Aha! I have figured out how the Big Ten alignment should work. It keeps things balanced in football (which is pretty much impossible to do with a straight geographic model), somewhat balanced in basketball (which is pretty much irrelevant, but whatever) and preserves traditional rivalries - either by keeping rivals in like divisions or designating that they are required to play each other every season. Since the conference is going to go to a 9-game schedule with the expansion, we can afford to assign two annual cross-divisional foes for half the teams to help with competitive balance and traditional or potential rivalries. Only Penn State will be really geographically isolated from their divisional opponents, but they always have been since joining anyway. Plus, this keeps them from having to be in a conference with U-M and OSU so they should be happy. Lakes Division ...............Annual rival(s) Michigan ....................Nebraska, Michigan State Ohio State ..................Penn State, Illinois Wisconsin ...................Iowa, Minnesota Purdue ......................Penn State Indiana .....................Michigan State Northwestern ................Illinois Land Division Penn State .................Ohio State, Purdue Nebraska ...................Michigan Iowa .......................Wisconsin Illinois ...................Ohio State, Northwestern Michigan State .............Michigan, Indiana Minnesota ..................Wisconsin