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hecticbro

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Posts posted by hecticbro

  1. Wait, so is the Lakes Division.

    Presently it is, but the Lakes Division has a lot of the historic Big Ten powerhouses, so would likely get better once Indiana and Michigan dig out from the rubble.

    Michigan's not really a traditional hoops power. They just had one pretty spectacular run. Michigan State and Illinois are arguably the strongest basketball programs in the conference. Iowa is solid at basketball (plenty of deep NCAA runs in their history and two conference tourney championships this decade), and Minnesota is passionate and usually competitive.

  2. 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

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