My Proposal for a 16 Team Big Ten

So I know it's just a rumor and very hypothetical situation, but rumors over the Big Ten expanding to 16 or even 18 teams are somewhat creeping up, with Oklahoma at the forefront of those discussions, with other schools such as Texas, Georgia Tech, and maybe UVA/UNC being looked at as well. 

In this exercise, I'm going to propose a division and schedule realignment under the assumption that 2 teams are added (and for this, I'm going to assume Oklahoma and Texas are those two teams). 

In my proposal, there would be four divisions of four teams each, which I will just name Division 1, 2, 3, and 4 for the time being.

Division 1: Michigan, Michigan State, Maryland, Purdue
Division 2: Ohio State, Penn State, Rutgers, Indiana
Division 3: Texas, Wisconsin, Northwestern, Minnesota
Division 4: Oklahoma, Nebraska, Illinois, Iowa

In this scenario, each division would be "paired" with another - Divisions 1 & 2 would be paired, and Divisions 3 & 4 would be paired. I'll get back to that in just a second.

In this conference, each team would play 9 conference games - 3 against the 3 other teams in your division, 3 against your "paired" division, and 3 against some combination of the other two divisions. Among those three played against your paired division, there would be a protected crossover game that would be played every year, similar to what happened with the Leaders and Legends divisions before Maryland and Rutgers were added. Those crossovers would be:

Div 1-2: M-OSU, MSU-PSU, Md-Rutgers, Purdue-IU
Div 3-4: UT-OU, Wisc-Neb, Illinois-NW, Iowa-Minn

This leaves every team with four opponents that they would be guaranteed to play every single year - 3 from your division, and the one crossover. For the other two games in your paired division, the team you would NOT play would rotate every two years. For example, Michigan could play Penn State and Rutgers in back to back years, then Rutgers and Indiana in back to back years, then Penn State and Indiana in back to back years. So you would play those other three teams 4 times every 6 years.

As for your 3 games against the non-paired divisions, you will play two from one division and one from the other. While the teams will change every two years (after one home and one away game), the amount of teams you play in each division will change every four years. 

For example, say Michigan's three games out of the division are Texas, Wisconsin, and Oklahoma (I know they would probably balance out the competition level more than this, but this is just for argument's sake here). So, they will play all three of those teams in back to back years, one each at home and on the road. Then, in the next two years, Michigan would play the other two teams from division 3 (Northwestern and Minnesota), and only one more from division 4 (Nebraska). After doing that for two years, Michigan would then play the remaining two teams from division 4 (Illinois and Iowa), and then would cycle back to the beginning of division 3 with Texas for two more years. FInally, Michigan would go back to the beginning of division 4 with Oklahoma and Nebraska, along with Wisconsin for the next two years. 

Overall, this would take 8 cycles to get back to the beginning, so in 16 years, you would play every team from the non-paired divisions 6 times in every 16 year cycle (I know that it would be very unlikely to actually make it through this 16 year cycle even once before more realignment, but it's still fun to think about).

Overall, assuming the layout is done correctly so that teams like Michigan won't face Oklahoma, Texas, and Nebraska all in one year, then face Illinois, Minnesota, and Iowa in the next (ie., maintain pretty solid competitive balance year to year), Michigan could have a fantastic schedule every year without much need for scheduling really tough OOC games. 

Then, for the conference championship game, simply take the best team from each of the paired divisions (i.e., one team from Division 1 or 2, and one team from Division 3 or 4). 

I made the divisions with the best combination of competitive balance, geography, and sustained rivalries that I could possibly come up with. It's not perfect (especially for a school like Texas who doesn't have any natural rivals in their division), but it's the best I could come up with. Seems pretty fair overall; each division has one perennial doormat except division 3, but their 2nd team is probably the weakest program (assuming MSU, Penn State, Wisconsin, and Nebraska as the second best team in each division).

And, in the event that Texas or Oklahoma are not the teams that are added, keep the same format for the schedule, just switch up the teams in each division and the crossover games a little bit.

Thoughts?

*Lastly, not sure if this should be a diary or post on the board, but I figure it'd be easier to move to a diary if it belongs there and would be less of an issue on the board than as a diary if it's in the wrong place.