Indiana Football: How would radical realignment idea affect the Hoosiers
By Adam Childs
The Indiana football team has struggled to gain traction in football, but would a radical realignment benefit the Hoosiers?
On Monday SI writer Pat Forde unveiled a radical realignment plan for college football. It includes every team in FBS and effectively eliminates mid-major teams and conferences.
https://twitter.com/CFBLive247/status/1277779787688415233?s=20
The realignment plan is split up according to geography and tries to balance out the conferences as much as possible. It includes 10 conferences with 12 teams each. Some conferences are obviously going to be stronger than others, but this would allow every team to have an “equal” opportunity to make the playoffs.
So the big question is if this is really a good idea? For the mid-major schools, they would absolutely say yes, and actually some of the bigger schools might like it also.
One of those teams could be the Indiana Hoosiers. Currently, the Hoosiers are stuck in the brutal Big Ten East that includes Michigan, Ohio State, Penn State, and Michigan State. All teams that are historically much better in football and ones that the Hoosiers have struggled to beat.
In the new realignment Michigan, Ohio State and Michigan State are all included, but if they were split into two divisions they surely wouldn’t be stuck with all of them again. They would likely at worst only get two of them and the rest of their division would be noticeably weaker.
The other teams in the Great Mideast conference would be in-state rival Purdue, Ball State, Toledo, Miami (OH), Kent State, Akron, Ohio, and Cincinnati. Six of those teams are from the current MAC conference, which the Big Ten has dominated in football.
It adds up to what would be more wins for the Hoosiers and would probably create a very top-heavy conference with the current Big Ten schools with Cincinnati lagging a little behind.
Of course how much Hoosiers would benefit would definitely depend on how the divisions within the conference were split, but it can’t be any worse than what they are in right now.
Let’s take a look at what the divisions could be split into.