Indiana Football: 3 ideas the Big Ten should absolutely consider for realignment of divisions

Indiana Football: 3 realignment ideas for Big Ten

Split Rivals

First and foremost the divisions need to be split up to be more balanced competitively. But there are different ways to do it. The first idea is too split up each team’s top rivals. If we do that, we can come up with this.

One

Michigan
Purdue
Illinois
Wisconsin
Michigan State
Nebraska
Rutgers

Two

Ohio State
Indiana
Northwestern
Minnesota
Penn State
Iowa
Maryland

This splits up the rivals as best as possible. Obviously Michigan/Ohio State, Purdue/Indiana, and Northwestern/Illinois get split up. After that, you start to look at the biggest rivals left. Iowa and Nebraska are new rivals within the Big Ten. Minnesota and Wisconsin make sense. Penn State and Michigan State used to play the last week of the year. Rutgers and Maryland are the only two left so they are paired.

With this setup, each team would have a protected cross-division game against their “rival” and it also splits up the competition fairly well. The recent top dogs of the conference are split up with Michigan, Michigan State, and Wisconsin in one division while Penn State, Ohio State, and Iowa in the other.

Being in either division for Indiana would be about the same, but still a lot better than what they are currently in. They would still have to get through some big names, but not four of them like they currently have in the Big Ten East.

This does create more travel for some teams, but that is going to be the same no matter how they split up the divisions if they make changes.

This does solve a lot of the problems the conference currently faces with the current setup, plus it also gives us an opportunity to get a rival game in the conference championship which would be amazing.