You'll still see this every year, but it will have less meaning. (Courtesy: rootzoo.com)
I have stayed fairly quiet on what our fearless leader dubbed “Expansionpalooza 2010″ because it was improving the two conferences I actually cared about.
Those leagues, the Big Ten and Pac-10, will soon have title games and the Big Ten season wont be over in mid-November every year.
Then the divisional alignment for the new Big Ten was reported today and all I can say is….
Whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa???????????
The two divisions will look like this:
• Michigan, Nebraska, Iowa, Michigan State, Northwestern and Minnesota.
• Ohio State, Penn State, Wisconsin, Purdue, Indiana and Illinois.
According to the report, the Big Ten wanted to preserve a number of traditional rivalries such as Michigan-Michigan State, Iowa-Minnesota, Purdue-Indiana and Indiana-Illinois.
Understandable, but the rivalry simply known as “The Game” is not important enough to keep alive within a division?
Sure, Ohio State and Michigan will still play every year as one of their “crossover rivalries”. It’s just like Minnesota-Wisconsin will probably play each other every year as well because, well, who else wants to play for Paul Bunyan’s Axe other than former Gopher Rhys Lloyd?
What made Michigan vs Ohio State such a great rivalry (at least before Jim Tressel arrived) was the fact that every year that game had Rose Bowl or National Championship implications.
Now, one of those teams can theoretically lose in the rivalry game, then exact revenge two weeks later in a rematch in the Big Ten title game and still go to the Rose Bowl.
It’s absurd!
But that’s what they want. This move is much like when the new ACC was formed and they put Florida State and Miami in opposite divisions, hoping they would play every year in the championship. It hasn’t happened yet (but we got that thriller of a Wake Forest/Georgia Tech title game!).
Texas and Oklahoma are both in the Big 12 South and that game means everything because the winner usually plays in the conference title game.
Michigan and Ohio State playing twice a year will start to tarnish the rivalry, especially since they will probably end up playing each other in back-to-back games.
The solution: just switch Wisconsin and Michigan. It’s that simple. You wont have to have any mandatory “crossover” games. You’re big-trophy rivalries will still be intact and you will make sure “The Game” still will be the game to watch every November even if you hate both teams.
Which I don’t. O-H….I-O!!!!!!!
