Big Ten Divisions for next year - just for fun

• the_system

  I'm bored so I broke down the divisions and added Nebraska (I know they haven't played anyone in the Big Ten this year). Just thought it was interesting that there is only one team with a losing record and the divisions seem pretty balanced. I can't wait for next year.
  
  Ohio State 8-1
  Wisconsin 7-1
  Illinois 5-3
  Penn State 5-3
  Indiana 4-4
  Purdue 4-4
  
  Michigan State 8-1
  Nebraska 7-1
  Iowa 6-2
  Northwestern 6-2
  Michigan 5-3
  Minnesota 1-8
  
  The question becomes, can some of these teams that are successful now hold onto that success? I don't think Sparty is a team that can play at a championship level every year. Iowa? With Nebraska coming in they might lose some recruits to the Huskers. Michigan should bounce back but who knows when.
  
  Just some fun on a boring Monday.
• ptown_trojans_1

  

  I'm not looking forward to seeing that Nebraska qb next year.
  
  Although, a MSU-Nebraska game this year would be awesome.
• killer_ewok

  

  Pelini will recruit well in the Midwest IMO. Particularly in Ohio with his Youngstown (Cardinal Mooney) ties.
• Trueblue23

  

  Nebraska will be sick next year.
  
  Martinez is gonna make a lot of people look bad.
• the_system

  Trueblue23;541532 wrote:Nebraska will be sick next year.
  
  Martinez is gonna make a lot of people look bad.

  
  They also just got a commitment from Aaron Green, top 5 RB out of Texas. If they can get Heard out of Youngstown Mooney to qualify next year they might have the fastest, most athletic, and very young backfield in the nation.
• ytownfootball

  

  I like Pellini a lot. He'll have monster defenses and seems to be getting the offense going that he lacked last season. He will get a good share of mid westerners that might otherwise have gone to the Big 10 on other squads.
  
  I like Pellini enough to be a little concerned that by Nebraska joining the Big 10, he might not consider OSU as his landing zone if/when Tressel hangs 'em up.
• the_system

  ytownfootball;541602 wrote:I like Pellini a lot. He'll have monster defenses and seems to be getting the offense going that he lacked last season. He will get a good share of mid westerners that might otherwise have gone to the Big 10 on other squads.
  
  I like Pellini enough to be a little concerned that by Nebraska joining the Big 10, he might not consider OSU as his landing zone if/when Tressel hangs 'em up.

  
  I think he'd go to OSU and that's probably the only place that would get him out of Nebraska.
• Tiernan

  Have you heard the Big 10 deacons are having some difficulty coming up with names for the two divisions? They have absolutely decided they will not be named East and West (or) North & South. They are considering using names such as the Wayne Duke Div and the Alonzo Stagg Div. This smacks of too much PC / BS for me. Why not just make it easier and call one the Ohio State Championship Div and one The Division With All The Other Losers?
• krambman

  

  Tiernan;542284 wrote:Have you heard the Big 10 deacons are having some difficulty coming up with names for the two divisions? They have absolutely decided they will not be named East and West (or) North & South. They are considering using names such as the Wayne Duke Div and the Alonzo Stagg Div. This smacks of too much PC / BS for me. Why not just make it easier and call one the Ohio State Championship Div and one The Division With All The Other Losers?

  
  I like that idea.
  
  They did make it difficult on themselves to come up with names. Since they aren't geographic North/South and East/West certainly won't work. If Wisconsin and Nebraska switched divisions you could have the Plains and Lakes divisions, but that won't work with the current setup. I've heard Woody and Bo suggested as the division names, but clearly 10 of the 12 schools would hate this. I'm not opposed to using the names of great coaches if you back far enough like the Big Ten is considering doing, however, those would be too difficult to remember and no one would ever use them. They need something easy to remember and use. like Blue and White (the official colors of the conference) or the Big and Ten (which would be stupid to have a six team division named "Ten"). It was easy for the ACC when they went with non-geographic divisions because they were able to use the names Atlantic and Coastal. I honestly have no good ideas of what to name the divisions.
• gorocks99

  

  Campbell and Wales. Problem solved.
  
  Seriously though, I don't see them naming the conferences after anything related to one school. The other schools unrelated to the name would get their panties in a bunch.
• j_crazy

  

  call one division the Great Lakes division and the other the Heartland Divsion, or the Midwest Division.
• krambman

  

  gorocks99;542330 wrote:Campbell and Wales. Problem solved.
  
  Seriously though, I don't see them naming the conferences after anything related to one school. The other schools unrelated to the name would get their panties in a bunch.

  
  Correct. Stagg would work because he coached at U of Chicago who isn't a Big Ten athletic school anymore. Duke graduated from Iowa though. Paul Brown was the other name that game to mind for me because he had the same kind of impact on football that Stagg did, however, he coached at OSU and only coached in college for a few years. It's certainly going to be difficult for them to come up with good names that everyone is satisfied with.
• OneBuckeye

  

  Best I have heard are Lakes and Plains divisions. Good article below.
  
  http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2010-11-01/sports/ct-spt-1102-big-ten-divisions--20101101_1_division-names-commissioner-jim-delany-big-ten
  

  Many ideas still contained names from Big Ten folklore ("Grange" and "Griffin", "Berwanger" and "Stagg") or stubbornly pushed for a geographical flavor ("Great Lakes" and "Prairie", "Rust Belt" and "Grain Belt"), despite the league's reluctance to use either geography or the names of legendary coaches or athletes that represent just two schools.
  
  The majority were serious, including "Caps" and "Gowns"; "Thunder" and "Lightning"; "Victory" and "Triumph" and "Rose" and "Thorn."
  
  One reader commented: "The way they screwed up those divisions, 'Dumb' and 'Dumber' might be more appropriate

  Commissioner Jim Delany said last week that the Big Ten isn't likely to meet his deadline of Dec. 1 for naming its two new divisions.
  
  "We're getting lots and lots of good selections that we're not coalescing very well," Delany said.
  
  No kidding. When the league played fast and loose with its geography, sticking Michigan and Nebraska in one division and Penn State and Wisconsin in the other, all the simple geographic names bit the dust.
  
  There will be no East and West or North and South. Unless the conference wanted to go creative with Eastern West and Western East - this is the league that called itself the Big Ten with 11 teams, after all - then directions were out. Perhaps the divisions can take names of people (Woody and Bo), colors (Black and Blue), materials (Iron and Steel), vegetables (Corn and Potato) or Midwestern weather (Gray and Grayer).
  
  Woody and Bo - or Hayes and Schembechler - seems an excellent choice as long you're a fan of Ohio State and Michigan. But how do you forget Zuppke, Yost or Paterno? An Indiana fan probably wouldn't appreciate having his team in a division named for a football bully who used to punish his Hoosiers like misbehaving kids. And in the Woody-Bo days the Big Ten was known as the Big Two and the Little Eight; bringing back those memories wouldn't be good marketing.
  
  Naming the divisions for storied players from long ago would be more palatable for most of us, but even then, each school's self-interest would probably get in the way.
  
  Harmon and Harley?
  
  Perfect. There probably isn't an Ohio State fan anywhere who would object to having Chic Harley sharing division naming with Michigan legend Tom Harmon.
  
  Harmon and Grange?
  
  Despicable. Harmon and Illinois legend Red Grange might be good for football historians, but Ohio State fans would go ballistic at having their heroes skipped.
  
  One solution is to come up with names associated with the Big Ten that aren't identifiable with individual schools, which seems harder than it is.
  
  The University of Chicago was one of the seven original members of the league. For 41 of Chicago's 51 years in the league, its coach was the legendary Amos Alonzo Stagg, who is still seventh on the all-time wins list (314) among college coaches. And Jay Berwanger, a Chicago halfback, was the winner of the first Heisman Trophy in 1935.
  
  Stagg and Berwanger divisions?
  
  We're getting there. Stagg is a good masculine name for a division, but most of us probably wouldn't want to compete in a division called Berwanger. It sounds a little too funky and too much like a slang, well, nevermind.
  
  So who else to pair with Stagg? A referee? No, no, a thousand times no. A sportswriter? An early giant such as Walter Eckersall, who played at Chicago and covered college football for the Chicago Tribune, might do, although he seems a little too obscure for modern fans. A league founder? Hmmm.
  
  Purdue president James H. Smart called the presidents of seven Midwestern universities together in 1895 to discuss the formation of a league (Lake Forest decided against it). Now, really, who wouldn't want be in the Smart Division? Then again, he is from Purdue, and the other division would immediately be nicknamed the "Dumb" by wise guys like me.
  
  A conference commissioner?
  
  Major John Griffin was the league's first commissioner, but he might be too easily confused with Ohio State two-time Heisman Trophy winner Archie Griffith. Tug Wilson? Wayne Duke?
  
  Ah. Duke has promise. Not only did he ably lead the Big Ten for 18 years, (1971-89), but more important, he has a virile, strong-sounding name.
  
  Any football player feeling his machismo would love to play in divisions named Duke and Stagg, and it wouldn't even matter if they didn't have the slightest clue who either guy was.
  
  It beats playing in a division named for a fruit or vegetable.

  http://www.dispatch.com/live/content/sports/stories/2010/10/31/big-ten-division-names-think-manly.html?sid=101
• Scarlet_Buckeye

  

  j_crazy;542334 wrote:call one division the Great Lakes division and the other the Heartland Divsion, or the Midwest Division.

  
  I love this idea/suggestion.
• Zombaypirate

  I like the Lakes and the Plains divisions. They have a nice ring to them.
• sleeper

  

  There's no doubt in my mind the Big Ten will be the consensus best conference in the country starting next year. Ohio State, Wisconsin, Iowa, Nebraska are all teams that will be perennial top 25 teams, then you have 2nd tier of Penn State(I can't believe I just had to put Penn State in the 2nd tier, jesus), Michigan, and Michigan State which will spend time between being top 25 and potentially having a great season. Then out of the other 5, you'll have Northwestern and Illinois who can pull things out of their butt and be bowl eligible at minimum year in year out, and then of course the bottom feeders.
  
  In the SEC, you'll just have LSU Florida and Bama being perennial top 25 teams, and then the rest beating up their mediocre OOC schedules and winning 2 in conference games against their plethora of bottom feeders(Kentucky, Vanderbilt, Tennessee, Georgia, Ole Miss, Miss ST, Arkansas, etc..) I'll give South Carolina and Auburn some credit, although these schools probably would be .500(at best) if they had to play in the Big Ten.
• Scarlet_Buckeye

  

  sleeper;545273 wrote:There's no doubt in my mind the Big Ten will be the consensus best conference in the country starting next year. Ohio State, Wisconsin, Iowa, Nebraska are all teams that will be perennial top 25 teams, then you have 2nd tier of Penn State(I can't believe I just had to put Penn State in the 2nd tier, jesus), Michigan, and Michigan State which will spend time between being top 25 and potentially having a great season. Then out of the other 5, you'll have Northwestern and Illinois who can pull things out of their butt and be bowl eligible at minimum year in year out, and then of course the bottom feeders.
  
  In the SEC, you'll just have LSU Florida and Bama being perennial top 25 teams, and then the rest beating up their mediocre OOC schedules and winning 2 in conference games against their plethora of bottom feeders(Kentucky, Vanderbilt, Tennessee, Georgia, Ole Miss, Miss ST, Arkansas, etc..) I'll give South Carolina and Auburn some credit, although these schools probably would be .500(at best) if they had to play in the Big Ten.

  
  Idkk... even from a Big Ten fan like me, and an SEC hater, I still am going to preserve the right to hold judgment. I think the SEC has to be considered the best conference until someone takes it away from them (and not just by winning the national title game). Yes, it pained me to say all of that.