Everybody's talking 'bout Divisions

Since tonight is the night we learn once and for all what the future holds for the Illini and Big Ten Divisions, I figured it would be a good opportunity to feature what some of the more respected figures of Big Ten blogging have said about dividing up the Old Lady.

Frank the Tank, long the source of paranoid/accurate/conspiratorial/incredibly-awesome expansion talk has some issue with how the divisions might shake up.

Alas, the very smart people at the Big Ten conference offices are completely outsmarting themselves here.  For whatever reason, the KISS formula of a logical East/West division split simply won’t do.  I can somewhat understand the desire to split the 4 "marquee brands" of Michigan, Ohio State, Penn State and Nebraska evenly amongst the divisions.  However, the thought of (1) sending Michigan and Ohio State to opposite divisions and (2) moving their rivalry game from the end of the season to the midseason is even worse than the idea of New Coke.

Our most fearless leader in blogging, OrsonSpencer SwindleHall is waiting for Big Ten divisional play with open arms and a brotherly slap on the back, as the Big Ten seems to shed its exceptionalism and join the rest of the country in the dirty business of big time cash football. He also warns against using tradition as a crutch of an argument against something that makes so much sense.

Beware anyone who defends things out of tradition, since tradition all by its lonesome makes as much sense as changing things for change's sake, i.e. none. Thus we arrive at the Big Ten's door, or more specifically its fans, who lag behind the rather forward-thinking conference by insisting that Ohio State and Michigan should not play more than once a year, that moving them into separate divisions would be a travesty, and that men should take their hats off inside and most especially in the presence of a lady.* ...
If the rivalry game is all that matters to you, the concept of greater glory means nothing, but for the Big Ten that greater glory and the ad revenues for the conference are very, very important indeed. In this instance Jim Delany is more than happy to jettison tradition for innovation, something the Big Ten has done more often than one might think in the past.

BUNK! Says Michigan bloggerand father of sports metrics that I cannot/do not care to understand Brian Cook (also the name thief of one of my favorite Illini players ever) There is much more than money and conference championships at stake in the UM OSU rivalry! Much that must be preserved! For without Michigan and OSU playing one another during the day on Thanksgiving, how can any of us truly rely on anything? 

It so happens that a lot of the time OSU and Michigan do decide the Big Ten, but did anyone want to beat OSU less in the mid-90s when Michigan limped into the game with 3 or 4 losses every year? Or last year? No. Would it matter less as an October game to be followed by three or four more? Necessarily yes. Is that the worst thing in the world? Yes.

I have no tolerance for anyone too dense to grasp this, much less see it as a potentially good thing, as Dave at Maize N Brew does. I said his post on the matter was the stupidest thing I'd ever seen a Michigan fan write and it remains so. Orson's post on the matter is also the dumbest thing I've ever seen him write. The reason college football matters in a way the NFL does not is the idea it has that some things are not worth selling. Once the date of the Michigan-Ohio State game goes the only thing left is the labor of the players.

 

We all used to be such good friends in the sports blogging community, why I remember days when we could go entire weeks between someone impugning the integrity of another's mother, sadly these days are gone with the return of football. So what is it that Dave said that got under Brian's skin so deeply?

The toughest thing we as Michigan fans and fans of the Big Ten have to realize is that Tradition as we know it is constantly evolving. There were outcries when the league went to 11 teams, but I think that's worked out great for everyone. There were people who opposed expansion and a championship game (yours truly, in fact) before it happened. But it did. The whole definition of our conference and how football will be played in our stadiums for the next generation are constantly being revised. If you're looking for the overarching tradition here it's change itself.

We can't expect the college football world to change around us as we stay stuck in the past. If The Game is to remain relevant to college football as a whole, it too will have to change somewhat. There's really nothing we can do to stop it. You can stand there in Bigtenimen Square and try to stare down the tanks, but trust me on this, Jim Delany is driving and he ain't going to stop because you're standing there. So let's embrace the change that's coming and find a way to preserve the most important elements of The Game.

 

Sensing a theme yet? Everyone is all freaked the hell out about their precious Michigan Ohio State game, for fear that its absence would forever destroy the Big Ten. Let's see if the guy who has actually been winning all of these damn games is getting as uptight as the recent losers.

There is nothing, nothing, that says Ohio State and Michigan can't be in the same division and play each other at the end of the year beyond a simple and base desire for more cash. I, for one, am not prepared to rip the guts out of the best rivalry in sports because of a perceived image problem that doesn't exist and to pour more dollars into a conference that is already making money hand over fist. Because ultimately this should be about the fans, and with all due respect to the fans of other Big Ten rivalries, the Ohio State/Michigan game needs to take precedence.

Nope, he is pissed off. Let's see if we can't move along to someone who is in no way involved with the damn UM/OSU game for some reserved and measured reactions. Surely Black Heart Gold Pants will not leave me wanting.

Splitting Ohio State and Michigan into different divisions in order to preserve the possibility of a Big Blue-OSU championship game might be stupid, but it's not completely unwarranted.  Further, your incessant bitching about the mere placement of a game only furthers the view the rest of us have of you: Smug, arrogant, entitled (there's also the douchebag stuff, but that has little to do with this).  Wisconsin and Iowa have played 85 times, including every year since 1937, in the Big Ten's most competitive rivalry.  It's a game that fans from both schools want, and yet it looks virtually certain that the series will be no more; regardless of where Minnesota ends up, they will trump the Iowa-Wisconsin rivalry.  Nobody -- well, at least nobody other than uninformed retirees -- is suggesting the annual Ohio State-Michigan game be skipped.  Everyone else here is sacrificing to make this a better conference, and there is little doubt that Nebraska does that.  We're not asking for blood and urine samples.  It's October.  Deal with it.

Well it may not be measured, but of all the arguments I have read to this point this one has the most resonance to me. Illinois, whatever the announcement tonight, is going to be in the sacrificial lamb category of teams. Like Indiana, Purdue, and even probably Minnesota, it is going to be looked at as the easy class of teams for the more traditional powers to feast on. This is evidence as to how poorly the Illini have done over the last decade in  football, as well as how important the big boys are to the conference. Breaking the conference into divisions and the addition of a 9th conference game is a sacrifice for the Illini in some respects. Nine conference games means one less home game every other year to profit from, and an even more difficult road to a bowl (removing the possibility of one MACrificial lamb to pad the win column.) This will make it tougher on the Illini, but I am not complaining, because I know it will be better for the conference, better in the long run for the school and better for midwest football overall. So you will excuse me if I don't shed a tear when I watch Michigan get steam rolled by Tressel in October instead of in the last game of the year.

Announcements come tonight at 6.