The Big Ten’s annual media days will take place August 2-3 in Chicago, with several important topics up for discussion littering the docket.
One that will certainly be one of the most talked about issues will be the alignment of the conference once Nebraska comes on board in 2011. It’s such an important piece of the conference’s future that Cornhuskers athletic director Tom Osborne will take part in the meetings even as his school won’t have an official say in the league’s goings-on until July of next year.
Some have talked about splitting the conference along geographic lines, others based on rivalries or balancing the conference based on recent performances, although it’s likely some combination of all that will be utilized. With every argument for how the league should be divided, however, it always involves two six-team divisions.
Enter Michael Hunt of the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, who threw an Uncle Charlie at the proceedings in an article posted online Sunday afternoon.
We’re uncertain whether it was simply a throw-away line or what, but Hunt intimated that more than two divisions in the Big ten could be a possibility.
“With Tom Osborne attending a year in advance,” Hunt writes, “the league will go about deciding how to split football into two (or possibly more) divisions to set up a championship game by the time Nebraska gets settled in.”
Now, I’m neither a rocket surgeon nor the sharpest knife in the chandelier, but how the hell would you split a football conference into more than two divisions and make a conference championship game work? Make the Big Ten four divisions, then have a mini-playoff to get the two title-game participants?
(But... but... but what about the kids and missed classwork and other assorted atrocities that additional games would bring and has been the biggest anti-playoff argument of the BcS sheep?)
While we guess you can’t really rule anything out, the suggestion of more than two divisions for the Big Ten has us scratching our heads and various regions due-south in an attempt to wrap our minds around the idea tossed out by the Journal-Sentinel writer.
We’ll continue scratching and thinking about this until something kicks in. Until then, discuss it amongst yourselves...
