NDPanther brought up a good question from my previous post, I just thought I would elaborate a little bit.

Why does the Big Ten need 12 teams?

The reason is that in order to have a championship game you must have 12 teams, it's part of the NCAA rules. The championship game is one step closer to a playoff, and getting rid of the crappy BCS system.

What would will we call the Big Ten if it is 12 teams?

  • Geographically the majority of the Big Ten teams are in the Midwest or Northern states. So it could be called something like:
  • Big North
  • Big Midwest
  • Midwest Conference
  • Northern Conference
  • Big 10 - It was still the same with 11 teams
  • Big 12 part duex

How would they be split up?

There are a lot of different ways to break up the conference, here are two examples:

East - West - The East is kind of stacked, but it's a simple way of breaking up the teams.

East

  • Penn State
  • Ohio State
  • Purdue
  • Indiana
  • Michigan State
  • Michigan

West

  • Iowa
  • Minnesota
  • Wisconsin
  • Illinois
  • Northwestern
  • Notre Dame - assuming ND will buck up and join the big 10.

North-South -This is a much more evenseparationof teams. and still an easy way to breakup the teams

North

  • Iowa
  • Michigan
  • Michigan State
  • Minnesota
  • Wisconsin
  • Northwestern

South

  • Penn State
  • Ohio State
  • Purdue
  • Illinois
  • Indiana
  • Notre Dame

Personally I like the North - South the teams break up good, there can still be good rivals for championship games like Ohio State vs Michigan, Michigan vs Notre dame. The whole scheduling thing will still be a pain, but every conference goes through it, so Delany can deal with it. Anyway, what was the question, oh yeah, 12 teams are needed for the championship game.