Last Fall the Big Ten Conference announced that it would expand from twelve to fourteen members by adding the University of Maryland and Rutgers University. While both schools are expected to join the league in 2014, the question of how the new teams will fit into the conference’s football divisions has been a topic of discussion among reporters, bloggers, and Big Ten officials, including Commissioner Jim Delany, for last several weeks. These divisions, currently known as “Leaders” (Illinois, Indiana, Ohio State, Penn State, Purdue, and Wisconsin) and “Legends” (Iowa, Michigan, Michigan State, Minnesota, Nebraska, and Northwestern) divide the Big Ten into groupings based on competitive balance and preserving team rivalries rather than geography. Since Rutgers and Maryland are located east and southeast of Penn State respectively, their inclusion into the Big Ten will significantly reshape the conference’s football landscape.
According to ESPN’s Brian Bennett, the Big Ten’s athletic directors will meet “several times this spring” to discuss divisional alignment and other issues like bowl tie-ins and whether to replace the current 8-game conference schedule with either a nine or a ten game format.* But, from reading news articles, blog posts, and comments from the online community, it seems that Big Ten officials are increasingly open to replacing Leaders and Legends with a divisional format that, as Michigan’s AD Dave Brandon put it, “will likely be a little bit more attentive to geographic alignment.”+ This decision begs the question of why the Big Ten would consider new divisions after only two football seasons? Did Leaders and Legends fail to meet the conference’s and the public’s expectations for long-term league stability and national football relevance? Why is geography now a primary aspect for the Big Ten’s divisional realignment? This article attempts to answer these questions by looking at how the current divisions took shape and discussing the problems and circumstances that led Big Ten officials to consider alternatives to Leaders and Legends.
The Big Ten’s Leaders and Legends divisional model could be characterized as a grand experiment with the best of intentions. Conference officials had wanted to build league divisions that would enable long-term stability and promote team competition in a rapidly changing college athletic environment. Back in 2010, when the current national conference realignment began over issues like money and intra-league animosity, the Big Ten was one of three FBS-level conferences (the others being the Pac-10 (now 12) and the SEC) that benefited from the instability which undermined the Big XII, Big East, and the ACC. After Nebraska accepted an invitation to join the Big Ten in July 2011, the league would have the twelve teams it needed to create intra-league divisions and launch a lucrative championship football game. In so doing, the league faced the problem of how to organize its new divisions. As they discussed this situation, Big Ten officials immediately dismissed the idea of splitting the teams along geographic lines. Scott Dochterman, of the Cedar Rapids, Iowa, newspaper The Gazette, back in July 2011 explained why the Big Ten rejected a purely geographic divisional model:
Most college athletics conferences divided based on geography, and
that legacy nationwide remains ambiguous. It works in the SEC where
five different schools almost evenly distributed in the two divisions have
won BCS football titles since 1998. It failed in the Big XII, where the
southern schools - specifically Texas - commanded more power than
its northern counterparts . . . Big Ten officials studied how other leagues
divided themselves and saw how geography . . . spurred discontent
among membership.^
Hence Big Ten officials chose a divisional arrangement based on competitive balance and protecting team rivalries.
In using competitive balance as the cornerstone of what eventually became Leaders and Legends, the Big Ten employed statistical data (e.g., winning percentages, bowl appearances, rankings, etc . .) going back to 1993, the year Penn State joined the league, to build the divisions. Conference officials began by identifying the league’s four strongest football teams, which were Michigan, Nebraska, Ohio State, and Penn State, and separating them into pairs. Since three of these schools were located east of Chicago, one obviously had to be joined with Nebraska. In so doing, Big Ten officials chose Michigan because they did not want to separate Penn State from its main rival in Columbus. Next, they analyzed the data from the other eight schools and ranked Iowa and Wisconsin above the other six teams. As a result, both universities were separated; conference officials placed Wisconsin with Ohio State and Penn State, while Michigan and Nebraska received Iowa. The remaining six schools were divided by geography while paying special attention to maintaining team rivalries. Thus, the Big Ten successfully balanced their divisions, but the new league alignment raised questions of how to preserve rivalries that transcended interdivisional boundaries.~
In building the divisions, the Big Ten wanted to maintain as many traditional rivalries as possible and in some ways they succeeded. Several regional rivalries were preserved within each division, and one was added when Nebraska joined:
Leaders: Ohio State-Penn State, Ohio State-Illinois, Indiana-Purdue, Indiana-Illinois, Purdue-
Illinois, and Ohio State-Wisconsin.
Legends: Iowa-Minnesota, Iowa-Nebraska, Michigan-Michigan State, Michigan-Minnesota,
Northwestern-Iowa.
However, the Big Ten’s most prominent rivalry, Michigan-Ohio State, was not an intra-divisional game. Even though Big Ten officials never considered eliminating this game as an annual contest, the Big XII’s old divisional alignment (North-South) provided an example of how eliminating one rivalry could affect the stability of an entire conference. The power of the South schools, led by Texas, gave preferential treatment to the annual Red River Rivalry (Texas-Oklahoma) at the expense of the Nebraska-Oklahoma game, one of the most intense rivalries in the country prior to the Big XII’s formation in 1994. It can be argued that this decision contributed to the interdivisional hostility that nearly destroyed the Big XII back in 2010. To promote interdivisional harmony, Delany and other officials set up six annual crossover rivalry games. Besides Michigan-Ohio State, the other five games included Illinois-Northwestern, Indiana-Michigan State, Penn State-Nebraska, Purdue-Iowa, and Wisconsin-Minnesota. Now that every Big Ten team had its primary rivalry game secured, the conference was ready to implement the Legends and Leaders divisional format, which went into effect on July 1, 2011.
Even before the Big Ten Conference played its first season as a twelve-team league, there were problems with the new divisions. The first problem was that the public was not favorably impressed with division names like Legends and Leaders. Initially, Big Ten officials chose those names to emphasize the conference’s “characteristics and mission” as Big Ten Communications Director Diane Dietz explained:
The mission for the conference was always to excel athletically without
compromising the emphasis that our schools put on academics . . . For
115 years we’ve been balancing these academic and athletic standards
and so with Legends and Leaders, we really believed that Legends was
a nod to our past. The Leaders division was a nod to our future . . . We’re
here to build leaders.**
Naming the divisions Legends and Leaders seemed like a way to put the Big Ten’s organizational mission on the college football map. However, the public’s response to this idea was mostly negative. Some public comments were very similar to how Chicago Sun-Times columnist Herb Gould characterized the divisions, which he identified as “lame.”^^ Others identified Legends and Leaders with another “L” word, specifically “Losers,” in part because no Big Ten team since Ohio State back in 2002 has won a national championship. Unfortunately, the new division names made the Big Ten into a subject of ridicule and scorn from the public and the media. This development lowered the Big Ten’s prestige before a single down was played in their new divisions.~~
A second problem with Leaders and Legends was that some rivalries were eliminated as annual contests. The teams most affected by this change were Purdue, Wisconsin, Iowa, Northwestern, Michigan State, and Penn State. Beginning with Purdue, the Boilermakers lost Northwestern, and with it, annual access to the Chicago market. Wisconsin, when it was placed in the Leaders division, also lost a chance to play Northwestern. But what hurt Wisconsin more than losing access to Chicago was the loss of their game with Iowa. Both ADs from Iowa and Wisconsin fought to preserve their rivalry but the Big Ten’s emphasis on competitive balance resulted in both schools being put into opposite divisions for, as Iowa AD Gary Barta put it, “the greater good of the conference.”++ Finally, the Land-Grant Trophy series between Michigan State and Penn State was also eliminated. Both schools had ended their conference schedules with this game since 1994 but because of competitive balance, Penn State was not placed in the same division as MSU. Penn State ultimately received a crossover game with Nebraska but it was still separated from the teams outside of Ohio (i.e., Michigan, Michigan State) which were closest in proximity to State College. Thus the Big Ten’s decision to end the MSU-PSU series had the unfortunate effect of further isolating Penn State from the rest of the league. In so doing, Delany and other officials had created a new problem that could only be solved by expanding the conference eastward.
Lastly, the third problem arose from building the divisions around competitive balance. Creating and maintaing a balance of athletic power is a difficult task in a world-class league like the Big Ten because the competitive environment is always changing. The problem here is that balance of power systems are antithetical to change. They are designed to keep things as they are for as long as possible. In the Big Ten’s case, conference officials built the divisions around its four primary football powers (Leaders - Ohio State & Penn State, Legends - Michigan & Nebraska), thereby giving those four teams a competitive advantage over the other eight weaker programs. The system would work as long as the four flagship programs finish their seasons in accordance with their historical standings (i.e., those on top, stay on top). Unfortunately, balance of power systems invariably break down when faced with unforeseen circumstances. In college football these situations can include coaching changes, upgrades to athletic facilities, the ability to recruit four and five-star athletes, and NCAA sanctions. The recent history of Big Ten football provides an example of how unanticipated changes can undermine competitive balance.
During the last two seasons, coaching changes and NCAA sanctions impacting Ohio State and Penn State weakened the Legends division and the conference as a whole. At Ohio State, the effects of the memorabilia-for-tattoos incident ended Jim Tressel’s head coaching career and put the Buckeyes in a position where they regressed from a 12-1 season in 2010 to a 6-7 record in 2011. The NCAA sanctions subsequent to that controversy also banned OSU from postseason play in 2012, a year the Buckeyes had an undefeated season. At the same time, the 2012 season was also the first year the NCAA’s sanctions against Penn State, in the aftermath of the Jerry Sandusky child molestation scandal, took effect. Besides five years of probation, PSU’s other punishments included a $60 million fine, the loss of several scholarships, and a four-year bowl ban. These sanctions not only crippled Penn State, they also destroyed the competitive balance between the divisions for the next half-decade.
Beginning in 2012 both flagship programs of the Leaders division were eliminated from postseason play, a circumstance that permitted a five-loss Wisconsin team to advance to the Rose Bowl. But while Ohio State’s sanctions will end in time for the 2013 season, Penn State’s status as a flagship program in its division remains in doubt as long as the sanctions remain in effect. Unfortunately, with two top-tier programs in the Legends division versus one in the Leaders, the Big Ten faces the prospect of divisional imbalance for the foreseeable future. This unfavorable situation, which complemented the embarrassment of a five-loss team playing in the BCS, revealed how a divisional model built around competitive balance created as many new problems on top of the ones (e.g., maintaining divisional harmony and promoting rivalries) it was originally meant to solve. As a result, Big Ten officials decided to replace Legends and Leaders with new divisions after only two football seasons.
Ultimately, the Big Ten will continue to use the Legends and Leaders divisions through the 2013 season since the League’s new divisional model will be built around fourteen teams. While adding Rutgers and Maryland in 2014 will end the Big Ten’s grand experiment, Leaders and Legends cannot be viewed as a complete failure. Even after the last two rough seasons, the Big Ten remains the wealthiest and most stable conference in FBS football. As for how the Big Ten will build its new divisions, recent news releases have shown that the Conference is considering a model based on geographic alignment. Hopefully it will be a divisional arrangement that, like Legends and Leaders, will emphasize interdivisional competition by promoting crossover rivalry matches. It will be interesting to see how the new divisions will take shape over the next couple of months.
Sources:
*http://espn.go.com/blog/ncfnation/post/_/id/76352/smith-favors-osu-u-m-in-same-division
+ http://www.cbssports.com/collegefootball/blog/eye-on-college-football/21623911/signs-point-to-geographical-divisions-in-the-big-ten
^ http://thegazette.com/2011/07/19/legends-and-leaders-chapter-1-geographically-challenged/
~ http://thegazette.com/2011/07/20/legends-and-leaders-chapter-2-balance-of-power/
**http://thegazette.com/2011/07/27/legends-and-leaders-chapter-10-whats-in-a-name/
^^http://www.suntimes.com/sports/colleges/2833846-419/division-state-divisions-michigan-ten.html
~~http://espn.go.com/college-football/story/_/id/8842536/big-ten-consider-renaming-legends-leaders-divisions-jim-delany-says
++http://thegazette.com/2011/07/22/b1g-chapter-5-wisconsins-melancholy/
