I've heard the theory of putting 2 of the Big 4 in each division of the Big Ten, so I did a little research to see if there really is the Big 4 as they've been mentioned (M, OSU, PSU, NEB).
First, if you were to use recent years as the measure of who is in the Big 4, and if you used overall winning % as the way to determine who was 'better', you would have to go back 15 years to reach a point when those four teams have the highest winning %(through present) of the 12 teams. Likely, they would continue to be the Big 4 if you kept going back in time, but that does not necessarily make for a balanced league in the present.
Likewise, the Big 4 often fall on hard times. In the past 11 seasons, there has been at least one team of the big 4 with 5 or more losses. Only two of those had only 5 losses (and winning records). The remaining years had at least one of the Big 4 at .500 or below.
In other words, keeping track of the Big 4 is probably not an important factor in deciding how to align the divisions. Also, because teams vary from year to year, I continue to propose using recent results (5 years, say) and re-aligning periodically (every year would be cool). I will go into more detail in a later post.
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either you're worried about relative strength - which is a fluid thing - or you're not. If they'reworried about relative strength it have to be adjusted somewhat regularly. In 1999, I bet people thought the Big 12 North was the stronger division, well for the last 5 years or so they've been the week sister.
ReplyDeleteI think you just go with geography: Nebraska, Wisconsin, Iowa, Illinois, Northwestern, Minnesota in the west and PSU, OSU, Michigan, MSU, Indiana and Purdue in the east.