I Find Your Lack of Faith Disturbing

Big Ten Logo

As those who follow college football know, the Big Ten added the University of Nebraska to the conference. With a new team added, there are now all kinds of proposed division set-ups and such as now the Big Ten can put on a championship football game. Not to be outdone, I’ve thrown something together that I think would work just fine.

Under my system, there will be no divisions. Instead, the two teams that play in the conference title game (assuming there will be one) will be based on two things, record and scoring percentage. I don’t claim my idea as original, as it’s similar to the system used by the Australian Football League and, I’m sure, other leagues. Let’s look at an imaginary standings table:

Team	Record	Pts.	PF	PA	Scoring %
UM	7-1	14	375	200	187.50%
OSU	7-1	14	385	230	167.39%
PSU	6-2	12	300	215	139.53%
UN	6-2	12	330	295	101.69%
UW	6-2	12	320	325	98.46

Each team gets 2 conference points for each conference victory and each team plays 8 conference games. The scoring percentage (%) is computed by dividing the points for (PF) by the points against (PA). If two teams have the same number of conference points, the team with the higher scoring percentage will be ranked higher within the conference standings. At the end of the season, the top two teams play in the title game.

Scheduling:

Currently, each team has two rivalry games, games it plays every year. Michigan’s, for example, are against ohio state and Michigan State. With the addition of Nebraska, I suggest each team plays an additional rivalry game. Michigan’s new rivalry games could then be against osu, MSU and Purdue or Illinois. The rest of the conference schedule will then be set up like it currently is where a school not in a rivalry matchup with another school will have a 1-2 year break from playing each other every few years.

As mentioned, this is how it works already so it wouldn’t be that big of a change. Make it so each school plays a 9-game conference schedule and I think we’d be good to go.

Name Change:

I am of the mind that the conference should keep the name “Big Ten”. They’ve been “mathematically challenged” for 20 years now. Being +2 instead of +1 isn’t much of a change. Still, if they’re keen on changing the name, I’d like to humbly suggest they revert back to one of the earlier names, the Western Conference.

Thoughts?