Big Ten discussing potential changes
On the table: Eliminating the two divisions and going to an 8-game conference football schedule.
COLUMBUS — Big Ten football teams have been divided into two geographic divisions since 2014.
That will be the case again this fall, but could 2022 be the last season that is true?
Gene Smith, Ohio State’s athletics director, said he and his colleagues in the league have discussed changes, including not redoing the divisions but eliminating them completely.
They could also go back to an eight-game conference schedule, though Smith made that sound unlikely.
“We haven’t come to any conclusions,” Smith said. “We talked about eight versus nine in the regular season. We have, I think, a preference for nine, but we haven’t voted on that. We have a meeting in May where we’ll kind of probably finalize some thoughts around that. The same thing with divisions. We’ve talked about divisions, so now we’re going to look at some models.”
For years, divisional play was a prerequisite for having a conference championship game, but other leagues, including the Big 12, have moved to simply matching the top two teams in the standings at the end of the year instead.
“I’m OK with losing divisions, but I’m interested in seeing the models first,” Smith said. “One of the things I want to make sure we do is try and mitigate some of the issues. One of the issues that has been challenging for a number of our schools is a student-athletes can go through four years and never play at a certain place. So I want to see if there’s a way to fix that.”
“I’m still willing to listen to eight (Big Ten games), but even if we go eight, I’m not so sure we’re gonna carry the load for the conferences and schedule Pac12 and ACC schools,” said Ohio State athletics director Gene Smith of the possibilities he and his colleagues have discussed changing.
His priority would be protecting annual rivalries, including Ohio State-Michigan, and putting in place a system that fits within the College Football Playoff structure.
The latter might be easier said than done because it is a moving target.
A 12-team model was proposed last year that would hold firstround games the week after conference championship games, which are held the first Saturday in December, but the CFP announced Friday that plan has been tabled until at least 2026.
Before that announcement, Smith wondered aloud if there is still a place for conference championship games within whatever structure is ultimately adopted.
“Is that still as valuable as it’s been?” Smith said of conference championship games, which were seen as a financial boon when adopted. “So all that discussion is ongoing, and I really don’t have a strong preference yet. I want to listen to my colleagues. I want to learn, and I just want to protect our rivalries and try and find a way to make sure kids have a chance to play everywhere.”
Ohio State plays Big Ten newcomers Maryland and Rutgers every year in the current format but has only been to Iowa once and made two trips apiece to Minnesota and Wisconsin since 2011.
The desire to fix that might keep them Big Ten playing nine conference games — which it has done since 2017 — and prevent a scheduling agreement between the Big Ten, ACC and Pac 12 (also known as “The Alliance”) from being put in place.
“When we first started The Alliance, everything was a little bit about scheduling and that kind of shifted a little bit,” Smith said. “So we did have the eight-versusnine conversation more intensely at that time with a thought that, ‘OK, if we played are, there some ACC/Pac-12 schools that many of us might play?’ But we moved away from that pretty quickly because many of us felt nine was still right for us in our scheduling model.
“And we felt that conference contests, when you look at it across the broad conference, were from a TV partner point of view just as valuable. And so we decided to kind of walk away from that a little bit. That doesn’t mean it might not come back up, but we at that point in time, we walked away.”
That leaves The Alliance as more or less just a voting bloc in discussions about CFP expansion and other issues surrounding major college athletics.
“The value of The Alliance was just bringing together schools that think alike,” Smith said.
While there was some thought a scheduling agreement involving the three leagues could lead to more appealing interregional games, Smith pointed out it could actually hinder Ohio State’s current scheduling philosophy.
The Buckeyes already play a big out-of-conference game annually while using the other two nonconference tilts to play home games against one small and one “mid-major” opponent per year.
Entering into a deal with the Pac-12 and ACC would make scheduling games like the 2022 season opener against Notre Dame more difficult, not to mention upcoming home-and-home series with Texas, Alabama and Georgia.
“I’m still willing to listen to eight (Big Ten games), but even if we go eight, I’m not so sure we’re gonna carry the load for the conferences and schedule Pac-12 and ACC schools. We’re gonna play whoever it is. It might be a Pac12 or ACC school. Might be like Washington’s on our schedule down the road, but I don’t see us making any changes that way. Those games are huge.”