The Athletic: The wild, wild Big Ten West rides off into the sunset as unassuming, unpredictable as ever

[BleedGopher]

Per Scott:

Never has the disparity between the divisions been greater than today. The East won last year’s crossover games 13-8 and has won six of the eight crossover games so far in 2023. Penn State has beaten Illinois, Iowa and Northwestern by a combined 76 points. Michigan beat Nebraska and Minnesota by 80 total points.

The top three teams in the East are ranked No. 2, 3 and 6 nationally. The top two teams in the West are receiving votes.

“If you look at the national rankings, you see where those fall right now,” Big Ten commissioner Tony Petitti said when asked about disparity between the divisions. “But there’s a lot more football left to be played here before we get to the championship game.”

The Big Ten West, overlooked as ever, enters its final stretch run

In its 10th and final year of existence, the Big Ten West's unpredictability has always made it fascinating — and easy to diss.

theathletic.com

Go Gophers!!

 

[MNVCGUY]

East has always been more top heavy in the West but this is easily one of the biggest splits and the West looks very mediocre across the board.

Whoever manages to win the West is going to get demolished in the title game, which of course just provides justification for why the conference wants to do away with the current division setup.

 

[Great Plains Gopher]

There is an easy fix for the disparity - with four excellent teams coming in from the West Coast, sprinkle some good ones into the "West" (after all, who could be more west), transfer a present Western team to the East, and continue a popular east-west split. The alternative of having an 18 team league is unsustainable as fan intertest would be nil. Maybe the B10 has something else in mind, but they are not revealing it. In other words, keep divisions. Give us Southern Cal, Oregon and Washington, slip Illinois to the East, along with UCLA.

 

[MplsGopher]

The problem with two divisions of 9 and only 9 conf games is playing everyone. It doesn’t work.

You’d move Purdue and Illinois to the East. You’d want to give Illinois a permanent cross-over of NW to preserve that rivalry. All other major rivalries are preserved automatically within the divisions. OK, but then ILL and NW have no more conf games left to play anyone else in the other division ever. All other teams can only cycle through the other division one team per year.

So from that perspective, it breaks down.

That’s why you’d break up into smaller divisions, like the NFL.

 

[The prez sez]

Since the big ten is all about money, eyeballs, and more money, let's just give everyone and equal share of the financial pie, and separate into two divisions of Big Ten-Heavy and Big Ten-Lite. There is no way Minnesota can compete against The heavyweights of Ohio State Michigan and Penn State (2019 was An aberration) oregon, SC, Washington and probably UCLA. So just send us our share of the BT gravy, put us in the BT-Lite and spare us the indignity of being served up as roadkill.

 

[MplsGopher]

Yeah but that's the thing ... in order to get our share of the booty, we have to be offered up as the roadkill to the major programs. Those teams all need wins to make sure their records look good, so they can get into the CFP and major bowls against the SEC and other major conf teams.

That's pretty much what they're setting it up to be.

If Mich, Ohio St, Penn St, USC, Oregon, Wash, Neb, Iowa, Wisc only played each other ... there would be too many losses on too many of those. Their records need pumped up by playing the others.