What if the Big Ten had World Cup groups?

It’s a forgone conclusion that the Big Ten will be abolishing divisions after it adds USC and UCLA in 2024 (assuming it does so). Geographic divisions would make no sense with two schools located nearly 1,500 miles from their nearest foe, and an eight-team division in a nine-game conference schedule would mean teams are only seeing each non-division opponent once every four years. While the anticipation is that the Big Ten will simply forgo any formal structure and instead opt to only protect established rivalries when designing schedules, I propose that a model exists that promotes a fairer schedule.

Without some structural constraints to scheduling, the Big Ten risks weaker-scheduled teams finding their way into the conference championship without being properly tested, while teams that are more historically successful would have a tougher go thanks to their entrenched rivalries and the conference’s desire to build marketable matchups. Even pods are vulnerable to this, as the Michigan-Ohio State pod seems as though it would always be tougher than the Quadrangle pod. The only way to ensure parity in scheduling is to have the schedules chosen by a draft.

The World Cup does this by placing the host country and the seven top FIFA ranked squads into their own groups. The remaining nations are grouped into tiers, and then drawn into groups so that each of the eight groups has an A, B, C, and D tier team. It would not be difficult for the Big Ten to do likewise.

Here’s what I propose: the Big Ten establish a four-pod structure. Each pod is lead by one of the four best teams from the previous year. If this were to happen be implemented in 2023 (with the early additions of UCLA and USC), it would be East champ Michigan, West champ Purdue, 11-1 (8-1) USC, and 11-1 (8-1) Ohio State. In the future, it could simply be headed by the four pod winners. From there, the teams would be ranked by conference record and “snaked” into the groups (so that team 5 is with team 4, teams 8 and 9 are with team 1, and so on).

Here’s the fun part: once those games are out of the way, the conference can protect EVERY rivalry. In about an hour, I wrote a schedule that ensures each of the 20 “recognized” (by Wikipedia) rivalries is maintained. Once those are safe, the schedule can be drawn to make sure teams don’t go abundantly long without playing one another (with nine conference games, everyone should see each other at least once every two and a half seasons).

Now, the obvious flaw in a four-pod system is that conference championship games are… well usually just one game. But why? In 2020, the Big Ten showed us that they can matchup teams at the end of the season to fit a game in. Why can’t we have an eight-game fixed schedule, a four-team conference championship bracket, and a ninth game in week 13 (the week of Thanksgiving) for those who don’t win their pods? If logistics are the answer, why not have all week 13 games in Indianapolis? This takes away half a home game per year, but in exchange for the above benefits, I think we can live with that.

The Big Ten probably isn’t going to pick this up, but I just wanted to have something out there before the next system fails so I can say “I told you so.”