Very Clever, TinMan. I especially enjoyed the "Silo 'n' Stockyard" and "Plane 'n' Auto" ones. :) They made me chuckle slightly, but you obvious understand what I mean. Don't think for one moment that the Big Ten marketing department is not involved in some of the decision making at all.

Because some of the schools are located near neither Lake? lol... West of Illinois would be best served by naming them the Plains division and East would be the Lakes division.. unless you split tOSU and TTUN up in which case you could go with Bo/Woody, but I don't think PSU and Neb would like that much. You know, with their OWN legendary coaches in Tom Osborne and Joe Paterno. So... it will probably be something along the lines of Plains/Lakes or East/West (geographically split terms) or they might do a zipper approach and throw something completely random out there.

Don't doubt that the Marketing teams for the Big Ten are working diligently on this. There is big money to be made here, and you know marketing has a hand in this as well. Possibly a hand in the actual division alignment plans as well. :)

No, it doesn't because if it did then the SEC would have an argument that they play the strongest OOC schedule of any conference. Plus the term is Out-Of-Conference, and you are only in different divisions, not different conferences.

Ho, All! I just got back from an extended (6 weeks) vacation in Boca Raton. :)D Glad to be able to talk football again. Fiance said no puters the entire trip.. Bah! So, let's get down to business...

I just found an article from the Cleveland Plains dealer [url]http://tinyurl.com/22kzqjj[/url] throwing out the possibility of #1 and #4 being together (OSU/Wisconsin) being paired in a division with #2 and #3 being paired together (TTUN/PSU).. this makes a nice amount of sense minus the fact that if you only have one cross divisional rivalry per year you lose either TTUN or PSU as Cross division rivals for tOSU. That won't happen.

I saw one a few weeks ago when I snuck on a computer that said that pairing tOSU/PSU/TTUN (In order of current importance) versus Neb/IA/WI would be competitive given the 1993 time scale that Delany set in motion. If you factor the records, it is tOSU, Neb, PSU, IA, Wis, TTUN (Because of the last few years under RRod). Competitively, over a 17 year time period, the divisions wouldn't be as uncompetitive as persons believe. This just further validates that WI and IA have been relevant enough over the past 17 years to actually jump TTUN in wins (in conference).

So why does everyone actually not like that idea? I understand the 3 largest stadiums in the East argument, but I believe that ALL revenue is shared equally (including jersey/uniform sales) in the Big Ten. I might be incorrect here.