Big Ten expansion

there has been a lot of talk this week about the possible addition of a 12th team to the conference. there have been rumors out there for years about Missouri moving to the Big Ten, a move that would then trigger Texas and Colorado joining the Pac 10. the idea is that Missouri fits in culturally and geographically with the Big Ten while UT and CU are a better match academically with the likes of Berkeley, Stanford and Washington than they are with Nebraska, Kansas State and Texas Tech.

other possibilities for the Big Ten are Pitt, Cincinnati, and Notre Dame. to be honest, i don't think the specifics of any potential addition are all that relevant to NU basketball, since whatever school is added will have a superior hoops program and only serve to push us down another notch towards the conference basement.

what i haven't yet seen are any suggestions on how the Big Ten would create the divisions. i assume Michigan and Ohio State would have to be together to make sure they play annually in football. i also assume that the conference would go with some sort of geographic split. here are two possibilities (assuming Missouri is the new team):

East - IU, MSU, OSU, PSU, Purdue, UM
West - NU, Illinois, Iowa, Minnesota, Mizzou, Wisconsin

North - MSU, NU, PSU, UM, Minnesota, Wisconsin
South - IU, OSU, Purdue, Illinois, Iowa, Mizzou



the other option would be to follow the ACC's model and arbitrarily separate the teams into divisions without factoring in geography.

if the Big Ten were to add another team, it probably makes sense to go back to a 16 game conference schedule. each team would play home-and-home with the other five schools in its division plus one game (three at home) with each of the six teams in the other division. that keeps the math nice and easy and allows for even rotation of the schedule between seasons.