OK assuming the Minn/Ill swap from what Jon wrote:
West: Iowa, Minnesota, Nebraska, Northwestern, Purdue, Wisconsin
East: Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Mich State, Ohio State, Penn State
I like that. It's not as clean as Illinois in the West and Purdue in the East, but it is close, and it would be more fair if historical records are an indication. It also preserves all rivalries other than Ill/NW and Indy/Purdue. It would be easy to preserve those as cross division rivalries without touching the other 8 teams schedules. Think of it this way, in years when the rotation would have IU play NW (and not PU) and Ill play PU (and not NW) they could just switch. In practice it would result in them maintaining their annual rivalries and no-one else is effected.
I really think stadium capacity should be something to consider. Even if you will be playing everyone except two teams in the league, you really don't want it to look like one division is full of little engines that could.
I think his point was the capacity of stadiums in the different divisions proposed for the Big 10.I thought i saw somewhere that Lucas Oil could be expanded somehow, does anyone know what they have to do to expand it to a higher capacity?
The stadium, when it will host a Super Bowl, can be expanded to a capacity of 70,000
From wikipedia
Purdue-Indiana is a bigger rivalry than Illinois-NW. That rivalry should be annual, as should Iowa-Wisc, Iowa-Minn, Mich-OSU, Mich-MSU. The East is a bit stronger in a straight geographical split, but is it worth shaking things up trying to make everything exactly even?
Just to throw this out there for thought. Instead of thinking East and West Divisions, how about North and South Divisions? NORTH 1.Minnesota 2.Wisconsin 3.Northwestern 4.Michigan 5.Michigan St. 6.Penn St. SOUTH 1, Nebraska 2.Iowa 3.Illinois 4.Purdue 5.Indiana 6.Ohio St. That's 425 wins for the North and 416 wins for the South. Plus it looks pretty competitive for Basketball. If you wanted to take it one step further, you could have these locked in Rivalry Games. Iowa/Minnesota Ohio St/Michigan Illinois/Northwestern Wisconsin/Purdue Michigan St/Indiana PennSt/Nebraska. Just another idea.
If there was a unwrtten rule that said if or when ND joins and they must play in the West, then i would agree with the geographic/historical split wilth Minn, Wisc, Nebby, Iowa, NW and Illinois in a heartbeat.