My references to the 1970s are a shorthand for the bygone era on which much of the arguments about historical power and perception rest upon. I guess it could have seemed that I was arguing that people were explicitly using the 70s as their benchmark. I should have been more clear. What I want to highlight is that when we talk about history, a lot of history (in the sense of changing circumstances causing events to unfold in different ways) has happened in the last 30 years of college football. Decades of traditional excellence certainly play a role in determining which teams are strong today. But other factors have become more and more important in recent years, otherwise it would make no sense that Boise State has a realistic shot at a bc$ championship this year, but Notre Dame and Michigan do not.
Once upon a time, Michigan and Ohio State were unchallenged in the Big Ten, much like Nebraska and Oklahoma in the Big 8 and Penn State in the east. But a lot of things happened to dramatically shift that landscape in the last 30 or so years.
1. Woody left and Hayden arrived. OSU became mortal in the 1980s at the same time that Iowa became a contender, based on a very different brand of football from what Woody and Bo used to dominate the 1970s. Iowa's emergence opened the door for Illinois and Michigan State to have success in the 1980s. Pandora's box was opened. By the 1990s, Wisconsin, Purdue and Northwestern were getting into the act.
2. Related to #1, and probably more important in the long run, was the reduction of scholarships to current limits -- a process completed by 1994. Ohio State, Michigan, Nebraska and Penn State still have recruiting advantages, but they can no longer maximize this advantage by stockpiling 120 players on scholarship. If the old system was still around, Stanzi and DJK would probably be Buckeyes today.
3. Expansion of bowl games. Some of Iowa's greatest teams never went to bowl games, because there were so few in decades past. But now any Big Ten team that goes 7-5 is guaranteed a bowl game, and most 6-6 teams go bowling, too. Ohio State fans, naturally, tend to look down their noses at anything less than a BCS bowl. But even the Motor City Bowl is enough to motivate teams like Indiana to make unprecedented investments in football, load up with OOC cupcakes, pray for a couple of Big Ten upsets, and go for it.
4. Big TV bucks and Big Ten revenue sharing. We've been talking about these things for the past few months, so no need to elaborate here. But this is the final piece in the puzzle in which every Big Ten team has (a) the opportunity to give as many schollies as the big boys, (b) a bowl game waiting as a reward for even a mildly successful season, (c) the examples of Fry, Alvarez, etc. for how to turn around previously moribund programs, and (d) the financial resources to go for it.
All this is to say that when I look at which teams are poised to seriously compete for championships in the 2010s, I see Nebraska, Iowa, Wisconsin, and wild card Northwestern in the west, and I see Ohio State, Michigan, Penn State, and wild card Michigan State in the east. Is that 50-50 equal? Not as long as Ohio State is Ohio State, but it's pretty close, and the exact balance of power will naturally shift from year to year -- often in unpredictable ways.
Iowa and Wisconsin make the list because of what Fry/Ferentz and Alvarez/Bielema have established in recent history. Could they fall into mediocrity? Sure, but Nebraska and Michigan both prove that even the great historical powers are potentially only one bad coach away from falling themselves.
So all in all, I favor geographical divisions. Not geography for geography's sake, but because geographical divisions do the most to satisfy Delaney's other condition: protecting rivalries. The only "rivalries" that get "lost" are Minn/Mich and Ill/OSU, neither of which is protected under the current 11-team setup, and neither of which matter nearly as much to either UM or OSU as maintaining an annual rivalry with ... you guessed it ... Penn State.
