The Big Ten is the Best Candidate for Open League Play

By Trent Fasnacht

    In my opinion, the Big Ten Conference is the best positioned for open league play where teams are promoted and relegated at the end of each season. 

    The main characteristic that makes the Big Ten ideally positioned for an open league arrangement pertains to branding. Despite the fact that the conference has had more than ten member schools since 1990, the number ten is still integral to the conference's stellar name. Instead of being an eccentric anomaly, in my envisioned restructuring, the number ten would have noteworthy significance that the league could build and grow around, and even more importantly, profit from.   

    The conference added the Pac 12's University of Southern California and UCLA last June and then just brought in Oregon and Washington last week. My suggestion would work with a Big Ten of eighteen, but would be built for the addition of ACC defectors like Clemson, Florida State, and even others.

    I'd start the reimaging of this super conference by bringing back the underappreciated Leaders and Legends monikers. However, because of the mobility factor, I'd call them tiers with member schools competing in their respective seasonal tiers. Based initially on winning percentages, the top ten programs would form the Leaders Tier. As an example (and with Clemson and FSU in the fold), it could initially be Ohio State, USC, Clemson, Washington, Michigan, Oregon, Penn State, Wisconsin, Iowa, and Michigan State. The Legends Tier would be the rest of the member schools. Again, based on current program strength it might be Florida State, UCLA, Purdue, Illinois, Indiana, Minnesota, Northwestern, Nebraska, Rutgers, and Maryland.         

    In the imaged Big Ten super conference, the ninth and tenth place finishers would move down to the Legends Tier and the best two teams amongst the Legends would move up to the top ten to play the following season with the Leaders. The representatives of the Legends Tier would be battling it out all season to be promoted. The beauty of the open league is that conference members are playing for something all season long. In this format the heart of the conference would be meaningful.

     However, I realize that the Big Ten is a blue blood conference and in the Eastern Standard Time Zone. It doesn't need to innovate or be creative. They're the Big Ten. The members have enormous fan bases and alumni world wide. I don't tune in for the Ohio State/Rutgers or Maryland/Michigan games, but plenty of Big Ten fans do game after game. However, the biggest obstacle I see with this proposal is scheduling. The Big Ten athletic departments are not going to want to have the squeeze of scheduling eight or nine months out when they're used to having a couple years to sort out the league calendar. For all of these reasons, I feel certain we won't see the Big Ten as an open league as I've described and they'll evolve into a safer, more acceptable structure with multiple divisions. 

    I'll still hold out a smidge of hope for the Big Ten one day becoming an open super conference that promotes and relegates, but they'd be more apt to follow someone else, a conference like the Big Twelve that exposes the possibilities first. See The Big 12 Should Become College Sports First Open League.