How the Big Ten Might Look With Cal, Stanford, Washington, Oregon

The notion that Washington, Oregon, Cal and Stanford could join the Big Ten at some point evokes several ideas of what the Big Ten would look like with the addition of those four schools along with UCLA and USC.

However, first we must be clear that it would require a series of complicated events for Washington, Oregon, Stanford and Cal to become Big Ten members, and it’s possible that the Big Ten might invite Washington and Oregon, leaving Stanford and Cal hanging. But Wednesday’s reports that Big Ten presidents are at least discussing the possibility of inviting those four Pac-12 schools to the Big Ten leads to speculation about how a 20-team Big Ten conference would be aligned.

Let’s not forget that money, specifically media money, is the driving force in conference realignment.

Jon Wilner of the San Jose Mercury lays out the complicated financial realities of a potential move of the four PC-12 schools to the Big Ten, but it seems to involve four steps:

---The Pac-12 must cease to exist, or at least give every indication that it can’t survive

--- The Big Ten presidents must approve inviting Washington and Oregon, or approve inviting those two schools plus Cal and Stanford.

--- Fox or some other broadcasting entity must approve the addition of schools and provide more money to satisfy the financial expectations of each school in an expanded conference.

--- Washington, Oregon, Cal and Stanford must accept a smaller financial share of the media revenue than the other Big Ten members receive, at least in the early years of the conference’s media-rights deal.

OK, let’s say it all happens and Cal, Stanford, Washington and Oregon are added to the Big Ten to create a 20-team conference.

The simplest re-alignment for football would be to create a West Coast division of six teams – Washington, Oregon, Cal, Stanford, USC and UCLA -- and leave the two existing divisions of the Big Ten as they are. That would leave fewer teams (six) in the West Coast division than in the other two, which would have seven schools apiece. That might work, but it would create scheduling imbalance since the West Coast division teams would play five intra-division games and teams in the other two divisions would play six intra-division games.

An option would be to add a team – perhaps Florida State or Notre Dame – to form a 21-team conference with three seven-team divisions, which might look something like this:

West Coast Division

Cal

Oregon

Stanford

UCLA

USC

Washington

Nebraska

---Nebraska might not like the move, but the Huskers are the western-most current Big Ten team.

Midwest Division

Michigan

Ohio State

Michigan State

Iowa

Minnesota

Wisconsin

Illinois

East Division

Penn State

Maryland

Rutgers

Purdue

Indiana

Northwestern

Notre Dame or Florida State

---The Seminoles seem primed to make a move; Notre Dame likes being an independent and would have to be persuaded.

This alignment keeps Ohio State and Michigan together, balances the divisions by putting Penn State in a different division from Michigan and Ohio State, and decreases travel costs for teams in the East.

Each team would play six intra-division games and one game against a team from each of the two other divisions for eight conference games plus four nonconference games.

A conference championship game could involve the two division champions with the best conference records, or it could involve a three-game playoff involving the three division champs and the top divisional runnerup playing semifinal games. This would mean a team could play as many 18 games in a season with a 12-team national championship playoff.

The final possibility would be a 24-team Big Ten conference with four six-team divisions. That would require the addition of four other teams, perhaps Florida State, Clemson, Notre Dame and North Carolina. (Florida State and Clemson seem better suited for the SEC, but we’ll put them in the Big Ten for our purposes.) This would require complicated negotiations with media outlets and discussions regarding the financial shares the newcomers would receive.

But it might look like this:

West Coast Division

Cal

Oregon

Stanford

UCLA

USC

Washington

Midwest Division

Notre Dame

Iowa

Minnesota

Wisconsin

Nebraska

Illinois

Mideast Division

Michigan

Ohio State

Michigan State

Indiana

Purdue

Northwestern

East Coast Division

Penn State

Maryland

Rutgers

North Carolina

Clemson

Florida State

---Each team would play five intra-division games and one game against a team from each of the three other divisions for eight conference games and four nonconference games.

The division champ with the highest national ranking would face the division champ with the lowest ranking in one conference semifinal game and the two other division champs would meet in the other semifinals. The winners would meet in the Big Ten title game.

A highly ranked team (like Michigan or Ohio State) might be left out of the conference title playoffs but would still be in contention for the 12-team national championship playoff. Again this could mean an 18-game season for some schools, but a 17-game season is possible even without the extra conference playoff games.

---None of these options addresses how an expanded Big Ten would look for basketball and other sports, but presumably the Big Ten would just be one huge conference for sports other than football.

Cover photo by Jeff Hanisch, USA TODAY Sports

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