The year is 2010. Cam Newton is ruling the college football world at Auburn, LeBron James has just announced his decision to join the Miami Heat, and Jason Derulo songs are on the radio everywhere. The Big Ten has just expanded to include Nebraska, and they introduced a new conference format to be used in the 2011 season: divisions. But here is the kicker: the names of the two divisions are “Leaders” and “Legends.” And while the names of these divisions were more of a laughingstock than Purdue football, the format stuck around until the conference expanded to add four Pac-12 schools in 2024. But yet, with the conference now having 18 teams, the division format is needed now more than ever – in the Big Ten, SEC, ACC, Big 12, and everywhere else in the college football world.
College football: SEC standings through Week 12
College Station, Texas, USA; Texas A&M Aggies quarterback Marcel Reed (10) runs with the ball during the third quarter against the South Carolina Gamecocks at Kyle Field. Credit: Troy Taormina-Imagn Images
The problem with the new mega-conferences in college football is that it becomes inherently impossible to play everyone in your conference. It doesn’t take a math major to acknowledge that you can’t play 17 opponents on a 9-game conference schedule. What this does, in a format with no divisions, is create a scenario where it is nearly mathematically impossible to create balanced scheduling. Case in point: the Ohio State Buckeyes only played one other team that is in the top-6 of the Big Ten Standings; poor Purdue had to play four. Things were worse in the SEC – Texas A&M had 7 of its 8 conference games made up of 7 of the 8 worst teams in the league.
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The biggest detractor of the division format was that it became impossible for both divisions to be evenly distributed in terms of talent. The Big Ten was the biggest example of this – think back to all of the years where Ohio State, Penn State, and Michigan would beat the heck out of each other in the regular season, only to be met with a 9-3 Iowa or Wisconsin team in the Big Ten Championship game. But this isn’t any worse than what is happening now – if you can reach your way to the conference championship game without beating any of the other best teams in your conference (kind of like Virginia this season), then do you deserve to be there?
Ohio State Buckeyes look at fans before the the NCAA football game between the Ohio State Buckeyes and the Michigan Wolverines at Michigan Stadium on Saturday, Nov. 29, 2025 in Ann Arbor, Michigan.
Here’s my proposal – all 16 and 18-team leagues can easily divide themselves back into 2 divisions. You can set up both divisions so that pre-existing rivalries, such as Ohio State/Michigan and Texas/Oklahoma, are preserved as yearly matchups. You play every team in your division every season, with one extra cross-divisional matchup. With this setup, every team in your conference will have played one team that is appearing in the Conference Championship game at the end of the season. This can not be said for Texas A&M or Baylor this season. Going back to the division format will allow for more balanced scheduling that will make it much easier to evaluate teams within their own conference and when stacking up resumes for the College Football Playoff this time of year.
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