Because I love doing these speculative expansion posts in pairs, here's my thoughts on Big Ten realignment. Again, I see four possible scenarios, but unlike the Pac-10, where there appears to be two distinct rumored favorites, there are at least five contenders. I tried to incorporate all five into the different scenarios. Alignment one assumes that Missouri is selected and is based on an East/West split. Alignment two assumes that one of the other schools (Pitt, Rutgers, Notre Dame, Syracuse) is selected, but is still based on an East/West geographic split):
Alignment 1:
East
Indiana
Purdue
Michigan
Michigan State
Penn State
Ohio State
West
Missouri
Illinois
Northwestern
Iowa
Wisconsin
Minnesota
Alignment 2:
East
Michigan
Michigan State
Penn State
Ohio State
Indiana
Pittsburgh (or Syracuse, ND or Rutgers)
West
Illinois
Northwestern
Iowa
Purdue
Wisconsin
Minnesota
Alignments three and four as based on North/South divisions:
Alignment 3:
North
Minnesota
Wisconsin
Northwestern
Iowa
Michigan
Michigan State
South
Missouri (or Rutgers or Pittsburgh)
Illinois
Purdue
Indiana
Penn State
Ohio State
Alignment 4:
North
Minnesota
Wisconsin
Syracuse (or Notre Dame)
Northwestern
Michigan State
Michigan
South
Iowa
Illinois
Purdue
Indiana
Penn State
Ohio State
I don't see the Big Ten taking the radical step of just placing the teams into a hat and pulling names out and slotting them into divisions. The Big Ten is too traditional to do something like "Mountain" and "Plains" divisions; after all, this is a league that was still known as the Western Conference officially until sometime around 1987—even though they had had ten teams since the mid 1950s.
Progressivism is not their style.
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