Todd’s Take: Coast-To-Coast Big Ten Is Fun … And It’s Helped Indiana Too

It’s popular to complain about traditions lost, but what was gained by accident is a system that creates a more compelling conference race.

Todd Golden | Oct 23, 2024

Fans celebrate a victory with members of the Indiana Hoosiers after beating the Nebraska Cornhuskers at Memorial Stadium. / Jacob Musselman-Imagn Images

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Indiana Hoosiers

BLOOMINGTON, Ind. – When you reach middle age, you reach a period where the sands of time tempt you to fear change and pine for the past.

Nostalgia is a powerful emotion. Every age group applies it constantly. Just today, in the wake of Fernando Valenzuela’s death, I watched some old clips of “This Week In Baseball” to watch Valenzuela look skyward to the iconic closing credits of TWIB. Iconic to people my age, anyway.

The problem with nostalgia is that it’s often misapplied, misremembered or all of the above. This is true in all walks of life, and sports is no exception.

College football is awash in misplaced nostalgia. From pining for the pre-championship, pre-playoff days where half of college football was eliminated from championship consideration on the first week of the season, to complaints about the lack of round-robin scheduling (which hardly existed in college football regardless of era), there is plenty of old-man-yelling-at-cloud grousing to go around.

The latest changes in college athletics have really brought out the naysayers. Conference realignment drives the traditional-minded crazy.

I get it. Apart from two years of my life, I’ve lived in traditional Big Ten country for the rest of my years in four different states. I’m old enough to still think of Penn State as one of the “other” schools. I understand the allure of what was.

When the Big Ten made the bold move in summer 2022 to add Southern California and UCLA, all geographic realignment rules were obliterated. Crazy leagues with crazy partners were born. Leagues ballooned to sizes unheard of previously and matched teams that have no common history together.

An 18-team Big Ten with teams in California, Oregon and Washington? New Jersey-based Rutgers playing conference games in Seattle? USC marching to Maryland for conference play? What kind of world is this?

A pretty cool world as it turns out.

While others decry the reality of Indiana-UCLA football games, I enjoy the novelty of it. Will that novelty wear off? Sure, but it’s exotic in the moment, and let’s be honest, do you really care whether Indiana is playing Washington or Wisconsin? As long as traditional rivalries are protected, variety is the spice of life.

Unbalanced schedules are the reality of giant conferences. In the Big Ten, you play nine conference football games. In an 18-team league, that means you don’t play eight conference schools.

Those who believe in balanced competition recoil as they would say it’s barely a conference championship when you don’t play nearly half the teams. Point taken. They’re right. But being right doesn’t always equate to the most entertaining choice.

So far, the unintended consequence of expanded leagues is that a lot more teams are playing for something meaningful in the second half of the season.

The expanded College Football Playoff has quite a bit to do with it. Having a 12-team field naturally opens up expanded possibilities for everyone.

But so does imbalanced conference schedules. Indiana is a poster child for this phenomenon. The Hoosiers have not yet played Michigan and Ohio State. They don’t play Illinois, Oregon, Penn State and Wisconsin. All of those teams have yet to lose or have one loss in the Big Ten race.

The Hoosiers have played weak sisters UCLA, Maryland and Northwestern. They made a supposed non-weak sister, Nebraska, look like one in a 56-7 win Saturday. The Cornhuskers are the only Indiana Big Ten opponent with more than one conference victory.

Ohio State, in the meantime, has played Iowa, Michigan State and Oregon, none of whom have fewer than two conference wins. The Buckeyes still have to play Nebraska, Penn State, Indiana and Michigan. I’m not about to feel sorry for the Buckeyes, but it’s undeniable they have a much-harder road than Indiana.

Is that fair? Not really. No one would design a competition from the start with such imbalance built in.

But it is a lot more fun.

Indiana fans are experiencing a generational season, and I don’t think any Indiana fan is in the mood to attach caveats. The Big Ten made the scheduling rules. Indiana is simply taking advantage of the cards it was dealt. A favorable hand is only as good as what you do with it. The Hoosiers have taken maximum advantage of theirs, and that’s fully to the Hoosiers’ credit.

The Big Ten isn’t the only conference dealing with this imbalance phenomenon. Seven ACC and SEC schools are hanging in there with one or fewer losses. Six schools are in the same boat in the Big Ten and Big 12. An unprecedented amount of teams have real hope going into November. That’s great for the sport.

So where some see chaos, I see fun. Indiana’s season has been great fun, certainly more enjoyable than it would have been in the previous divisional set-up where league power was often imbalanced anyway.

Sometimes unintended consequences can be good. The large, coast-to-coast Big Ten might be unwieldy, and it might be an affront to tradition.

But it’s also helped create a very entertaining football season and a compelling title chase to come. For that, I welcome the brave new world of coast-to-coast Big Ten. Strike up the big new Big Ten map commercial and let the fun of this chaos soak in.

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