Big Ten Eliminating East, West Divisions in 2024

Starting in 2024, it will be possible for the Ohio State Buckeyes and Michigan Wolverines to play each other in the Big Ten Championship.

The Big Ten conference will disband the East and West divisional format for format in 2024, according to a release Thursday.

The top two schools with the best conference records at the end of the 2024 regular season will play each other in the Big Ten Championship. The conference has elected to continue the nine-conference-game format, through the Flex Protect Plus Model, which features "a combination of protected opponents and rotating opponents" to where each team will play "every other conference opponent at least twice — once home and away — in a four-year period," the release stated.

The Ohio State Buckeyes' only protected rivalry is "The Game" against Michigan, as the Buckeyes' two-play opponents are Illinois and Northwestern. The two-play opponents will change every two years, the release stated.

The East and West divisional format replaced the Legends and Leaders format in 2014 when Rutgers and Maryland joined the conference. In its 10-year lifespan, the winners of the East and West divisions would play each other in the Big Ten Championship.

This was met with some controversy, especially in the past two years, when Ohio State and Michigan met in their annual rivalry as the top two teams in the Big Ten. In both years, the Wolverines went on to Indianapolis to play in the conference championship, while the Buckeyes watched from home despite having a better record than the West Division winner.

This comes as the latest change in what has been a flurry of renovations for the conference in the past year.

The Big Ten announced the joining of USC and UCLA for the 2024 season, a new multi-billion-dollar media rights deal with Fox, CBS, NBC, and Peacock and replaced former commissioner Kevin Warren — who assumed the president and CEO position with the Chicago Bears — with former CBS Sports executive Tony Petitti.

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