GRAHAM COUCH

Couch: Lost rivalry games only part of needed Big Ten scheduling fix

Graham Couch
Lansing State Journal
Michigan State plays Michigan just once this year, on Saturday. Same goes for Indiana and Purdue, which meet Feb. 20 in Bloomington, Ind. The Big Ten needs to protect its rivalries.

EAST LANSING — If you can’t have an honest champion, at least keep the rivalries.

The Big Ten is risking the prospect of having neither — a severe unbalanced schedule stripping away legitimacy and prestige from its championship; compounded by an inexplicable disregard for tradition.

Expansion did this — a great basketball league falling victim to football, fear and greed.

And, as a result, bloatedness.

What’s done is done. Fourteen teams is too many to produce the truest of champions each season with a predetermined 18-game schedule. The only way around an unbalanced schedule is bold creativity.

If the Big Ten can find Rutgers fit for membership, it’s certainly capable of more innovative thinking.

And while it thinks, it ought to think better of its basketball rivalries. It ought to respect them, protect them.

Michigan State plays at Michigan on Saturday afternoon. It’s the only time the schools will meet this season.

This isn’t the only rivalry to be disregarded.

Also meeting only once this season: Indiana and Purdue, Michigan and Ohio State, and Northwestern and Illinois. Iowa and Wisconsin see neighboring Minnesota just once, too.

With 14 teams, there is only room for five two-plays a year on an 18-game schedule. Still, it’s easy enough to make sure the traditional in-state rivalries and border wars are among them.

Men�s basketball tipoff: MSU at Michigan

“I do hate it,” MSU senior Denzel Valentine said of playing Michigan once. “It should be a rule that you play your rival at least twice.”

MSU sees Iowa, Wisconsin, Ohio State, Penn State and Rutgers twice. It’s fair mix of competitive tiers. But Michigan should replace somebody in that group.

It’s an easy fix — each team has one protected rival.

Fixing the entire schedule is more difficult. But it can’t stand pat.

If anyone other than Iowa wins the Big Ten this season, who they beat and by how many games they won it should matter.

Of the five ranked teams and realistic contenders — Iowa, Maryland, Michigan State, Purdue and Indiana — only the Hawkeyes play three of the other contenders twice.

Indiana and MSU have the easiest schedules of the five, playing only one of the other four top teams twice and each twice playing two of the league’s bottom four teams — Minnesota, Rutgers, Penn State and Illinois — whose overall records are all under .500.

If the Hawkeyes at least split with Indiana and don’t win it — after beating Purdue and MSU each twice and falling in a close game at Maryland, their only game against the Terrapins — that Big Ten championship banner ought to have big, fat asterisks on it.

Couch: Big Ten regular season title losing its oomph

“One of the things that I miss is the full round robin,” MSU coach Tom Izzo said. “Now I think in saying that, the Big Ten would probably be happy with that. I don’t know if coaches would all because you want to play some non-conference games.

“What you can’t do is some things that nobody else is doing. If you’re playing 22 conference games and other conferences are playing 16 and then you’re trying to get teams in the NCAA tournament, you’re in trouble.”

Izzo’s math is a little fuzzy. For the Big Ten to play a true round robin, it would require 26 conference games, eating up most of a 31-game schedule.

The Big Ten hasn’t had a true round robin format since Penn State joined the league in 1992-93, but it was close until 1998, when the conference went to a 16-game schedule at the inception of Big Ten tournament. The 16-game slate lasted 10 seasons. From 2008 through 2011, before Nebraska joined the conference, an 18-game league schedule again gave oomph to the regular season title — which, in the Big Ten, is the league championship, despite the existence of a conference tournament.

And until Maryland and Rutgers joined last season, the Big Ten regular season was safely the most prestigious and meaningful regular season in college basketball. The ACC, by comparison, crowns its champion based on its tournament. The Big East has always celebrated its tournament. In the Big Ten, the conference championship banner comes from the grind of January and February.

The Big Ten tournament should never be how the league determines its champion, even if the regular season is flawed. Because the seeds for the Big Ten tournament are based on that regular season anyway. And teams enter that week with different degrees of motivation. Lastly, as long as the end of the Big Ten tournament championship game butts up against the NCAA tournament selection show, it’s a tournament title without proper fanfare. The world has moved on by the time the nets have been cut down.

Spartan Speak Live Podcast: Michigan week

I’d love to see a 26-game round-robin format. But between ESPN’s non-conference tournaments and the perhaps well-founded fears of Izzo (and probably other coaches), a massive round robin will never happen. It is likely that the NCAA tournament selection committee wouldn’t be able to recognize a 16-win Big Ten team as being the same as a 19-win ACC team with a record padded by non-conference wins.

As I wrote last March, the best solution I’ve heard — initially coming from MSU assistant athletic director Kevin Pauga — would be to hold off on scheduling the last two weeks of the Big Ten season until mid-February, letting the standings determine the final matchups. Sort of a high-major version of the now-defunct mid-major Bracketbuster games.

As I see it, the league could separate the teams into tiers, careful not to schedule a third meeting between anyone, but to fill in the gaps where teams only met once. A team could play outside its tier if necessary. For example, MSU might host Purdue and Michigan and play at Maryland and Indiana. Iowa, though, would host Maryland and perhaps Ohio State and play at Wisconsin and Nebraska.

At the end, the teams contending for a title would have relatively balanced schedules — and better strength of schedules heading into NCAA tournament selection Sunday.

Bubble teams around seventh or eighth place would have a chance for resume wins that would strengthen their case for an NCAA tournament bid.

There would be logistical headaches. But it’s better than not having a champion.

It’s a logical solution. First, though, more logic is required — protect the damn rivalries. That’s easy.

Contact Graham Couch at gcouch@lsj.com. Follow him on Twitter @Graham_Couch.