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Realignment theory: North-South beats East-West

It’s been nearly a full decade since the Big Ten Conference introduced divisions for the first time in its history. Having already been reworked once, the conference appears to be headed for yet another realignment.

Outside of whatever nonsensical thing Jim Harbaugh was talking about, divisional realignment was the hottest topic. There is a way for the conference to make things a little more even, and while no setup will be perfect, it doesn’t take too much work to find a better fit.

After scraping the initial Legends and Leaders divisions, which attempted to split the conference with an overly complicated process that attempted to keep rivals in the same division while still keeping things even, the Big Ten switched to the current East-West alignment in 2014.