It’s official! The Big Ten, like the ACC, Pac-12, and SEC, has opted to abolish divisions in favor of a divisionless format that increases the number of times each team will play other members of the conference over a four-year span. In fact, each of the 16 Big Ten members will play everyone in the conference at least once every two seasons. And of course, being the Big Ten, rivalries are of utmost importance, so those protected rivalry games were at the forefront of this model.
But not all rivalries are created equal, so not every team got three protected games as we expected initially.