With Big Ten and other power conferences abolishing divisions, chances for rematches increase

It didn’t take Penn State players long to turn their attention toward what lies ahead even with the sting still setting in following yet another gut-wrenching loss to Ohio State — this one in front of a record crowd at Beaver Stadium on Saturday.

They made it clear: They hope the Nittany Lions meet the Buckeyes again this season. And coach James Franklin had no problem with it.

“I’m totally fine with them having enough confidence and having enough grit and determination and anger at the moment, that they want a second shot,” Franklin said Monday during his weekly news conference. “In today’s college football, that’s a reality in ways that it probably hasn’t been in the past.”

The moves by conferences in recent years to abolish divisions combined with the expansion of the College Football Playoff field from four to 12 created more avenues for rematches and even teams meeting three times.

Though the odds of No. 3 Ohio State (7-1, 4-1) and No. 6 Penn State (7-1, 4-1) playing each other in the Big Ten championship game aren’t great, it’s a possibility that didn’t exist prior to this year. That’s because they were always grouped together after the league split into divisions and instituted a title matchup in 2011.

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Both teams would need help to get to Indianapolis even if they won their remaining four games, with No. 1 Oregon (9-0, 6-0) and No. 8 Indiana (9-0, 6-0) at the top of the conference standings. The postseason might be a more likely possibility for a Buckeyes-Nittany Lions rematch.

The Big Ten wasn’t exactly a trendsetter among power conferences when it came to adding divisions — or eliminating them.

The SEC did it with the arrivals of Arkansas and South Carolina in 1992. That gave the conference 12 teams and the right to split into divisions and play a championship game.

The Big 12 followed with its launch in 1996 after the Big Eight merged with four teams from the Southwest Conference. The ACC split into two divisions and added a championship game in 2005 following the addition of Boston College.

The Big Ten and Pac-12 were stragglers, finally adding divisions and a championship game in 2011. And when it comes to ditching divisions or simply going with the two best records in league play, well, the same goes for the Big Ten.

The Big 12 became a 10-team league with no divisions in 2011, when Nebraska went to the Big Ten and Colorado joined the Pac-12. In 2017, after the NCAA dropped the 12-team requirement, the league reinstituted a championship game based on the two best conference records.

The Pac-12 went from matching division champions from 2011 to 2021 to going with teams the two best winning percentages in league play in 2022. The conference is a shell of what it used to be after losing all but two of its members — Oregon State and Washington State.

The SEC announced in June 2023 it would scrap divisions this year with the arrivals of Oklahoma and Texas, giving the conference 16 teams. The Big Ten followed a week later, announcing it was eliminating them with the additions of Southern California, UCLA, Oregon and Washington in 2024.

In the ACC, Pitt coach Pat Narduzzi isn’t exactly a fan of the one-division setup. He sees too many scenarios where top teams don’t play each other and tiebreakers come into play.

“Who wants that?” he said. “Who wants to sit in front of the team and talk about a tiebreaker? E-3, this is what it says. We’re going off of some FBI ratings, whatever that is.”

In the Big Ten, the divisions created competitive imbalances.

The league tried to prevent that by going with “Legends” and “Leaders” from 2011 through 2013 rather than grouping teams by geography. In that sense, it succeeded.

Ohio State and Michigan wound up in separate groups, but the storied rivals never met in the championship game.

Wisconsin won the Leaders and conference championship game the first two years, with Michigan State coming out of the Legends division and then beating Ohio State in 2013.

The switch to “East” and “West” with the arrivals of Maryland and Rutgers in 2014 put the Big Ten’s three winningest programs — Michigan, Ohio State and Penn State — in the same division. Though it created opportunities for a program like Northwestern to win the Big Ten West and play in the title game in 2018 and 2020, it also resulted in an imbalance.

The Big Ten usually had the top three or four teams in the conference competing for one spot in its championship game. The East winner went on to capture the conference title each of the past 10 years, with Ohio State taking the top prize five times and Michigan grabbing it the past three seasons.

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AP Sports Writer Will Graves in Pittsburgh contributed to this report. ___

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