[NU Sports] Classic, thy name is Northwestern ...

[Jonathan Hodges]

Here are the "protected" rivalries for each Big Ten team (there are a
maximum of 2 each that are played every year - the other 8 teams in the
conference rotate off of the schedule every so often):

Northwestern: Illinois, Purdue
Illinois: Northwestern, Indiana
Purdue: Indiana, Northwestern
Indiana: Purdue, Illinois
Wisconsin: Minnesota, Iowa
Minnesota: Wisconsin, Iowa
Iowa: Minnesota, Wisconsin
Michigan State: Penn State, Michigan
Michigan: Michigan State, Ohio State
Ohio State: Michigan, Penn State
Penn State: Ohio State, Michigan State

I'm not going to list the "trophy games" because as discussed earlier, there
are a ton of them.  After Penn State joined the conference and the current
scheduling strategy was developed, the conference obviously had a tough time
deciding the "natural" rivalries - especially for newcomer PSU (they ended
up going with MSU-PSU and OSU-PSU probably because of proximity and
availability).  The Minnesota-Wisconsin-Iowa rivalry triangle has been
around for some time, so that made sense - but left no room for anyone else
(e.g. NU-UW).  Therefore in the middle of the conference region (Illinois
and Indiana) it appears that they adopted a "neighbor rivalry" strategy with
NU-Purdue and Illinois-Indiana which are not necessarily natural rivals.

In any case there is not much the B10 can do unless that 12th member shows
up, which is an entirely other discussion altogether.  A complete
round-robin 10 game conference schedule won't happen because that would
leave only 2 NC games which would put B10 teams at too much of a
disadvantage (and wouldn't allow 7 or 8 home games like now).

Personally, I would prefer NU's 2 "rivals" to be Wisconsin and Illinois
since those are 2 rather competitive series all-time.  But, I can understand
why not.

Jonathan


On 10/6/07, CHerron604 at aol.com <CHerron604 at aol.com> wrote:
>
> Does anybody remember the rationale for making Purdue our 'other'
> protected
> conference foe ?  Illinois was obvious - Did Wisconsin already have
> 2  natural
> rivals (Minnesota, obviously).
>
> PS - Doesn't Minnesota have natural rivalries with Iowa (Floyd), Wisconsin
> (Paul's axe) and Michigan (the jug) ?  Does one of those disappear
> from  time
> to time ?
>
> Chuck Herron   Tech '85
>
>
>
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-- 
Jonathan W. Hodges
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