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

[Roy Lamberton]

This brings up the interesting idea of adding N**** D*** to a 12 team "Big 10"
and splitting the new conference into divisions.

Yes, ND is down right now, but they'd add a lot of punch to any conference.

We've debated that here several times, do you go East-West or North-South. The
resurgence of Illinois and Indiana make an east west split easier to take now,
but you still have to figure out how to put Michigan and dOSU in separate
divisions and keep the "trophy" games.

Of course there's basketball, and all the women's sports where NU is the
"powerhouse"

Glad its not me doing that.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Roy S. Lamberton - Senior Associate
Computer Applications & Support Associates
and Publisher of Purple Reign, 
The Scout.com Northwestern University Site
(http://www.purplewildcats.com)
AIM Handle: CoachRoy74
======== Go Cats -  Beat 'em All ===========
"You have a Republic Madam --
     If you can keep it" - Benjamin Franklin
============================================

> -----Original Message-----
> From: nwu-sports-bounces at tssi.com [mailto:nwu-sports-bounces at tssi.com] On
> Behalf Of Michael Vance
> Sent: Sunday, October 07, 2007 1:40 AM
> To: nwu-sports at romaine.tssi.com
> Subject: Re: [NU Sports] Classic, thy name is Northwestern ...
> 
> The two-rivalry idea actually didn't get officially instituted until a
> couple years into scheduling Penn State.  They started out with a
> handful of schools having two rivals -- the WI-MN-IA triad; Michigan
> against OSU and MSU; and MSU against Michigan and PSU (more on that
> later) -- but quickly realized that would be unfair and eventually even
> impossible to keep a balanced schedule with that in effect.  So they
> came up with the others.  Yeah, we were a victim of geography.
> 
> Interesting thing about MSU's rivalries: Of course, the only one that
> MSU cares about is Michigan, in the same way that the only thing that a
> little brother cares about is one day being able to beat up his older,
> bigger sibling.  But MSU and PSU were the first two Land-Grant colleges
> chartered a few days apart in 1855 (MSU first, then PSU), so someone
> decided that the "Land Grant Trophy" would be a good idea.  Most Spartan
> fans didn't really care, many still don't.  They feel like they got
> "stuck", too, and with a contrived trophy at that.
> 
> The other thing that I found a little odd, is that if you look back to
> the 10-team conference's traditional season-ending rivalry games, MSU
> and Wisconsin always ended up getting stuck playing each other, yet
> never developed much of a rivalry of their own.  I realize that there
> were years that NU-Illinois wasn't a season-ending game (the 1991 "Rain
> Bowl" comes to mind), and that allowed the conference to shuffle some
> others, too, but all the "normal" years that ended with Mich/OSU, IU-PU,
> NU-Illinois, and MN-IA, there were poor Sparty and Bucky playing each
> other.
> 
> OK, maybe I'm the only one who finds that interesting.  :-)
> 
> -Michael
> 
> Jonathan Hodges wrote:
> > 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
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >> ************************************** See what's new at
> >> http://www.aol.com
> >> _______________________________________________
> >> nwu-sports site list
> >> nwu-sports at tssi.com
> >> http://romaine.tssi.com/mailman/listinfo/nwu-sports
> >>
> >>
> >
> >
> >
> >
> 
> _______________________________________________
> nwu-sports site list
> nwu-sports at tssi.com
> http://romaine.tssi.com/mailman/listinfo/nwu-sports