One issue we've all seen with conferences growing in size over the years is the scheduling issues that come with two large divisions leading to not seeing conference opponents from the other division for years at a time.  This is especially frustrating when certain teams are owed revenge and it has to wait years to happen (how are Purdue and Iowa still waiting??).

So if the Big Ten goes to 16 teams with 2 divisions and kept the 9 game conference schedule, you play 7 teams every year from your own division, but only see 2 of the other 8 teams each year.  In a 12 year rotation (assuming no protected crossovers, which would make things worse), you would see a specific team from the other division only 3 times.

One way to address this is a rotating pod system instead of hard set 8 team divisions.  Basically you split everyone up into pods of 4 teams based on geography/rivalries, and you play the other 3 teams in your pod every year.  But every year you rotate a different pod into your division.

So one year you have Pod A and Pod B in Division 1, and Pod C and Pod D in Division 2.  The next year you rotate so Pod A and C are in Division 1, Pod B and D are Division 2, and the third year Pod A and D are together with Pod B and C together.

With a 9 game conference schedule, you would play 7 teams in your division, and then 2 from the other division (one from each pod).

I've done the math on this and it works out so in a 12 year period you play 6 games against every team in the conference that isn't in your pod.

I think this would keep matchups fresh as each team is still seeing everyone else on a regular basis, while keeping most of the big rivalries playing on an annual basis.

With OU and Texas likely off the table and on their way to the SEC, let's just for sake of argument say the Big Ten grabs Kansas and West Virginia (you could pick any two teams, but these work nicely for geography in this example).  In that scenario here's how the pods could look:

Pod A - Ohio State, TTUN, MSU, Illinois

Pod B - Penn State, West Virginia, Rutgers, Maryland

Pod C - Northwestern, Nebraska, Iowa, Kansas

Pod D - Wisconsin, Minnesota, Indiana, Purdue

The teams could be shuffled up differently, especially depending who the two new teams actually are (OK State, Mizzou, Notre Dame, etc.), but this just shows that the scheduling would work pretty well for seeing every conference opponent on a regular basis if you used rotating pods instead of set 8 team divisions.

To me this makes a lot of sense, which means Kevin Warren won't consider it.