Michigan Monday: Wonders If Michigan Should Explore Other Conferences?

Before we get started, for those fools that are tweeting or emailing Ronnie Bell with threats or telling him to leave the team/school, just stop.  He is a kid with a family and nobody feels worse then him.   Contacting him directly through social media makes you and the Michigan fan base look like A-Holes. 

With the independent ND coming to Ann Arbor this weekend and Michigan's struggles in the Big Ten.  I started to wonder what type of pressure Michigan could put on the Big Ten if they started to look at other opportunities.   My initial thought was just moving football out but I assume the Big Ten probably has a rule about being all in or all out.

Why should Michigan consider this at all?

• Scheduling - The Big Ten divisions are not even and the East continues to be much stronger then the West.  The Big Ten has basically ignored a historic trophy game with Minnesota.

• Kick-off times - I know this is driven by TV, but could Michigan have more control when they play if they were in a different conference or independent?

• Officials - I don't know if officials are ranked against other conferences  but from my eyes the Big Ten officials are very poor against their counterparts.   (another solution is to stop having conference officials, just have a big bucket of money/officials organization where the top 5 leagues have the best officials and they rotate different conferences each week - that would help any bias the current conference officials have, you also could have the top officials on the countries top games.)

• Lack of Big Ten Championships lately - Michigan Football hasn't won a Big Ten Championship since 2004 and has never played in the Championship game in Indy.  

• Doesn't have to mean the loss of rivalry games - Florida and FSU are in separate leagues and still play the last game of the year.  Michigan could keep MSU and OSU on the schedule. 

• The Big Ten has expanded too much.  Maryland and Rutgers has not been a success and was only brought in for potential new TV viewers in DC and NYC

• Lack of Big Ten Bowl Game tie-ins - Bowl Games are dying and have become a glorified scrimmage.  Michigan also has a big enough brand to make a bowl game with out a conference tie-in (if they decided to go independent).

• Games against new teams and new rivals. 

• Big Ten has huge team payouts!  Yes, but every conference has a TV deal now and could make Michigan a huge offer. 

Moving from the Big Ten would of course hurt the other sports and be much more expensive for travel across the board.  It's probably not a viable option, but I think it should be "floated" to put some pressure on the Big Ten to improve in a number of areas.  I see the current Big Ten offices as a black hole of information and a fat and happy "old boys" network.

Michigan will probably never do this, but I think its time for some major changes, so the narrative of this football program changes.  Football is changing and this isn't the conference of Bo and Woody any longer. 

from The BIG HOUSE Blog http://mbighouse.blogspot.com/2019/10/michigan-monday-wonders-if-michigan.html