The Big Ten divided is a better Big 10

Welcome to the 21st century college football fans.
A century where money talks and you know what walks-right over every fan of every college football team in America.
Don't get me wrong-I'm definitely no bleeding heart Socialist. I'm all about making as much as you can, but when it comes to public entities like Universities, who owe their existance to the communities they serve, a line has to be drawn somewhere in "going for the gold" so to speak.
With so much money available in television deals, and growing support for a college football playoff as opposed to the BS...uh, BCS system, it was inevitable that we would see conferences make pushes to add teams and get bigger-which is exactly what we saw this past summer with the Pac 10 and Big 10 looking to expand to 16 and 14 teams, respectively, at the expense of the (now former) Big 12 conference.
Of course, neither succeeded-yet, but both made significant additions to their conferences.
Between the 2, the Big 10 stands out to me-not because its the conference of my home college teams, but because they landed the bigger fish in Nebraska; and because landing that fish meant some big changes for a conference that, until the 1990's, shied away from change.
How deep those changes would go, all Big 10 fans found out yesterday when the Big 10 released its new "division" structure-a structure that preserves the placement of the biggest rivalry game in all of American sports history and, in some ways, makes it even better.
To the surprise of many, but to no surprise to me, the powers that be within the Big 10 had the wisdom enough to place Ohio State and Michigan in separate divisions. Placing them in separate divisions was a no brainer to me: if you are the Big 10, your dream conference championship match up is the Suckeyes (sorry, old habits die hard) vs. the Wolverines. And what better way to possibly set up that contest than to have it potentionally be a revenge match between the 2.
Had the game been moved, as many believed it would be, or had the 2 teams been placed in the same division, the rivalry would have lost much of its luster: had it been moved, the historical importance of the game would have been lost-that being that it usually determined the conference champion. Had the 2 teams been placed in the same division, then you are quaranteed to exclude one of the 2 most important teams to your conference.
Needless to say, I think the Big 10 got it right, and now they-as a conference-are poised for success in the 21st century. If only they could get those pesky Irishmen to bend to their will and join the conference THEN Big 10 fans would have something to boast about.
Regardless, change is a good thing-especially in the 21st century-and in the case of the Big 10, a Big 10 divided is definitely a good thing.