What is the logic behind your division alignment?
You asked...
Jim Delaney said that Competitive Balance and Maintaining Rivalries are the top two factors; and geography is third.
I believe it has been reported that The Big Ten is looking at program winning percentage since 1993 (when Penn State joined the Big Ten). The schools are in tiers in this order:
Ohio State-Michigan-Nebraska-Penn State
Wisconsin-Iowa
Then the bottom six are a big jumble but the best tiers are :
Purdue-Michigan State-Northwestern-Illinois
Minnesota-Indiana
To keep Iowa-Wisconsin in the same division, it really screws up the integrity of "competitive balance"; and you would probably be forced to put three of UM-OSU-PSU-Neb in the same division. I don't think that should or will happen.
Therefore, before getting into the rivalries, we would expect to see the teams split up evenly along these lines.
As for the protected rivalries, different folks have different thoughts on which rivalries need to be protected. My belief is that Michigan-Ohio State, Michigan-Michigan State, Indiana-Purdue, Illinois-Northwestern, and the trio of Minnesota-Wisconsin-Iowa must all be protected. MSU-PSU, UM-Minn, OSU-Ill are some that would be very nice, but those are not absolute musts. Additionally, Penn State and Nebraska are, as of yet, not represented. I'll get to those schools in a minute.
The real killer to my logic is this: If Wisconsin-Minnesota-Iowa must all play each other, and Wisconsin-Iowa must be split up in different divisions for competitive balance, then you must protect two rivalries from the other division to make it work for this trio. It's a nice bonus that you have an easy logical split of the remaining four unprotected rivalries: two schools on for two years, two schools off for two years.
Also, in the interests of competitive balance, I don't think you will see any of Michigan-OSU-PSU-Neb having protected rivalries with the other three schools. It makes the schedule much harder year in-year-out, and gives an advantage to Wisconsin-Iowa in their schedules. Furthermore, schools like Indiana and Northwestern and Purdue want Ohio State and Penn State and Michigan on their schedule for recruiting and because they sell out the stadiums. So I think you should see one protected non-division rival from the top half, and one from the bottom half. And the other four schools rotate.
All things being equal, I'd like to keep rivalry games in the same division, but some have to be split up.
Looking at the top six, Iowa-Wisconsin will be a protected rivalry. So now, let's start splitting up UM, OSU, PSU, and Neb. Each school will get one top 4 rival every year in their division, one top 4 rival protected from the other division, and one top 4 rival to play half the time. UM-OSU must play every year. Next, if you were to ask Penn State, I believe their most important rival in the Big Ten is Ohio State. So OSU-PSU must be played. By logic, that means that OSU-Nebraska will be one unprotected rivalry, and Michigan-Penn State would be the other unprotected rivalry, and that both UM-Nebraska and PSU-Nebraska will play every year. I think Nebraska would be cool with it which ever way it went, but they have a little bit of history with UM and Penn State, so this probably works out for the best.
Now the question is, do you want UM-OSU in the same division, or do you want the potential for them to meet a second time. Let's leave this open for a moment.
Tom Osborne stated the other day that Nebraska sees Iowa and Minnesota as their two most important rivals. They share a border with Iowa, and apprently NE and MN have a history fifty years ago when both were competing for national championships.
So, as Iowa-Wisconsin must be protected as a cross-divisional rivalry, that means that Nebraska and Iowa must be in the same division.
Minnesota wants to play Iowa, Wisconsin, and presumably, Nebraska. Since it would be unfair competitively to ask Minnesota to play two upper-tier teams in Nebraska and Iowa as protected cross-divisional rivals, it makes sense to put Minnesota in the same division as Nebraska and Iowa.
Logically, Wisconsin is in the other division, as is Ohio State, since NE-OSU is not a protected game.
Wisconsin has gone on record stating that they want a protected rivalry with Nebraska. However, as of yet, Nebraska has not agreed on the record, and again, in order to do this, you would have to break up the competitive balance.
To get to this point was pretty easy from a logic standpoint.
Now for the big question of keeping or splitting up OSU and UM. I think this can go either way. I know I said, all things being equal, keep the rivalries in the same division, but I decided to split them up for three reasons.
1. I fall on the side of "more is better" and UM-OSU meeting twice isn't a bad thing. And it won't happen every year anyways. It STILL hasn't happened form Miami-Florida State to meet in the ACC CCG, so I don't think it would be a regular occurrence that people will get bored with. If you disagree with this statement, that's the biggest reason that UM-OSU should be in the same division.
2. UM and Ohio State are the historical cornerstones of Big Ten football. Old men with white hair and a lot of money will not want to be in a division with neither of those schools. Nothing against Nebraska or Penn State, but for a school like Purdue or Indiana or Illinois or Northwestern or even Minnesota, it just would seem too goofy to look at the standings and be in a division headed up by both Nebraska and Penn State. So because of history, I think UM and OSU will be split up.
3. If you truly want competitive balance, the records from 1993 are 1-OSU, 2-UM, 3-NE, 4-PSU <gap> 5-Wis, 6-Iowa. This puts 1, 4, 5 in the same division, and 2, 3, and 6 in the other.
4. Nebraska and Penn State are the geographical outliers. Nebraska will be comfortable either way, as they will get Iowa and Minnesota in their division. But Penn State, if they are not in the same division as Ohio State (or Michigan or likely Michigan State), their nearest schools will be... Purdue? Indiana? Northwestern? And then they would definitely get Nebraska, Iowa, and Minnesota. If you look at a map, the UM-OSU-MSU-Wisconsin division will be pretty compact geographically, while the PSU-Minn-Iowa-NE will be pretty spread out. I think Penn State really needs to be in the same division as Ohio State to really feel part of The Big Ten.
So based on that, I've now got Michigan-Nebraska-Iowa-Minnesota and Ohio State-Penn State-Wisconsin.
The rest of it I can be pretty indifferent about, but assuming that "competitive balance" remains king, here's my next logical steps:
Split #12 Indiana from #11 Minnesota, so Indiana is with OSU, PSU & Wisc.
Split up #7 Purdue and #8 Michigan State. Also, split up #9 Illinois and #10 Northwestern. You could keep Ill-NU in the same division, but it would theoretically make the Purdue-Michigan State division a bit stronger.
I then put Purdue and MSU in the same respective divisions as their in-state rivals. It's purely a gut feeling, but I think Illinois would most want to play Ohio State every year, and Northwestern would prefer to see Michigan and Michigan State.
So now we have OSU-PSU-Wisc-Pur-Ill-Ind and UM-NE-Iowa-MSU-NU-Minn.
Now for the crossover games. One game will be played against a top tier school, and one against a bottom tier school.
OSU-Michigan, PSU-NE, Wisc-Iowa, are set as top tier vs top tier matchups.
For the bottom tier matchups, NU-Ill is a must have. I'm indifferent on the rest, but I have heard that MSU-Indiana have a rivalry. Maybe in basketball, but whatever. Let's put MSU-Indiana, and throw Purdue-Minnesota together as the leftovers.
Looking at the top tier of OSU-PSU-Wic vs the bottom tier of MSU-NU-Minn: Wisc-Minn is a must have, and it makes a lot of sense to keep the MSU-Penn State game also. Ohio State-Northwestern is left over as a crammed in protected matchup.
Finally, UM-NE-Iowa vs Pur-Ill-Ind. There's no strong argument to go one way or another. Iowa-Illinois aren't particularly rivals, but they share a border. Indiana already travels every year to the state of Michigan to play MSU, so I might as well give them Nebraska instead. That leaves UM-Purdue, who have a bit of a rivalry anyways (They hate RichRod, the whole Griese thing, and there have been a few memorable games - the 9-3 one and the Brees-Henson matchup). Sure. Why not.
Some of these rivalries can obviously be mixed up a bit. If for some reason things are "stale" in 8 years, then swap Illinois and Northwestern. Or swap the UM-NE-Iowa vs Pur-Ill-Ind protected rivalries.
And of course, we'll be re-doing this in four years when the Big Ten expands to 14 schools in five years.