SMQ: Thinking radically about college football realignment in age of coronavirus
By Zach Bigalke
Great Lakes Conference
- Teams: Minnesota, Wisconsin, Central Michigan, Eastern Michigan, Michigan, Michigan State, Western Michigan, Notre Dame
- States included: 4 (Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, Indiana)
- Current P5 teams: 5 (Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, Michigan State, Notre Dame)
Congratulations, Notre Dame, you are now officially in a conference. The Fighting Irish serve as the eighth member of a loop that includes the five Michigan schools and the flagship universities in Minnesota and Wisconsin. As one of the more geographically compact leagues after this process of realignment, the Great Lakes Conference allows a great measure of competitive balance and keeps together a large number of traditional rivalries.
Big Ten schools are certainly a critical component of this configuration, with the Golden Gophers and Badgers siphoned out of the Big Ten West and the two Michigan programs out of the Big Ten East. The Fighting Irish figure to be a perennial challenger in this alignment, and the three MAC schools have the potential to grow quickly from their relationship with such big names.
Much of the travel in this league could be conducted by bus, with many campuses especially in Michigan and even from Notre Dame within several hours’ drive. The longest travel required would be the trip from Ann Arbor to Minneapolis, a one-way trip of around 510 miles. That affords even more compactness than the leagues further west.