Big Ten Divisions?

The Big Ten conference just announced it's new divisions which, due to a clear lack of geographic convenience, must be an attempt to maintain competitive balance. But how balanced are they? Lets look at the past six years of results for all 12 teams.

Rank	Team	Avg Score
1	Ohio State	681.34
2	Penn State	403.06
3	Iowa	243.64
4	Michigan	225.04
5	Wisconsin	219.97
6	Nebraska	211.77
7	Michigan State	153.51
8	Purdue	145.94
9	Minnesota	116.91
10	Northwestern	89.68
11	Illinois	67.76
12	Indiana	50.5

One division is Ohio State, Penn State, Wisconsin, Purdue, Illinois and Indiana, which is an average rating of 176. The other division has an average rating of 162, which overall is impressively close, especially when adding in expected Michigan improvement (from tradition) and compensating for my systems surprisingly low ranking of Northwestern (who repeatedly preforms poorly in non-conference games). An impressive job by the Big Ten conference, and I look forward to the annual Iowa-Ohio State championship game.