SOUTH BEND, Ind. — On the precipice of one of its most noteworthy seasons in decades, the Big Ten had three of its longtime greats inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame on Saturday.

Michigan Heisman Trophy winner Desmond Howard, legendary Wisconsin coach Barry Alvarez and record-setting Purdue quarterback Mark Herrmann headlined the 20-person class — three men who have dramatically changed Big Ten football over the years.

It gave Alvarez a chance to comment on the league, which is undergoing a major facelift this year with the addition of Nebraska. Now at 12 teams, the league split into two divisions and added a championship game for football.

The conference’s first title game is Dec. 3 in Indianapolis.

“It makes us relevant after the (regular) season,” said Alvarez, who has a unique perspective on the Big Ten as a longtime old-school coach who now is the Badgers’ athletic director.

“It really has hurt us (not playing later in the season), a few years in particular where we finished the season and name a champion, everyone else is playing in championship games and we’re watching. … Our guys are sitting an extra 10 days. We’re going into bowl games sometimes with 50-some days off. It’s hard.”

Alvarez was 118-73-4 as Wisconsin’s coach from 1990 to 2005. He inherited a program that went 1-10 in his first season and took it to 11 bowls. He won eight of them — the best winning percentage (.727) of any coach with at least that many bowl appearances.

Since becoming an administrator, he has become a catalyst for change in the Big Ten, which is being lauded for its divisional split.

But the move hasn’t been without its bugaboos.

One sticking point has been the logistics of drawing up the league’s new football schedule. Although Michigan and Ohio State still play each other every year on the regular season’s final weekend— allaying concerns one of the best rivalries in sports would lose its luster — other rivalries haven't escaped unscathed.

Michigan, for instance, won’t play Wisconsin again until 2015.

Does that concern Alvarez?

“When you split ’em up, that’s going to happen,” he said. “We’re more concerned we’re not playing Iowa every year, but you can protect only one rivalry. You can’t have it all.

“Our No. 1 priority (in splitting into two divisions) was competitive equality. When you see all those teams over the past 20 years, there are six teams contesting (for titles), and we have to split those teams up. You can’t go geographically, then end up with four in one division and two in the other, because there would be competitive imbalance.

“This is what we’re left with.”

The creation of divisions has received near-universal approval, although those divisions’ names — Leaders and Legends — have not.

“There’s a lot of chatter,” Alvarez said. “They can call ‘em A, B (for all I'm concerned). They can call them anything they want, we still have to go win football games.”

Herrmann, a member of Purdue’s “Cradle of Quarterbacks,” did plenty of that in his career with the Boilermakers.

He finished 33-13-1 at Purdue, setting 23 school and nine NCAA records from 1978-80.

Herrmann became the first quarterback to pass for 8,000 yards — then the first to pass for 9,000 yards.

“At that point, (the Big Ten) was very much a run-oriented conference,” Herrmann said. “We thought the pass might be the great equalizer.

“We were way ahead of our time.”

Kyle Meinke covers Michigan football for AnnArbor.com. He can be reached at 734-623-2588, by email at kylemeinke@annarbor.com and followed on Twitter @kmeinke.