I say scrap the 2 division deal. Have no divisions, and play 10 conference games. Rotate the schedule on a two year (home and home) basis. Allow each school one exemption so as to play their rival (ie, Purdue for us) every year. Conference championship is played between the two teams with best conference records. Team with best record gets home field. In the event of 2 teams with same record, head-to-head winner (if they played) would get home field advantage. If no head-to-head, play conf championship on a neutral site. My plan would eliminate the issue of division imbalance, and would be more interesting for fans. Go Hoosiers!
Change the conference structure and scheduling
- Thread starter bdhman
- Start date
I hear you, and generally agree, but I think you would have to have 2 protected rivals. As an example, Michigan should play OSU & MSU every year. OSU should play Michigan & PSU every year.
The arrangement right now maximizes those rivalries, which is important. If I'm an Iowa fan I'm happy as hell. You play Nebraska, Illinois, Minnesota, & Wisconsin every year. It wouldn't bother me not to have to play UM, OSU, & PSU every year.
i like it. but jim delaney would have to run it by urban meyer first.
I would day "Illinoise" they are a natural geographical rival, I hate them as much as the PUkes and half of my family is from that lovely bankrupt state. So when we beat them, which would be often, I can rub it in their face. By the way I still don't think Rutgers even belongs in the B1G.
Rutgers? I think every other school in the Big 10 probably has the same one word reactive response to playing Rutgers: "why?"
The problem with all this is that the current arrangement works perfectly fine for 13 or the 14 teams. IU is the only loser in this deal. Every school in the West is happy because they have a puncher's chance to win the division if they're decent. OSU, PSU, Michigan, and MSU have been at the top long enough to know they can compete. Md, and Rutgers are just damn happy to get big gates from games with OSU and PSU and big paydays from the BTN (though Md fans might get sick of being in the same boat as IU eventually).
We got hosed just as we were finally making an investment in football and taking serious steps to become competitive in the league. The guy who really got screwed in this was Kevin Wilson. He took this job with promises of a commitment to building the program and then got sold down the river to the tune of a guaranteed four conference losses every year.
I don't know if anybody at IU really had any authority to prevent this alignment short of a university-wide threat to leave the conference. That was never going to happen. So we got it shoved up our a$$.
Knowing what we face every year I have decided that if we can manage to win 6 and make a bowl I will never complain about the coach and the football program.
I'm not saying we can't ultimately get there, but it was a hell of a roadblock and a huge setback for us when it happened. We got put in the heavyweight division when we were fighting as a flyweight. It takes a while to gain that kind of weight and you take a lot of ass-beatings trying to get there.
not a rules expert, but i don't think the B10 can play a CCG absent playing a round robin sched within the 2 divisions, or a round robin sched of the whole conference.
absent divisions, i think the B10 would have to play a round robin sched, (13 in conf games), to be eligible to play a CCG. (good luck with that).
that said, i have no doubt Delany has the throw weight to have this round robin rule amended, (as other conferences have had the CCG rules amended recently), so if Delany doesn't do so, it's because he doesn't want to.
for that matter, imo Delany had the ability to have the 12 team rule to play a CCG amended when the conf only had 11 teams, (and the rule has since been amended), but didn't do so because he wanted the rule in place as a pretext for his lust for expansion.
absent divisions, i think the B10 would have to play a round robin sched, (13 in conf games), to be eligible to play a CCG. (good luck with that).
that said, i have no doubt Delany has the throw weight to have this round robin rule amended, (as other conferences have had the CCG rules amended recently), so if Delany doesn't do so, it's because he doesn't want to.
for that matter, imo Delany had the ability to have the 12 team rule to play a CCG amended when the conf only had 11 teams, (and the rule has since been amended), but didn't do so because he wanted the rule in place as a pretext for his lust for expansion.
I'm tired of the whining. Coming up with scenarios that do nothing for anyone except IU is a losers game. IU doesn't get any football respect because we haven't earned it. Give Glass credit for locking in the cross-division rivalry game with Purdue every year -- they didn't have to give it to us. How bout we manage our OoC schedule well and beat the teams we're supposed to beat year in and year out? That would put us in line to average 6-8 wins a year. Then we can take the next step and beat the big boys.
You people must have higher expectations than 6 wins per year, my goodness. Low expectations have been a large problem for this program going back years and years.
If you have low expectations, you'll deliver poor results.
If you have low expectations, you'll deliver poor results.
A), a 14 school conference doesn't work for football, and there's mathematically no way you can make it work.
B), IU isn't the only one unhappy at the division set up.
Neb fans feel like they were bait and switched, thinking they would play the marquee east schools more often when they joined the B10.
Wisc fans want to play the marquee east schools more as well.
RU fans complain daily about the east division.
C), expansion was a stupid idea to begin with, and don't make the mistake of crediting expansion for revenue increases that were driven by the dynamics of the pay tv/internet industry.
adding Neb, RU, UMd, aren't why tv revenue is so much. it's your $220 mo pay tv-internet bill, with providers being heavily reliant on carrying must have sports programming or lose the whole $220 mo to a provider who does have it.
D), we can do away with divisions, but with 14 schools and 8 or 9 conf games, scheds will still be unequal. the inequality will just be more evenly spread out over time.
like i said, mathematically impossible to make large conferences work for football.
E), i like playing MSU, OSU, Mich, regularly, but i also liked playing Iowa, Wisc, Minn, more as well.
i also like playing more major conf non conf games as well, but expansion robbed schools of 1 OOC game a yr.
should have kept the conf at 11 schools, and no way to fix what expansion broke.
absent expansion, money would still be relatively the same, (especially after everyone starts getting a full cut), IU would have more say in conf matters and a larger presence on BTN, (1 of 11 instead of 1 of 14), and i would like the look of both the fball and bball scheds more. especially fball.
as to the positives of expansion, absolutely zero other than to Delany's ego of reigning over a larger kingdom..
I'd mark this with the "like" button twice or more if I could. Whole heartedly agree!
IU got no favors out of this alignment.
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