The Other Dimension of Big Ten Expansion
Posted 05-13-2010 at 08:23 PM by EastLosRandy
More Conference Games
The Other Dimension of Conference Expansion
by EastLosRandy
13 May 2010
The explosion of speculation, premature reports and internet buzz around the potential expansion of the Big Ten has created an off-season for college football fans unlike any other in the history of the NCAA’s most lucrative and storied sport. Despite the dearth of tangible news on the subject, the increasing probability of the Big Ten growing to 12 or more teams -- in addition to the possibility of such growth triggering a chain reaction of expansions, raids, and realignments across the nation -- is an intoxicating idea for many folks eagerly awaiting the start of the 2010 season this fall.
The focus on which teams may be going where is perfectly understandable here. Is your favorite team moving or staying? Who would you like to see added to your team’s conference? What new rivalries can be created? What old rivalries may be lost? These are all questions of immediate concern to the college football partisan. Fans of Big Ten schools have thus been most interested talking about the prospects of expanding the number of teams in the conference.
Problems with One-Dimensional Expansion
But there’s another dimension of conference expansion that fans, teams, and league officials alike shouldn’t ignore. The Big Ten should be playing more than the current eight conference games each season. If you increase the length of a rectangle without increasing its width, you distort the rectangle out of its original proportions. If you increase the breadth of the Big Ten by adding several teams without increasing the depth of the conference by playing more conference games, then you distort the Big Ten far out of proportion from the successful league it is today. This is most clearly expressed by many fans’ complaints that conference traditions and rivalries will be lost or at least watered down as the Big Ten adds more teams.
These fans have a point. There is an inverse mathematical relationship between the number of teams in a conference and the frequency with which conference teams play one another. Add teams to the Big Ten, and that means fewer Iowa/Michigan games, fewer Wisconsin/Ohio State games, etc., and new games against expansion teams. Trading Iowa/Penn State games for Iowa/Rutgers and/or Penn State/Missouri will be disappointing to many fans. These concerns won’t be enough to stop expansion, but they should be enough to get conference officials thinking about ways to improve the expansion scenario that would make more people happy and enhance the appeal of Big Ten competition.
Benefits of Playing More Conference Games
The number of conference games played by each team is the third and most overlooked variable in the equation involving the number of teams in the conference and the frequency of meeting conference rivals. Play more games, and you can maintain more rivalries while adding teams.
Given a twelve-game regular season, expanding to nine conference games would also prove to be a case of addition by subtraction. Scheduling only three non-conference games instead of four would mean trimming many teams like Arkansas State, Ball State, Eastern Illinois and Tennessee Tech from Big Ten schedules in favor of conference games that will put more butts in the seats and get a lot more eyeballs looking at TVs. Such a shift will also boost the strength-of-schedule (SOS) ratings for Big Ten teams while still allowing a couple of “warm-up” non-conference games in September.
The simplest reason may be the best ... more Big Ten games! Currently the Big Ten gets all of its marquee games on ABC and still has enough quality games to support the highly lucrative Big Ten Network. That’s with a 44-game conference slate. A 12-team conference with a nine-game conference schedule would play ten more conference games per year plus a conference championship game. The “Big 14” would play 63 games, and the “Big 16” would play 72.
Twelve Team Scenario
Each of the current 12-team conferences (ACC, Big 12, SEC) in Division 1A has an eight-game regular season. Every team plays all five of their divisional opponents and three out of the six teams in the opposite division. As in the Big Ten this results in a plethora of games scheduled against teams from the MAC, the Sun Belt and even Division 1AA.
If the Big Ten goes to 12 teams and 9 games, then it will establish a new standard of competition for all of college football. It will boost Big Ten teams’ SOS and computer rankings and influence poll voters. With nine games, each team plays four out of six teams in the opposite conference. In that scenario, Iowa would play Ohio State, Michigan, Penn State etc. an average of two out of every three seasons while playing Minnesota, Wisconsin, Illinois etc. annually. I think this preserves the integrity of every Big Ten rivalry while keeping all the indispensable rivalries annual affairs. Even on the odd occasions that Iowa is not scheduled to play Ohio State in a particular season, there is still a chance of playing Ohio State ... in the conference championship game!
Sixteen Team Scenario
Depending on how it’s organized, a “Big 16” could be a nightmare scenario for Big Ten fans who prize east-west rivalries like Iowa/Penn State, Wisconsin/Ohio State and Minnesota/Michigan. If the 16 teams are divided into two permanent eight-team divisions while keeping the current eight-game schedule, then you can basically kiss these east-west games good-bye. Teams in opposite divisions would play each other only 12.5% of the time, and it would feel like the Big Ten had become two virtually separate eight-team conferences with a “conference championship game” between two teams that almost never see each other on the field.
However, if you combine a rotating four-by-four “pod” structure with a nine-game conference schedule, then it becomes possible for a team to play all three rivals in its own “pod” annually while playing each of the other 12 conference teams twice out of every four years. Iowa will still play Penn State less frequently than they do now, and that much is basically unavoidable. But playing Penn State 50% of the time (plus hopefully some conference championship games) still keeps them as part of the Hawkeye football experience. Every Hawkeye player who stays four years will be able to play at the Shoe, the Big House, and Happy Valley.
Playing a tenth conference game would then create the potential for each Big 16 team to select two protected rivals from other pods in the conference. Then Iowa/Penn State could also become an annual affair! Considering all the other reasons that make the sixteen-team scenario attractive, the ability to temper legitimate fan worries about abandoning traditions and rivalries by playing more conference games may be a critical piece to the jigsaw puzzle of Big Ten expansion.
The Other Dimension of Conference Expansion
by EastLosRandy
13 May 2010
The explosion of speculation, premature reports and internet buzz around the potential expansion of the Big Ten has created an off-season for college football fans unlike any other in the history of the NCAA’s most lucrative and storied sport. Despite the dearth of tangible news on the subject, the increasing probability of the Big Ten growing to 12 or more teams -- in addition to the possibility of such growth triggering a chain reaction of expansions, raids, and realignments across the nation -- is an intoxicating idea for many folks eagerly awaiting the start of the 2010 season this fall.
The focus on which teams may be going where is perfectly understandable here. Is your favorite team moving or staying? Who would you like to see added to your team’s conference? What new rivalries can be created? What old rivalries may be lost? These are all questions of immediate concern to the college football partisan. Fans of Big Ten schools have thus been most interested talking about the prospects of expanding the number of teams in the conference.
Problems with One-Dimensional Expansion
But there’s another dimension of conference expansion that fans, teams, and league officials alike shouldn’t ignore. The Big Ten should be playing more than the current eight conference games each season. If you increase the length of a rectangle without increasing its width, you distort the rectangle out of its original proportions. If you increase the breadth of the Big Ten by adding several teams without increasing the depth of the conference by playing more conference games, then you distort the Big Ten far out of proportion from the successful league it is today. This is most clearly expressed by many fans’ complaints that conference traditions and rivalries will be lost or at least watered down as the Big Ten adds more teams.
These fans have a point. There is an inverse mathematical relationship between the number of teams in a conference and the frequency with which conference teams play one another. Add teams to the Big Ten, and that means fewer Iowa/Michigan games, fewer Wisconsin/Ohio State games, etc., and new games against expansion teams. Trading Iowa/Penn State games for Iowa/Rutgers and/or Penn State/Missouri will be disappointing to many fans. These concerns won’t be enough to stop expansion, but they should be enough to get conference officials thinking about ways to improve the expansion scenario that would make more people happy and enhance the appeal of Big Ten competition.
Benefits of Playing More Conference Games
The number of conference games played by each team is the third and most overlooked variable in the equation involving the number of teams in the conference and the frequency of meeting conference rivals. Play more games, and you can maintain more rivalries while adding teams.
Given a twelve-game regular season, expanding to nine conference games would also prove to be a case of addition by subtraction. Scheduling only three non-conference games instead of four would mean trimming many teams like Arkansas State, Ball State, Eastern Illinois and Tennessee Tech from Big Ten schedules in favor of conference games that will put more butts in the seats and get a lot more eyeballs looking at TVs. Such a shift will also boost the strength-of-schedule (SOS) ratings for Big Ten teams while still allowing a couple of “warm-up” non-conference games in September.
The simplest reason may be the best ... more Big Ten games! Currently the Big Ten gets all of its marquee games on ABC and still has enough quality games to support the highly lucrative Big Ten Network. That’s with a 44-game conference slate. A 12-team conference with a nine-game conference schedule would play ten more conference games per year plus a conference championship game. The “Big 14” would play 63 games, and the “Big 16” would play 72.
Twelve Team Scenario
Each of the current 12-team conferences (ACC, Big 12, SEC) in Division 1A has an eight-game regular season. Every team plays all five of their divisional opponents and three out of the six teams in the opposite division. As in the Big Ten this results in a plethora of games scheduled against teams from the MAC, the Sun Belt and even Division 1AA.
If the Big Ten goes to 12 teams and 9 games, then it will establish a new standard of competition for all of college football. It will boost Big Ten teams’ SOS and computer rankings and influence poll voters. With nine games, each team plays four out of six teams in the opposite conference. In that scenario, Iowa would play Ohio State, Michigan, Penn State etc. an average of two out of every three seasons while playing Minnesota, Wisconsin, Illinois etc. annually. I think this preserves the integrity of every Big Ten rivalry while keeping all the indispensable rivalries annual affairs. Even on the odd occasions that Iowa is not scheduled to play Ohio State in a particular season, there is still a chance of playing Ohio State ... in the conference championship game!
Sixteen Team Scenario
Depending on how it’s organized, a “Big 16” could be a nightmare scenario for Big Ten fans who prize east-west rivalries like Iowa/Penn State, Wisconsin/Ohio State and Minnesota/Michigan. If the 16 teams are divided into two permanent eight-team divisions while keeping the current eight-game schedule, then you can basically kiss these east-west games good-bye. Teams in opposite divisions would play each other only 12.5% of the time, and it would feel like the Big Ten had become two virtually separate eight-team conferences with a “conference championship game” between two teams that almost never see each other on the field.
However, if you combine a rotating four-by-four “pod” structure with a nine-game conference schedule, then it becomes possible for a team to play all three rivals in its own “pod” annually while playing each of the other 12 conference teams twice out of every four years. Iowa will still play Penn State less frequently than they do now, and that much is basically unavoidable. But playing Penn State 50% of the time (plus hopefully some conference championship games) still keeps them as part of the Hawkeye football experience. Every Hawkeye player who stays four years will be able to play at the Shoe, the Big House, and Happy Valley.
Playing a tenth conference game would then create the potential for each Big 16 team to select two protected rivals from other pods in the conference. Then Iowa/Penn State could also become an annual affair! Considering all the other reasons that make the sixteen-team scenario attractive, the ability to temper legitimate fan worries about abandoning traditions and rivalries by playing more conference games may be a critical piece to the jigsaw puzzle of Big Ten expansion.
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