Totally Bats 16(!) Team Big Ten Proposal
this is a sculpture called "Very Hungry God," so it goes here. the little boy is ND.
The old bats idea was for 14 teams and wouldn't have worked anyway. And with Big Ten expansion probably definitely happening now and probably definitely being the crazy XXL version, a 14 team Big Ten is so March. Give us 16 and give us the death of the Big East, even if it doesn't make any sense.
If this is happening, it's important that whatever form the Big Cthulhu takes makes as much sense as possible. Since the usual divisional stuff makes no sense and would see Michigan play opponents in the opposite division slightly more than once a decade, this requires thinking outside the chicken patties. So here's another crazy idea. The new bats idea: it's the World Cup, yo.
The New Bats Idea
So the problem with 16 is that it doesn't divide very well. You have two choices if you want to split teams up: eight or four. Thinking inside the chicken patties provides eight and all the stupid problems that go along with that. Four is interesting.
Divide the Big Ten into four groups of four based on last year's standings. (1-8-9-16, 2-7-10-15, etc.) Everyone plays each other.
Bo | Record | Woody | Record | JoePa | Record | Fry | Record |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Michigan | 3-0 | OSU | 2-1 | PSU | 2-1 | ND | 3-0 |
Iowa | 2-1 | Wisconsin | 2-1 | Nebraska | 2-1 | Missouri | 1-2 |
Michigan State | 1-2 | Minnesota | 1-2 | Purdue | 2-1 | Pitt | 1-2 |
Indiana | 0-3 | Northwestern | 1-2 | Illinois | 0-3 | Rutgers | 1-2 |
Top two teams in a group get put in an eight team division at the top; bottom two get put at the bottom. Point differential breaks ties. Everyone plays each other except for the teams that have already played.
Division 1 | |||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Michigan | Iowa | OSU | PSU | ND | Missouri | Nebraska | Wisconsin |
Division 2 | |||||||
Michigan State | Minnesota | Purdue | Pitt | Indiana | Northwestern | Illinois | Rutgers |
At the end of the year, the winner of the top division wins the conference.
(Variant: instead of lumping teams into eight team divisions on the second go-round, do another round of four team groups that split the top and bottom of the conference into approximately equal sets. Then do a third round of four team groups, two of which offer their winners a bid to the conference title game. The "contenders" groups consist of: the winner of both loser groups, the top two teams in each winners group, and the teams with the best conference records after that. This is probably too complicated.)
This makes a lot more sense to me than playing Penn State once a decade. You play a subsection of the conference based on how good you are. If you go from really bad to really good, as Penn State did in the middle of the decade, you don't get locked out of a championship game before the season starts.
There are a bunch of tricky issues, though: unbalanced home and away in the early section means getting through your group is partially dependent on home/road split. Getting stuck in the second division basically ends your conference championship hopes and that can happen with just one loss (see the PSU group above). And teams wouldn't know who they were playing, or even what their home/road split would look like, until midseason. Protected rivalries would be a thing of the past.
What about a…
Backwards Version!
Do the divisions first. Play seven games. At the end of the year create groups based on finish in the divisions.
Contenders A | Contenders B |
---|---|
Div A #1 | Div B #1 |
Div B #2 | Div A #2 |
Div B #3 | Div A #3 |
Div A #4 | Div B #4 |
(Other teams would get sorted into groups as well and play out the rest of the season; these matchups can take rivalries into account because if you're not playing for the conference title you might as well play someone you hate.)
Play the two games you haven't already; the games you have played count in the group standings. The winner of each group gets a bid to the conference title game. First tiebreaker is overall conference record. Variant: Play a tenth conference game and do a full round-robin in each subdivision. Teams seeded #1 and #2 get the extra home game. The variant provides everyone who makes the contenders groups a reasonable chance at winning them, but does guarantee one rematch per year. It also severely restricts nonconference opportunities.
This version is way more doable. Teams would be able to lock down ten of their 12 games before the season. The clawing for the fourth spot in a contenders group would keep most of the conference at least theoretically in the title hunt until deep into the season, but keeping the result from the earlier game and using overall conference record as tie breaker gives the top team in each division a big advantage. The extraneous games against the other conference would be sort of like playoff games. They wouldn't be random, unbalancing games with a distorting effect on the conference race. They would have purpose.
You want games to have purpose, don't you? You don't want them wandering around being all pointless, do you?
In Which I Pretend To Be Ives Galarcep
What do you think? Should Ricardo Clark have stayed in MLS?
I want more ideas. If a Big Cthulhu conference happens there should be so many different possibilities for the leadership to consider that they get very confused and actually pick one of them instead of defaulting to a divisional format that leaves everyone zo unsatisfied at the conclusion of a season (or the decade) when they drew the top two teams in the Bo division and the team that won your division drew Indiana and Northwestern and you haven't played Penn State since JoePa's age could be practically expressed without scientific notation.
So email me or post a diary or put it on the message board or pick this proposal apart—it's got its flaws—and we'll revisit this at a later date if this turns out to be something other than a game of chicken with the Big East and the Notre Dame administration.
Could you imagine that, by the way? The Big Ten waves its pointy stick at the Big East and manages to get them to boot Notre Dame and then ND ends up joining a 12-team Big Ten? Jim Delany would instantly be the most frighteningly Machiavellian person on the planet.
April 20th, 2010 at 11:35 AM ^
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But, wait, GoBlueScott, that leaves 15 teams, and 15 is a very poor number to divide.Yes, however now you could have three groups of five teams. Groups are based on the previous year's standards. That way you are guaranteed four games in your group.* That leaves six teams (two from each group) on top after the first four games. So what we have is five more games for each of the Top 6. (Now, maybe that sounds like a lot, but that's a total of nine games.) Home field is determined by record (even better, make it Premier League style with 3 points for a win, 1 point for an overtime loss, and no points for a loss.) Here's where we have some fun. While the Top 6 are playing their games, the Bottom Nine are also locked in a mini-tournament with seeding. (This part gets tricky for scheduling, but people smarter than I am can figure it out I'm sure.) At the end, you have this: Winner from Top Group vs. Winner from Bottom Group for Conference Championship. Say what you want, but it places THAT much more importance to win the Top Group to advance. None of this, "Well, we already beat them and now we have to play them again to win the conference?" nonsense. *Alternative: Have the Group Stage be home and away, making it a total of eight games. Top team in each group play. Best record gets a bye, other two teams play for the right to go to the conference championship game. /longest post I've ever typed
April 20th, 2010 at 12:18 PM ^
Group 1 | Group 2 | Group 3 |
---|---|---|
Michigan | OSU | PSU |
MSU | PITT | Iowa |
N'Western | Missou | Illinois |
Indiana | Rutgers | Minnesota |
Wisconsin | Purdue | Nebraska |
Top 6 | Bottom 9 |
---|---|
Michigan | N'Western |
MSU | Indiana |
OSU | Wisconsin |
PITT | Missou |
PSU | Rutgers |
Iowa | Purdue |
Illinois | |
Minnesota | |
Nebraska |
Schedule |
---|
Out of Conference |
Miami (YTM) |
Notre Dame |
Group Stage |
MSU |
at N'Western |
Indiana |
at Wisconsin |
Top Flight Stage |
at MSU |
OSU |
at Pitt |
PSU |
at Iowa |
Championship |
N'Western |
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April 20th, 2010 at 12:47 PM ^
STEEL CAGE.
Drop it over the Big House.
Last team standing wins the conference.
Slight advantage to MSU, since their players are so accustomed to being behind bars.
April 20th, 2010 at 12:44 PM ^
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