Completely Bats 14-Team Big Ten Proposal

They laughed at Jules Verne too.

Where did this come from?

It's so complicated it could work, but it's also too complicated to work.

You just blew my mind Brian.

Let's take a hypothetical. Let's say that the top conference beats the crap out of each other and that next year Michigan goes undefeated in conference (or has the best record in conference). Since they are in the bottom division they have no chance at the championship?

That's the only flaw that I see that I don't really like.

Also (From twitter the internets are for speculation):

umhoops

By far the best option for the B10. RT @CFTalk: Report: Big Ten, Texas have initial talks http://tinyurl.com/yzvy5je #collegefootball 12 minutes ago from TweetDeck

Which we all know is only two steps from communism. WHY DO YOU HATE AMERICA?

Stanzi/Leman 2012!

but if three teams (one from each group) finish undefeated, you take group one and two winners based on strength of schedule?

Overall, I like it. When preparing to throw away 70 years of tradition, don't consider half-measures, do something revolutionary!

This would definitely blow everyone's minds, and I love it. Besides the points Brian made, I would expect this structure to have an interesting effect on recruiting, although you have a less-formally-structured-but-still-pretty-rigid haves and have-nots system now anyway.

This is similar to the english soccer league, right? I wonder how you would do the initial seeding, just based on the previous year's record?

This would also have an interesting effect on coaching changes like the one we have just gone through. Assuming Michigan would have been in the top tier in '07, the switch to RR would have dropped us to the second tier in '08 and almost definitely the third-tier in '09. I would expect this to be a significant disincentive to making the kind of system/culture switch that going with RR was if any more stable options were available.

Woo Promotion/Relegation!

Let's name the lowest division the Rich Kotite division though. Nothing says failure like Kotite.

Isn't this very similar to the English Premier League? The bottom two teams are demoted, and two teams are promoted from another league? I like it!

So if Michigan were in the bottom division, they can potentially go undefeated and not make it to their own conference championship game???

There's too much turnover in college football for it to be treated like EPL.

Let's burn this post and forget that it ever happened.

I love it!!! Bring on Texas, Texas A&M, anyone.

Scheduling nonconference games should probably be addressed somewhere. Are we assuming no conference byes/mandatory first 3 weeks of the season are the only nonconference games?

It just seems like scheduling would be fairly last minute instead of years ahead.

What I don't like is that if a team from the bottom division goes undefeated, they only move up to the middle division the next year. Shouldn't they move up to the top division? Maybe there should be a provision that if a team plays in the championship game, they automatically get moved to the top division. That would mean two from the top division would move down to the middle division.

I like it, but....it seems to be installing relegation just for the sake of relegation. A jump to Group 2, for example, appears to be its own reward (plus a little tiny boost in priority for the BTCG, which is offset by having to play a harder schedule), which ain't enough.

You would need to specify something better, like, bowls have to take a Group 1 team before they take a Group 2 team, with all kinds of complex caveats about better records and so on and so forth. Promotion for its own sake just doesn't seem worth the effort.

And the catfight over how to determine the groups from the start would be pretty intense. Who's a top team? Naturally, M will want to look at records over the past ten years and Iowa (for example) would prefer we ignore all but last year.

This is probably the worst idea I've heard since Kirk Herbstreit proposed a plus-one BCS Championship format

Somehow I am still able to write this post, though.

I think the system would work, but only if movement in the divisions was weighted a bit more. So instead of a team moving around every year, maybe make the shift on a 2-year basis? That way, a team can have a down year and still bounce back, and a one-year wonder has to show sustained improvement lest they jump a division and get pummeled all year.

I know that means the random undefeated team might miss out on the championship game, but my sense is that it won't happen too often. While the Penn St. example is a cautionary tale, historically the Big 10 shakes out like most major conference - the best teams rarely stumble and the bad teams rarely show sustained improvement. I mean, Indiana hasn't been relevant in over a decade, and OSU has been the best team in the conference over that same span. The real scrapping would be between the bottom team in the Bo/Woody division and the top team in the Tiller/Mason division, but most years that is a debate between teams like MSU, Wiscy, and Iowa - good teams, but rarely competing for a conference crown.

The best part of this is that there could someday be a game where we have a chance at relegating tOSU to the bottom level. Other than that I think its crazy.

The whole winter sports sucking thing has really given Brian some extra time, huh?

If you want to make a national title run, it pretty much has to be at least a two-year push. If you have a bad year, next year when your players are older and you're a better team you're still being hurt by the previous year because you have a weaker strength of schedule. People on the national stage will say things like "_____ is undefeated, but they're only a second tier Big Ten team so we'll ignore them."

And that's how "just wait til next year" becomes "wait til two years from now."

Yeah, I think it's pretty terrible.

It is like the premier league, but the big difference there is that there are 20 teams in the top division, thus breaking up which teams could likely win much more obviously, and they also play many more games so it makes more sense. With college football you can't play as many games, and therefore, can't have divisions with as many teams. This however, makes this idea pretty craptastic because there typically isn't a clear division between team 7 and team 3.

It would also hurt the big ten's perception nationally, as the top teams would always beat up on each other and, possibly, one bad team would do good. But people will claim that bad team doesn't deserve to be ranked before admitting the number 5 team in the top division should be, even with four loses. I don't know, it just doesn't seem like a good idea when applied to american football, or as I like to call it, football.

Sounds like the old high school Mega Conference, which was shitty.

Sorry to be the one to point this out, but there are 2 ways the math doesn't work:

PROBLEM #1:
GROUP 1: 5 teams, play 3 teams each in group 2.
GROUP 2: 4 teams, play 3 teams each in group 1.

That means that the 5 teams in group 1 need 15 matchups (5 teams x 3 games) with group 2 teams. Unfortunately, the 4 teams in group 2 need 12 matchups (4 teams x 3 games) with group 1 teams. It can't be done.

PROBLEM #2:
GROUP 2: 4 teams, play 3 teams each in group 3.
GROUP 3: 5 teams, play 3 teams each in group 2.

Same problem at the bottom of the conference.

But I think trying to make it work with three groups in a conference is asking for it to fail. With the more realistic 12-team, two-division conference, relegation could actually work.

Discussion: if the NFL had relegation, how long would it take for the Lions to be relegated to playing in a local high school league? Would the Detroit PSL take the Lions?

...that this concept is beneath, you Brian. You did a fine job addressing it, but it´s utter nonsense.

holy hell Brian. on the principle of pure insanity, it's insane. by the time I got to step 4 in the year's end rundown it was all greek to me

4) Οι δύο πρώτες ομάδες παίζουν ένα παιχνίδι πρωταθλήματος. Μία ομάδα είναι πάντα ο νικητής της ομάδας. Η άλλη ομάδα θα μπορούσε να είναι η δεύτερη ομάδα θέση σε μια ομάδα ή μια πραγματικά καλή ομάδα δύο ή τρεις νικητής: κάθε αήττητη (στο συνέδριο) ομάδα δύο / τρεις νικητής παίρνει την αυτο-προσφορά για το παιχνίδι πρωταθλήματος. Εάν υπάρχουν δύο, ομάδα δύο παίρνει προτεραιότητα. Εάν η δεύτερη θέση την ομάδα 1 ομάδα έχει το ίδιο ρεκόρ ως ομάδα δύο ή τρία ομάδα και το χαμηλότερο ομάδα έχει κερδίσει H2H, παίρνουν την προσφορά. Θα υπάρξει πιθανόν κάποια πολύπλοκη φόρμουλα που θα επιτρέψει μείωση ομάδες διαίρεση στο παιχνίδι, εφόσον καλύτερες επιδόσεις από την ομάδα μία ομάδες επαρκώς.

I love it..

So do the Bo/Woody teams get to play in some sort of champions league after the regular season is over??

(sorry, football/soccer is the number one sport on my mind right now.)

fixing the current play off structure in the Time Traveling Unicorn-Leprecon Lightsaber Jousting Tournament?

because right now, team Mxyzptlk is totally getting screwed by the TTULLJT committee.

That would cause just way too much unneeded confusion.

We have entered the wilderness of the off season...