If you are interested in this but haven't read the first installment, go back and do so, otherwise this won't make much sense. OK. In Part 1, I proposed my playoff-within-the-season plan. It takes some getting used to. The major hurdle, I think, is the lack of a set-in-stone regular season schedule. The lack of certainty is tough on the conference schedulers. Otherwise, commenters brought up some points, most of which I think I had a pretty fair answer for. But the main sticking point is that it would seem nigh-impossible for teams to know when they'll have a home or road game any later than a week in advance. What if I told you that home and road dates could in fact be set nearly in stone before the season began? I set out to find if this could happen. My methodology: - All 120 teams are seeded using the CBS Sports 1-120 power rankings, and 8 sacrificial lambs that don't matter were added from the ranks of DI-AA. - The playoffs played out with no upsets, returning visiting teams to the ranks of the regular season participants, though for these purposes I only care what happens to the Big Ten teams. - The first three conference games of each Big Ten team happened before the playoffs, were spread out from Weeks 2-6, and were precisely reflective of the games that were actually played this season, though not always in correct order. This is because I had to adjust for dates, bye weeks, etc. The conference can, of course, make this smoother when they schedule ahead of time. I was kind of back-scheduling, if you follow. - Starting October 18, which is Week 8 of the real season and Week 9 of mine, and covering six weeks, each Big Ten team had either a home game, away game, or a bye (nonconference game = bye for these purposes, I'm focusing on just the conference right now.) I slotted all the home games and away games and byes in the right slots ahead of time. This is important: It simulates doing so in real life. Now each team has set home dates it can sell tickets for, though no opponent yet. It forces me to try and put a home date in the right spot wherever I can. - Week 9, teams began to return to conference play, having lost the week before. Each week, I took the teams that had returned and gave them a game based on where they were supposed to play that week. For example, the first week saw Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, and Purdue eliminated, and thus returned to conference play. Illinois was scheduled for a home game that week, IU was scheduled for a road game, and M and Purdue were scheduled for byes. So Indiana traveled to Illinois, and the other two teams kept their byes. The next week, Minnesota and Wisconsin joined the party, and the process continued. - I did this each week, even paying attention to rivalries and avoiding rematches from the playoffs. Michigan plays MSU and OSU. Minny, Wiscy, and Iowa all play one another. OSU even plays Illinois. - Then I added up the standings, using actual results and taking guesses where those don't exist (e.g. Wisconsin over Purdue.) Here are the results, including playoff games: (I present these for posterity as proof of my work - if you only want to see the summary, just skip to the bottom.) Guide to the symbols: PP - playoff game ## - Changed from home game to something else @@ - Changed from road game to something else %% - Changed from bye to something else Standings (conference games only) Penn State 7-0 Michigan State 6-0 Ohio State 6-1 Northwestern 4-3 Illinois 4-4 Iowa 3-5 Minnesota 3-5 Wisconsin 3-5 Michigan 2-6 Purdue 1-6 Indiana 1-6 ILLINOIS: @Michigan (W) @Penn State (L) Minnesota (L) @Vanderbilt (L) PP Indiana (W) @Wisconsin (L) Iowa (W) Bye Ohio State (L) @Purdue (W) INDIANA: Michigan State (L) @Minnesota (L) Iowa (L) @Western Michigan (L) PP @Illinois (L) @Michigan (L) ## Bye Northwestern (W) @Penn State (L) Bye @@ IOWA: Northwestern (L) @Michigan State (L) @Indiana (W) UAB (W) PP South Carolina (W) PP @Penn State (L) PP @Illinois (L) Ohio State (L) Minnesota (W) @Wisconsin (W) MICHIGAN: Illinois (L) Wisconsin (W) @Penn State (L) @Clemson (L) PP Bye Indiana (W) @Purdue (L) @Michigan State (L) @Northwestern (L) ## @Ohio State (L) MICHIGAN STATE: @Indiana (W) Iowa (W) @Northwestern (W) Kent State (W) PP Connecticut (W) PP @Georgia Tech (L) PP Wisconsin (W) Michigan (W) Bye @Minnesota (W) MINNESOTA: @Ohio State (L) Indiana (W) @Illinois (W) Tennessee (W) PP @Ohio State (L) PP @Purdue (W) Northwestern (L) Wisconsin (L) @Iowa (L) Michigan State (L) NORTHWESTERN: Purdue (W) @Iowa (W) Michigan State (L) Washington State (W) PP Buffalo (W) PP @TCU (L) PP @Minnesota (W) ## @Indiana (L) Michigan (W) @Penn State (W) %% OHIO STATE: Wisconsin (W) Minnesota (W) Purdue (W) North Texas (W) PP Minnesota (W) PP Mississippi (W) PP @Penn State (L) PP @Iowa (W) @Illinois (W) Michigan (W) PENN STATE: Illinois (W) @Purdue (W) Michigan (W) James Madison (W) PP Fresno State (W) PP Iowa (W) PP Ohio State (W) PP @Oklahoma (L) PP Indiana (W) Northwestern (W) PURDUE: @Northwestern (L) Penn State (L) @Ohio State (L) @Central Michigan (L) PP Bye Minnesota (L) Michigan (W) Bye @@ @Wisconsin (L) Illinois (H) WISCONSIN: Penn State (L) @Ohio State (L) Michigan (L) Temple (W) PP @Boston College (L) PP Illinois (W) @Michigan State (L) @Minnesota (W) Purdue (W) Iowa (L) OK. Problems and their possible answers: - Clearly, this makes a mess of the conference standings. Only 5 of 11 teams play a full conference schedule. I did include intra-conference playoff matchups (PSU-OSU, for example) in the standings, except for rematch games (OSU-Minn.) Answer: Intra-conference matchups in the playoffs will happen more than you might think - consider the birthday problem - and so it's not hard to count on being able to add them to the standings to help mitigate this. This also provides an excuse for the Big Ten to play a championship game. I don't worry about a team that went 1-6, but MSU/PSU might turn into an issue without a pretty well-defined tiebreaker of some kind, be it a championship game or whatever else. - Inequitable spread of home and road games. This happens because some teams lose a home conference game by advancing, some lose a road one, and some lose a bye. This and the above problem can be greatly reduced with slop-time games at the end; if Week 8, the first round of the playoffs, is October 18, then Week 14 is November 29 and there's still one more week of football left (at least in the real season.) However, Penn State has already played 13 games, a slop-time game would give them 15 all season. - A very few instances of lost home games. Lost road games are not a huge issue, except for the revenue. Lost byes are probably a bonus - if the other divisions can play a home game in the playoffs on a week's notice, so can this one. Lost home games, as mentioned by commenters, are the big thing. But I really think this can be eliminated entirely with some rejiggering. I'm a dude with a spreadsheet, playing nerd games. If I can figure this out in an hour and a half with only three lost home games (which were changed to road games - and mind you, the home team for those three games already had a home game scheduled so there isn't a reciprocal switch. If there were, then there would be no issue) then I have little doubt that a crack group of people who do it for a paycheck can figure it out so this doesn't happen. So the main thing now, to me, is the inequitability (actual word?) in the conference schedules. I think it's very possible, and very workable, to set home dates in stone so that fans can plan around those dates. I have yet to think of a proper solution to the uneven conference schedules. Other than "just live with it" or "the team that advances farthest in the playoffs is the conference champ, and if two teams tie then they just play each other when they're eliminated" I don't have any solutions to that, just mitigating factors. The main idea might be mvp's proposal from the other comment thread that had six conference games, then the start of the playoffs, which would help big-time with this issue but create a couple others.