A Slightly Less Bats 16 Team Proposal

Having OSU on our schedule every year instead of a random weak team puts us at a disadvantage. Some years, 5-2 might not be enough to make the cut to the top-4 playoff in weeks 8-9, or maybe we're 4-3 but played a tougher schedule and are bumped down to the toilet-bowl tourney by a 5-2 team who didn't have to play OSU.

The beauty of Brian's (and others) suggestions is that they make uneven schedules fairly irrelevant. Every team has a pretty equal shot within their groupings and can't blame any systemic or scheduling bias on their fate.

This makes my brain hurt, I really hope this doesn't happen.

Why we can't just do a North-South or East-West type format instead of all this confusing crap. The Big 10 will never implement anything like this, even if the NCAA was cool with it, which they probably aren't.

All in all, I think it's pretty doable. I would make the divisions contain almost all protected rivalries and then do 4 weeks of rotation / randomized draw to get everyone on each other's schedules more regularly.

The other thing is that whoever comes in the bottom of the conference in the first seven games is going to get seriously hosed on home games and consequently $$, so that might be a problem.

Although we would definitely end up playing OSU twice a season quite often.

And I still really really really hope we don't have a sixteen team "union." Right now I'm praying for 14 because it's still close to manageable.

You have Michigan not in first place. This is hypothetical...undefeated with a win over OSU is too much to ask?? Please recalibrate.

Kidding...kind of.

I think my biggest complaint is that this requires a mid-season schedule adjustment. I don't think an athletic department in the would want to have to deal with late breaking reservations, etc. I realize that conferences do that already with championship games. However, that's two teams that have to prepare for one indeterminate game. This system appears to result in uncertainty for the entire conference.

I think I would prefer a system based on the previous years results in which a better finish produces a theoretically more favorable schedule (with protected rivalries, etc). This gives developing teams a goal beyond just getting a bowl game. Even if you finished 2-10 the prior year, doing well and getting to 5-7 is rewarding and provides incentives for the following year. Of course, I have no idea how to actually implement this.

I skimmed pretty fast, but I did not see where the unbalanced home and away scheduled would get balanced out. With our new unbelievable home feild advantage (noise levels going up and all) I would hate to get short changed on home games.. especially compared to another divisional team. Other than that, I am good with it and find the 16 team conference idea interesting.

I don't understand why Illinois is in both the Championship 2 bracket and the first I Can Has Bowl bracket.

switching Indiana and Illinois and switching Purdue and Northwestern. The Old Oaken Bucket rivalry >>> whatever it is that Illinois and Northwestern play for. Also, they're next door to Ohio State (if it matters at all, I doubt we'll be so lucky to see the Big Ten expand into four neat little geographic knots), and if Moby Dick is Notre Dame, it probably makes more sense to shovel the three Indiana schools into one division.

Actually, it might not be bad to put Illinois where you have Maybe Nebraska so the two Big 12 schools are together. (And if the other one is Missouri, then Illinois-Missouri would probably be a protected rivalry.)

It's not a bad layout, though. I like the "crazy" ideas (i.e. anything other than tradition) because it's more fun to speculate about things like relegation and playoffs than to guess which opponent Michigan will protect in the two-division format.