jmblue

April 6th, 2011 at 12:57 PM ^

It bothers me on the more basic level, that there are going to be guys in our program who will go their entire careers without facing another conference team, unless we happen to play them in the conference title game.  That's absurd.

A lot of this nonsense could have been avoided if the league would have gone with straight geography for the divisions.  Then, there would have been no need for protected cross-division games, since all the rivalries would have been contained in the divisions.  Then you could have played three of the six teams in the other division one year (or two years), and then play the other three the next.  Instead they went to this stupid gerrymandered setup, which is just making things more complicated than necessary.

jtmc33

April 6th, 2011 at 11:23 AM ^

I don't like losing 2 in a row to Wisconsin (and both in ugly fashion) and not get a chance at revenge for 4 years  (I'm still waiting for a rematch with Oregon)

Hopefully we face them in the Championship game in the next 3 years

MH20

April 6th, 2011 at 11:28 AM ^

MSU doesn't get to play it's "rival" for the next four seasons.  You know, the rivalry that was eventually supposed to blow M-OSU out of the water.

Hahahahaha.

joeyb

April 6th, 2011 at 12:10 PM ^

There's a guy at my work who has half a dozen relatives on either side of that "rivalry". I just brought this up and he feels like the Big Ten dropped the ball on it because of how intense the rivalry was in his family each year.

WolverineHistorian

April 6th, 2011 at 1:05 PM ^

Yeah.  It was kind of cute how hard the Big 10 tried to make PSU/MSU a rivalry.  There's no history to dwell on.  I don't ever remember hearing the players trash each other or stories  of fans getting into it.  It was always just a regular game to end their seasons. 

Penn State has won 13 of 18 meetings and most of them have been complete blowouts to the tunes of 59-31, 51-28, 61-7, 49-18 and 42-14.

Back in the days when we ruled the rivalry with OSU, I always got a kick out of watching PSU humiliate Sparty later that evening.  It was the perfect aftertaste once the bucks crawled back in their holes after THE GAME.

slaunius

April 6th, 2011 at 2:09 PM ^

Still, I'm going to miss it on multiple levels. Trash it all you want, but there WAS something budding between PSU-MSU. The Sparties I know definitely looked at it as their third biggest game (after us and Ireland). Also, it doesn't help to know that Sparty will probably end up in a situation where they play neither OSU or PSU, and we don't need a repeat of 2010.

Lastly, one of my favorite non-UM games of all time was the MSU-PSU game in 2002. It was fairly hyped, only because Larry Johnson needed something like 260 yards to pass 2,000. I remember the pregame talk was obviously all "Will he or won't he?". The answer was "he will...in the first half." 279 rushing yards in TWO QUARTERS. He just annihilated the Spartan "defense". One of the more absurd individual performances I have ever seen, and the fact that it was against Sparty made it that much better.

PhillipFulmersPants

April 6th, 2011 at 3:05 PM ^

repeat because of the conference championship game. Nothing to worry about there. If Sparty misses OSU and PSU some particular year with cross over games, it's likely that if they somehow win the Legends div, they'll get one of them in the Championship game.  And if they win that matchup, the rest of the conference won't be able to complain. 

Sidenote: I didn't realize how painful it would be to type "Legends" for the first time. Part of me still wants to believe this is all an elaborate practical joke and Jim Delany will appear with Ashton Kucher one day on the set of the B10 network to tell us all we've been punk'd.

 

 

jmblue

April 6th, 2011 at 1:01 PM ^

You don't need a 9-game schedule to do that.  With eight games, you play the other five teams in your division, and that leaves you with three against the other division.

Where the problem lies now is the insistence upon protected cross-division games, because that means that in any given year, you can only play two of the five non-protected cross-division opponents.  They should have set up the divisions in a way that kept all the rivalries intradivisional.

jmblue

April 6th, 2011 at 1:04 PM ^

Forget about the competitive standpoint for a minute.  As a fan, don't you want to see marquee teams come to your stadium?  Having the possibility of playing one of them in a domed NFL stadium in December doesn't quite make up for that.

joeyb

April 6th, 2011 at 5:07 PM ^

I'm not a Wisconsin fan, so I don't really care. I only care from the standpoint of one team missing three possibly very good teams and winning the conference. That won't happen because they'd end up having to play one of those three in the championship game.

Now, if Michigan didn't play PSU, Wisconsin, and some other team, I might care. However, we still play OSU, Nebraska, and ND every year. It might be nice to have those teams off the schedule to make it to the BTCG. Then, if PSU or Wisconsin were any good, we'd face them then.

Indiana Blue

April 6th, 2011 at 11:46 AM ^

of giving 3 weeks between games with Nebraska and tsio.  The future home schedules have also improved looking year to year.  Seems that in the past we would have a HUGE home schedule followed by a rather weak one (for conference games).  But looking at 2013 we get Nebraska and tsio (again with 3 weeks in between - yea) and then in 2014 we have little brother, PSU and Iowa all at the greatest stadium in the universe ! 

As for non-conference I really hope DB drops ND ... all we give them is credibility  -  let them join the mighty Big East just like their BB team !  I would much rather see home and home series with Florida, Alabama, Va Tech, Texas, Oklahoma ... maybe even USC !   C'mon DB drop ND. 

Go Blue !

Kilgore Trout

April 6th, 2011 at 12:26 PM ^

I think the Big Ten is dropping the ball on these four year breaks.  It's totally unnecessary that a player could be at a BT school for four years and never play an opponent.  Three year breaks are easy to accomplish if you just have a team come off and get replaced every year instead of two off and replaced every two years.  I literally did the whole Big Ten in 20 minutes a few weeks ago (saved on another computer), but here's how it could work for UM.

2011 - @Ill, Pur

2012 - @Wisc, Ill

2013 - @PSU, Wisc

2014 - @Ind, PSU

2015 - @Pur, Ind

and repeat forever...

UMMAN83

April 6th, 2011 at 12:55 PM ^

not playing these teams will tarnish the year.  They could end up end up in a bowl, a better bowl than deserved, then get smashed again.  Ok then.

Will Vereene

April 6th, 2011 at 7:26 PM ^

Not playing top-ranked programs will reflect on their rankings, so there's some karma in that, too.

Some Sparty fans sighed relief when they saw their guarantied cross-division rival (no offense Hoosiers), but that means MSU will have to do more than beat IU to convince the polls.

GO BLUE!

Tater

April 6th, 2011 at 3:02 PM ^

1.  State got off too easy by adding Illinois and Purdue while losing TSIO and Wiscy.  If they are merely competent in those years, they will win 9 games.  Luckily, there is no guarantee that they will be the least bit competent.

2.  Iowa got screwed by picking up TSIO and Wiscy: like MSU in reverse.

3.  Everyone else pretty much has one tough team and one easy team.  

tbeindit

April 6th, 2011 at 3:17 PM ^

Frankly, I don't feel that bad about missing out on this game.  Sure I have enjoyed the matchups between the teams, but if this is what it takes to have legit divisions and to continue to face msu and osu every year (with osu as the last game) I will gladly accept it. 

I appreciate the argument that it sucks for players not to be able to face a conference team for 4 years, but if they are a true conference contender and we are as well, we will have to face them in the championship game.  If both or either or us suck I don't think that argument is as legitimate