What's wrong with Superconferences?
There seems to be a lot of sentiment that an 18 or 20 team superconference is "too big"? With that size you can't play everyone in your conference, but you can play everyone in your division and then meet the other division winner in the superconference championship. So, basically, you have 2 conferences with a formal arrangment to play a championship game and share marketing arrangements (notably, TV revenues).
I see no problem with this. Let the Big East and Big 10 merge (with Penn State moving back east). Let the Pac10 join with some combination of the WAC and Mountain West. Let the ACC and SEC trim a few and join up. Let the Big 12 pick up teams who got lost in the shuffle and/or midmajors.
In the end, the conference championship games will serve as the first round of an 8-team playoff. ..The top 4 remaing play each other on New Years day. The national championship is about 2 weeks later.
It doesn't address fairness for non-superconference teams, but its a major step forward, without killing off intrenched interests.
we've talked about this yet.
You can't just add a bunch of teams to the Big Ten, there are rules. This is not 'Nam.
Plus, I don't want to share Big Ten air time with 20 other schools.
You allow South Florida to join this conference, you're entering a world of pain.
GOOOOOOOOOOOOOD MOOOOOOOOOOORning BIG TEN!!!!
Whats wrong with Superconferences?5,000 new threads a month is whats wrong with Super Conferences.
All these expansion plans are getting annoying. I'm just going to wait until whatever Big Ten committee reveals a final report or when another team officially joins the conference.
If you have an 18 or 20 team super conference, why not just have 2 conferences? In football you'll never play a team in the opposite division except in the conference championship game?
How do you do a basketball schedule? If you do a home and home with everyone in your division then you probably don't play anyone in the opposite division.
If you're never playing teams in the other division, what's the point? At least with 12 team conference's you can have the basketball schedule so you play everyone at least once, and in football you're playing 8 of the 11 teams in the conference.
Really, the "divisions" are conferences, and the "conference" is just an agreement to associate two "divisions" in sports.
The point is to provide a wider package of TV programming that covers a wider region of markets. In football, the point is to create a structure for a playoff without actually making a playoff or killing off the bowls or extending the season. In short, you retain most aspects of the current system and don't fight the change-haters on all fronts. Of course, you rapidly restructure conferences, and theres much more to it than football...
Theres a lot of issues though, particularly when it comes to cutting teams from 11 or 12 team conferences to make 10 team divisions. Its a semantic argument perhaps, but Penn State might not like being in the Big Ten (East Division) rather than the REAL Big Ten in West Division.
Basketball is a non-issue. With 91,000 teams in the ncaa tourney, who really care how the conference tournaments are structured. You play teams in your division and maybe the other division in the tourney, or maybe some non-conference stuff. Same as it ever was.
There is nothing wrong with the big ten.
I think we should start the MGoConference with every single FBS school that starts with an M.
/sarcasm
Edit: I made a helpful list of what this conference would entail.
Marshall, Maryland, Memphis, Miami, Miami University, Michigan, Michigan State, Middle Tennessee, Minnesota, Mississippi State, Missouri, Ole Miss
Oh look, it's 12 teams, that's less batty than 20.
Give me Marquette
decision about this happen? Is it possible that it will effect this year, or are they talking about making the change for 2011/beyond? I agree with the earlier post that we should just wait and see what happens and go with the flow.
Everything.
What isn't wrong with superconferences?
Let's talk about cheesecake some more. Or, Eno's gotta be lurking about in the shadows, maybe he's got a good potato salad recipe.
I still maintain that cake > pie even when the pie is in a cheesecake form.
I can't think of any positive things about superconferences.