ESPN now has even more reason to put 2 SEC teams in the playoff. The next version of the playoff needs to be owned by more than just ESPN, or every conference besides the SEC is screwed.
Official UM out of conference scheduling protocol:
Step 1: schedule an exciting home-and-home series against a historic power for 10 years down the road.
Step 2: hype that series for multiple years. Play up the opportunity for out-of-town alumni to see the team, and the chance to play a meaningful game in a legendary venue.
Step 3: some years later, cancel the series with a press release titled "michigan adds ShitTeamA and ShitTeamB as future home opponents." Hope that nobody actually reads the article and realizes that the exciting series was cancelled.
Step 4: add the historic power to the BIG, thus completely annihilating the college football environment for the rivals of that team, and seeding the reduction of interest and passion in college football for millions of fans
At 24 teams you can do a 2-7-7-7 format: 2 permanent rivals per team, and play 7 other teams each year. Cycle through every team within 3 years.
Past 24 teams, I think it becomes necessary to play 10 conference games.
The BIG could also go to 22 schools. There can be a 3-6-6-6 format: 3 permanent rivals, cycle through 6 other teams per season. See every team within 3 years.
I'd love to have our 3 permanent games be OSU, MSU, and Minnesota. But I think they'll keep the round robin of the West's Big 4 (Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa, Nebraska), so there wouldn't be room for us on Minnesota's rotation.
I think the East's Big 4 will each get 2 of each other (we will drop Penn State), and then we each take one bottom tier team. OSU gets Illinois (Illibuck), Penn State gets Maryland. Either us or MSU gets stuck with Rutgers. I think it'll be MSU, because they'll be bitching about something no matter what (and nobody cares when they do). So we get Indiana.
Northwestern also gets stuck with Rutgers, because somebody has to take them. Also I've always thought the BIG should play up the NYC-Chicago rivalry, just to have something to talk about for these teams.
We backed out of a series with UCLA for 2022 and 2023.
The announcement on mgoblue hilariously announced it in an article titled "Michigan Adds Hawaii and East Carolina as Future Home Opponents." I guess they were hoping nobody would click on the article and realize that the reason for those 2 crappy games was because we were cancelling an actually intriguing series.
I hate that we waste all 3 of our OOC games on "guaranteed wins" (not that it has always worked out that way on the field). The playoff really shouldn't be more important than having an interesting regular season. 1 good OOC game every year please.
What if the purpose of the committee wasn't just to pick the 4 teams in the playoff each year, but instead to pick the NUMBER of teams in the playoff each year?
Almost every year sees a different number of teams that seem deserving of a spot. This year, it was lucky that 4 worked out pretty well. But really 6 teams could have made a case.
Instead of the committee trying to figure out how to squeeze some random number of teams into 4 spots, let's task them with figuring out how many spots there should be.
I cannot imagine any situation in which I would root for Notre Dame. They are my favorite team to root against, especially when they are on NBC and the announcers don't even pretend to be impartial. ND is arrogant and their independence is so obnoxious to the college football world.
FSU over Clemson...Clemson's season has been so easy, they could finish 13-0 and still wouldn't deserve a spot in the CFP.
Purdue over MSU...sure it's better for Michigan's SOS if MSU can sneak back into the top 25. But state is supposed to be bad at football. So let them be bad.
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ESPN now has even…
Yes.
ESPN now has even more reason to put 2 SEC teams in the playoff. The next version of the playoff needs to be owned by more than just ESPN, or every conference besides the SEC is screwed.
Official UM out of conference scheduling protocol:
Step 1: schedule an exciting home-and-home series against a historic power for 10 years down the road.
Step 2: hype that series for multiple years. Play up the opportunity for out-of-town alumni to see the team, and the chance to play a meaningful game in a legendary venue.
Step 3: some years later, cancel the series with a press release titled "michigan adds ShitTeamA and ShitTeamB as future home opponents." Hope that nobody actually reads the article and realizes that the exciting series was cancelled.
Step 4: add the historic power to the BIG, thus completely annihilating the college football environment for the rivals of that team, and seeding the reduction of interest and passion in college football for millions of fans
Step 5: profit.
Another major problem is the idea that USC and UCLA made the jump to the Big 10 only to end up playing an all Big 10 West schedule.
At 24 teams you can do a 2-7-7-7 format: 2 permanent rivals per team, and play 7 other teams each year. Cycle through every team within 3 years.
Past 24 teams, I think it becomes necessary to play 10 conference games.
No room for divisions in a 16+ team league. Either pods or (hopefully) individual permanent rivals.
The BIG could also go to 22 schools. There can be a 3-6-6-6 format: 3 permanent rivals, cycle through 6 other teams per season. See every team within 3 years.
The additional 6 teams (sorry PAC):
Oregon, Washington, Stanford, Cal, Notre Dame, Colorado
2 rivals for everyone:
I'd love to have our 3 permanent games be OSU, MSU, and Minnesota. But I think they'll keep the round robin of the West's Big 4 (Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa, Nebraska), so there wouldn't be room for us on Minnesota's rotation.
I think the East's Big 4 will each get 2 of each other (we will drop Penn State), and then we each take one bottom tier team. OSU gets Illinois (Illibuck), Penn State gets Maryland. Either us or MSU gets stuck with Rutgers. I think it'll be MSU, because they'll be bitching about something no matter what (and nobody cares when they do). So we get Indiana.
Northwestern also gets stuck with Rutgers, because somebody has to take them. Also I've always thought the BIG should play up the NYC-Chicago rivalry, just to have something to talk about for these teams.
My expectation:
We backed out of a series with UCLA for 2022 and 2023.
The announcement on mgoblue hilariously announced it in an article titled "Michigan Adds Hawaii and East Carolina as Future Home Opponents." I guess they were hoping nobody would click on the article and realize that the reason for those 2 crappy games was because we were cancelling an actually intriguing series.
I hate that we waste all 3 of our OOC games on "guaranteed wins" (not that it has always worked out that way on the field). The playoff really shouldn't be more important than having an interesting regular season. 1 good OOC game every year please.
What if the purpose of the committee wasn't just to pick the 4 teams in the playoff each year, but instead to pick the NUMBER of teams in the playoff each year?
Almost every year sees a different number of teams that seem deserving of a spot. This year, it was lucky that 4 worked out pretty well. But really 6 teams could have made a case.
Instead of the committee trying to figure out how to squeeze some random number of teams into 4 spots, let's task them with figuring out how many spots there should be.
Their selections could have been:
2021: 6 teams. Bama, Michigan, Georgia, Cincy, Baylor, ND.
2020: 8 teams. Bama, Clemson, OSU, ND, Texas A&M, Oklahoma, Cincy, Coastal.
2019: 5 teams. LSU, OSU, Clemson, Oklahoma, Oregon.
2018: 6 teams. Bama, Clemson, ND, Oklahoma, OSU, UCF.
2017: 8 teams. Clemson, Oklahoma, UGA, Bama, OSU, Wisconsin, USC, UCF.
2016: 6 teams. Bama, Clemson, OSU, Washington, PSU, Oklahoma.
2015: 7 teams. Clemson, Bama, MSU, Oklahoma, Iowa, OSU, Stanford.
2014: 6 teams. Bama, Oregon, FSU, OSU, TCU, Baylor.
I cannot imagine any situation in which I would root for Notre Dame. They are my favorite team to root against, especially when they are on NBC and the announcers don't even pretend to be impartial. ND is arrogant and their independence is so obnoxious to the college football world.
FSU over Clemson...Clemson's season has been so easy, they could finish 13-0 and still wouldn't deserve a spot in the CFP.
Purdue over MSU...sure it's better for Michigan's SOS if MSU can sneak back into the top 25. But state is supposed to be bad at football. So let them be bad.