Per Delany - B1G considering new conference title format, best 2 teams square off

IF they expand the CFP to let's say 8 teams, it would be really weird seeing OSU and Michigan potentially playing in back to back weeks. Lot more potential for someone to get bounced out. If they only play once for example, and the loser is still 10-2 or 11-1, they'd make the CFP even without going to Indy.

All of these things need to be considered. 

Just rebalance the fucking divisions. 

oh great so the year we finally beat OSU we will have to beat them a second time.   A new and unusual way for them to rip our hearts out, great. 

This is stupid.  The problem isn't the B1G divisions, it's the CFP.  Switch it to 8 teams with 5 autobids already.

Here's your fix.  Tell me if you've heard it before...

Eliminate divisions.

Eliminate conference championship game.

Institute rotating schedule in which every team plays every other team over the course of three years.

Rather than archaic standards that attempt to account for every possible iteration at the end of the year to determine the champion, form a committee composed of member representatives that select which team is the conference's best team that year. 

Crown them champ and bless them with the CFP's forthcoming auto-bid.

Delaney has been seeking counsel because he is not smart enough to come up with this on his own.  I love the idea if this becomes reality.

Get rid of the divisions and the (silly) conference championship game. Play a 10 game league schedule and make sure the top 6-8 teams from the previous year play each other and have a "mythical" champion...who gets an automatic bid to the CFP. 

I like it the way it is. Playing OSU two weeks in a row is stupid.

Nah, this, like most B1G decisions, is another bad one.

I'm more in favor of just realigning the conferences every couple of years. I don't hate divisions if they're not comically mismatched like they are now. 

I do realize in my scenario you could have years with back-to-back OSU/UM games (or another two teams) but hey, no system is perfect, and if OSU and UM have played well enough all year to get another shot at it then what are you gonna do? My guess is it would happen a lot less than you think. 

The real problem with eliminating the conference championship game is that the committee already punished TCU and Baylor in 2015 for not playing in a game.  Of course the committee vaulted OSU over both those teams and OSU won its championship.  It may end up hurting the B1G rather than helping it.

Nope. Dont like that.

Get rid of championship game weekend and make it week 1 of the 8-team playoffs.

Having an open mind about the pros and cons is the first step in acceptance of the new age of college football dynamics. I definitely love having to play OSU last. If we were to play midway through the season instead, and possibly see them later, I'm open to have that play out as well.

Best teams playing - Yes

8 team CFP - Yes

Moving The Game off Thanksgiving weekend - Hell yes

Splitting up MSU & OSU to home and away - FUCK YES

Delaney capable of any of this - No

The timing of this sounds like Delany is butthurt about not getting Ohio State into the CFP.

But they still would not have gotten in if they played us a second time instead of NW.

Problem is, you have a current CFP structure that has only 4 slots, and 2 of those slots are always going to be taken by the SEC and ACC, given the committee's biases. 

That leaves only 2 slots to be fought over by the Big Ten, the Big 12, the Pac 12, a second SEC team "darling", Notre Dame, and an occasional G5 team.

That's a lot of folks to be left on the sidelines.  Who didn't see this train wreck coming?

Why did Delany even sign up for this in the first place?

I think some creativity is in order here. Nate Silver published a pretty cool idea a few years ago that I think would be awesome. Unfortunately, the cave man type mentality in college football would probably prevent this from happening for at least some of the following reasons.

1. Would require teams to not know who they are going to play in some weeks until the week before. Coaches would probably hate not getting to scout.

2. It's complicated, and people that don't like to think find it easy to blow this type of thing off. 

Well, so the point of this proposal or idea, is because the CFP committee gives precedence to teams that have already earned tickets to the big dance, let's consider putting our teams with the best record regardless of division in the best position to compete for a national championship. Hard to argue with that logic. 

Imagine if Alabama lost to Georgia on Saturday, that Hurts couldn't turn water into wine after being subbed for in the second half of the championship game a year ago against the Bulldogs, do you really think that Bama would have been kicked out of the playoff? No fucking way.

Delany is simply trying to assure that the Big Ten gets a chance every year to punch a ticket into this playoff. This bowl compromise playoff system favors the SEC and the very elite of the game in a way that makes arrogance seem like normal behavior.

Don't get pissed at Delany for wanting his conference to be represented every year instead of playing a non-competitive West Division team that has never and will never get into the playoff. Maybe Frost has a team that strikes a challenge or maybe Paul Chryst gets Wisconsin into the championship game with a puncher's chance of making a first quarter threat in a playoff game, but the chances are the best recruited teams are going to go the farthest in the current playoff system, without any change. And that is what Delany is seeking to counter.

Until expansion of the playoff system, why should the SEC and its minions control who gets in based on historical precedent and subjective choice. That is the issue being confronted here, nothing more.

Dear God, please make this happen.

I'm so sick of seeing the likes of mediocre teams such as Wisconsin, Northwestern and even Iowa win their division and make it to the Big 10 championship game only to get blown out by better teams such as OSU. 

This format change will make the Big 10 title game more competitive which is great for the conference and fans. 

....

It could also mean that we could get our asses kicked two times by OSU instead of once if things don't change. :-)

This is obviously just him being pissed because of the big ten not getting in the playoff. If osu would have played um in the championship game and won, they would be in instead of Oklahoma.

There are many issues with the way things are now and what might happen with the change. A few:

• The East and West divisions are so lopsided with team quality. The East division teams are much better but only one team can win the division. 
• The Game as the last game of the season is a huge asset for both Michigan and Ohio State to bring visibility to both programs. (Yes we've been losing, but when it's more even that will go away as a problem.) The visibility is an important thing for recruiting and revenue. Don't give that up.
• In our homer focus, we just assume that Ohio State and Michigan will always be the top two teams in the Big 10. That's mistaken thinking. Other combinations will happen quite regularly. 

Great idea and they should move the OSU game too.  No need to play it last week of the season.

There doesn't need to be a conference title game to award a conference champion.  If the B1G wanted to be a leader, it would eliminate the divisions and have every team play each other by eliminating the crappy non-conference games (plus drop Rutgers from the league). 

The team with the best conference record is the champ.  If there is a record tie, then the tiebreaker is the head-to-head result. 

This would produce a more thoroughly vetted champion and produce a much higher strength of schedule for the CFP ranking process.  Especially if the SEC just kept scheduling cupcakes. 

The only good thing about this idea would be that potentially the divisions would be eliminated and we could play traditional rivals more and Rutgers and Maryland less.

I’m in favor of that...by a wide margin

Or we could just pick divisions that aren't dumb. Even a North/South split is far more even than East/West

North: M, MSU, Minn, Wisc, Rutgers, Iowa, NW

South: OSU, PSU, Nebraska, Indiana, Purdue, Illinois,  Maryland

Now Louis C.K. is chiming in?

That's fantastic news.  Now, just get rid of the divisions all together, play a rotating schedule to ensure fairness, and get rid of all protected rivalries and game date slots and we are good to go.  While we're at it, require the rest of the Power 5 to do the same, expand the playoff to 8 teams, guarantee all Power 5 conference winners an entry, and we're golden.

Its tempting, but I'd rather pass. Assuming UM and OSU are the two best teams in the conference, it almost completely devalues The Game, or at least the first one that's played. If both teams were undefeated coming in, that first game would be meaningless unless one team got completely blown out. 

I'd be a fan of re-aligning the divisions, because the West has been so grossly tilted in Wisconsin's favor for years. Maybe swap PSU for Purdue to give Wisconsin an extra challenge, and then Purdue/IU don't need a protected crossover, so it allows them more frequent exposure to teams from the other division. 

It could have the opposite effect but who wouldn’t want the best two?

In most cases this will just be a rematch.  Conference title games need to go.

How do you break ties if two teams didn't play each other?