Legends and Leaders: Competetive Balance
As the sanctions were handed down to PSU yesterday one thing that crossd my mind was what this does to the competetive balance in the BIG for not just this year but in the years to come. An ever so brief reminder . . . .
Ranking the two sides just for fun with best vs. best over not just the last year, but over the next 5-10 years in light of the recent PSU actions to me is interesting. There are obvious variables that we cant know so most if not all of this is based on pure individual opinion.
Conference standings at the end of 2011 . . .
Big Ten - Legends
Michigan State
Michigan
Nebraska
Iowa
Northwestern
Minnesota
Big Ten - Leaders
Wisconsin
Penn State
Purdue
Ohio State
Illinois
Indiana
To me the Legends should remain the same in the years to come with Michigan being in the 1 spot, Nebraska, MSU and every blue moon Iowa figting it out for 2-4. Northwestern will always be in a posiion to spoil someones season and Minnesota right below that.
In the Leaders I think it will be a little different. No way Ohio State finishes 4th. Yes, yes we all hate them but they will be good very quickly. I see Wisconsin as having climaxed so to speak over the last 5 years. They will be in the championship game this year almost for sure, but after that they have to deal with OSU every year. Now the interesting part. Nobody can really say what PSU will look like in 2/3 years, but I would assume they would look more like a Purdue/Illinois than Wiscy/OSU. Purdue and Illinois are really going to be mirror images of eachother in my opinion. not eally challenging for the title but spoiler. Indiana is terrible.
It would look to me like the Legends divsion will be much stronger over the nex several years than the Leaders. In a teleconference with reporters after the sanctions were announced Delany was asked if he would address the perceived competeive imbalance. He really stepped around the question as good administrator would. What are you thoughts on this issue? Is it an issue?
Fail!
Not even competitive, in fact.
Quick save this thread, change the division names to something clever.
Um, upvote?
welcome to the team sir.
It's late. I can't think of any other words that have a similar sound....and, ummm, spelling.
Penn State players react to sanctions:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YASWRhCXWKY&feature=player_embedded
To make the balance of power more equal they should make Indiana and Nebraska switch places.
go tell the SEC west that we have an unfair division
The SEC East used to claim that, and not that many years ago. Hence the folly of chasing "Competitive Balance". It refuses to be caught.
The B1G is blessed with a natural East - West geographical split that has great rilvaries and happens to have very good "Competitive Balance" anyway. Go with that.
Posting fail checklist:........
Redundant topic?
Check!
Spelliing errors?
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Grammatical errors?
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Flawed premise?
Check!
Well done OP.....well done.
But I think we can count on Ohio's being in the Big Ten title game for the majority of Urban's career there. Wisconsin isn't great every year and I believe they have peaked also. PSU will be down for at least ten years.The rest of that division is garbage.
Well, when they first came out with the divisions, everybody thought they were a bit unbalanced, but I think most thought that the Leaders was the stronger side. I guess 2 different sets of sanctions can really change that around. I actually thought they were pretty even, but this could obviously soon change. There's no point in realignment because in 10-15 years they will be uneven again. Leave them in the Bo and Woody divisions. Unless somebody new joins or something, leave them.
happen. There will be times when one division is clearly better than the other. The SEC has dealt with this its entire history. There was a time when the West division was pretty pathetic compared to the East.
The Big 12 had an imbalance of power at times, esp when Oklahoma was on probation and Texas was busy sucking before Mack Brown arrived.
Its just going to happen.
There will also be times, many times actually, when the best team in any given division doesn't win that division because of the schedule imbalance.