Big 10 (11) Fix

Alright, I'm tired of watching the Big 10 finish up two weeks early every year and sit back while every other school has rivalry games and conference championships.  While the Big 10 teams stay home and rest up, every other good team in the country is getting beat up and through attrition - helping those teams with a bye move up the rankings.  As long as we're going to have a BCS system instead of a playoff I think that the BCS conferences need to have title games.  The Pac-10 is an issue for another article, but largely it isn't worth having a title game out there right now because there's only one good team in the conference.  That being the case, let's focus on the Big 10.

For this scenario to have even a shred of credibility, (not saying there's much of a chance of that, but let's pretend) I think it's important to maintain as many traditional rivalries as possible.  That way when the conference is split up, there's not the concern that Michigan only plays Ohio State every three years.  Additionally, which we'll get into, there will be the need to add another team so everything may be divided up evenly.

Big 10 Rivalries

• Illinois: Indiana, Northwestern
  
• Indiana: Illinois, Purdue
  
• Iowa: Minnesota, Wisconsin
  
• Michigan: Michigan State, Ohio State
  
• Michigan State: Michigan, Penn State
  
• Minnesota: Iowa, Wisconsin
  
• Northwestern: Illinois, Purdue
  
• Ohio State: Michigan, Penn State
  
• Penn State: Michigan State, Ohio State
  
• Purdue: Indiana, Northwestern
  
• Wisconsin: Iowa, Minnesota

Okay, so now what?  How can we start breaking this down?  Well based on rivalries the 11 teams fit into three main groups:

Group 1: Michigan, Michigan State, Ohio State, Penn State

Group 2: Indiana, Purdue, Northwestern, Illinois

Group 3: Iowa, Minnesota, Wisconsin

Right off the bat there's a problem - there's no easy split to get six and six while still maintaining these traditional rivalries.  I propose instead of the traditional approach that is done in the other BCS conferences that have championship games where the conference is divided into two groups of six that the Big 10 institute a pod system similar to how the CCHA balances out the hockey schedule.

Breaking down in pods, a team would be paired with a rival and this rival they would play automatically every year.  Providing you add one more team, you would have six pods.  Nine conference games would be easy enough to schedule in that you play your rival and then you play both teams in four of the five remaining pods that year.  You still have room for three non-conference games and then the pod that you do not play one year you rotate through and play the next year.  This means that teams in the Big 10 pod system would play every team aside from their rivals four out of every five years, which is pretty much how it all works out now.  Additionally the championship game would be #1 playing #2 at the end of the year and the advantage of this system is that you don't have a top team sitting out just like you do in the Big XII this year with Missouri playing for a BCS automatic berth instead of Texas or Texas Tech.

There are a number of different scenarios for pod breakdowns, each has pros and cons.
Pod 1 - Penn State/ Michigan State
Pod 2 - Michigan/ Ohio State
Pod 3 - Indiana/ Purdue
Pod 4 - Illinois/ Northwestern
Pod 5 - Wisconsin/ Minnesota
Pod 6 - Iowa/TBD

I kept Minnesota and Wisconsi together becase I like the rivalry and playing for a Slab of Bacon is just cool.  What to do about adding another team?  I'm sure a lot of people will say that Notre Dame is the obvious answer.  The Irish are independent in football and already play a strong Big 10 schedule every year.  As a Domer, I think it would be cool to see in addition to Michigan, Michigan State and Purdue each year a more consistent showing of Penn State and Ohio State.  The problem is, where do you put Notre Dame?  You can't really slide them in with Iowa, that doesn't make much sense.  If you put them in with Purdue or Penn State or Michigan or Michigan State, none of those teams have a strong rivalry with Iowa.  So if Notre Dame doesn't work, what are other schools that have a strong enough rivalry with these schools for football and would actually add to the conference.  Penn State has some of the better out of conference rivalries with Pittsburgh and West Virginia.  In the immediate time frame a frequent matchup of Michigan/ West Virginia would be interesting, but that's a temporary storyline.  Additionally you still have the problem that if you add in one of those teams, then you end up putting Michigan State with Iowa, which isn't a great scenario.  Plus you'd have to find another team to fill in for the Big East (Marshall?).

So where do we go now?  Back to Iowa, and finding a team to plug in with Iowa.  I propose move Iowa State out of the Big XII and into the Big 10.  In order to fill the void in the Big XII add TCU which should be able to be competitive (probably more so than Iowa State or Baylor).  There are a few extra moving parts here but it accomplishes four things: 1) traditional rivalries are maintained 2) the Big 10 will have a championship game which will be more equitable in selecting the Rose Bowl berth and the top teams won't have the chance to creep into the BCS by being idle 3) the Big 10 will finally be forced to find an accurate name for their conference and not try and hide an 11 (or in this case 12) in the design.  The Big XII used to be the Big 8 and they managed to learn to count accurately, it's not that hard.

Same as Everyone Else...

...ND coaching and BCS

BCS first, and the 3-way ties thing. For what it's worth, I'd like to point out that this year the BCS is working EXACTLY as intended. The national championship game will likely pair the winners of the 2 undisputedly best conferences, which combine to include 4 of the consensus top 5 (and 5 of the top 7) teams in the country. So, my apologies to USC (not really), but their conference and related strength of schedule wasn't good enough to merit their single loss as a national championship contender.

Although the SEC model worked out fine this year, the Big XII tiebreaker for determining the South division champion is really the problem. By this point, we know that OU is going to the Big XII Championship and, hopefully for the BCS, the national championship. (What a mess it would be if Missouri somehow finds a way to win that game.) But this is a problem with the conference, not the BCS, so don't blame the BCS for this.

I agree that it's unfortunate that Texas and TTU (I hate that people are discounting them because their BCS rank isn't as high in large part because they weren't a preseason top 10 team and lost most recently) apparently won't have a chance to factor into the national title picture, but I don't have a solution for the conference tiebreaker, so to go any further with this would be counterproductive.

However, in response to earlier posts, I am against forced scheduling, in large part because I think it is unnecessary and impractical and I think that it could hurt historical inter-conference rivalries (i.e. ND/UM, ND/USC, Florida/FSU, Iowa/Iowa St., etc.) because who would want to play a 3rd marquee non-conference game if they already have to play 2? I am also against an 8-team playoff because mid-December scheduling interferes with finals and because now you are bringing 2-loss teams into the picture.

Now ND coaching. I am for the most part in agreement with most of the other sentiments posted on this site. I think ND is in a lose-lose situation right now. Therefore, for too many reasons to write on a post that is already too long, I think that the best course of action is to keep Weis for at least one more and probably two more years. Link Weis to Clausen and that class--if he can't get it done in 1 1/2 years, fire him mid-season and be first in line to get a new coach.

Or maybe he'll die from "health complications" before that point.

Big XII vs SEC (cont)

So everyone has their opinions on who is the better conference - SEC or Big XII.  There's only been one inter-conference match up and Texas soundly defeated Arkansas 52-10 (which is hardly a good judgement of how the conferences would stack up since you take the best from one against the worst from the other).  That being said, I'm going to throw out there (in my view) the top six potential match ups pitting a Big XII team against an SEC opponent.  I'm going to give each game a neutral location so home field advantage doesn't come into play.

1. Texas v Alabama - Texas: The Longhorns are rolling right now and Colt McCoy is putting up some amazing numbers against top 10 teams.  Alabama has talent, but they're still young and not going to be able to keep up, Texas is putting up on average 45 ppg and giving up 18, that's a lot of ground for Alabama to make up.
2. Oklahoma v Georgia - Georgia: Georgia can put up points and Oklahoma is having a hard time stopping anybody.  Fortunately for Boomer Sooner, Sam Bradford has the offense clicking so OU can get out to an early lead and boat race the opposition.  I realize it's a hard sell since Alabama destroyed Georgia between the hedges of Sanford Stadium, but in the long run I think Georgia is the best team in the SEC this year.
   
3. Texas Tech v Florida - Texas Tech: The Gators have woken up the past two weeks but Mike Leach is actually running the ball and the Red Raiders are dominating.
   
4. Oklahoma State v LSU - Oklahoma State: The best that LSU has on their resume right now is beating an inept Auburn team and getting blown out at home by Georgia and on the road by Florida.  Okie State won on the road against Missouri and played Texas tight - OSU gets the edge for being competitive in big games this year.
   
5. Missouri v Vanderbilt - Missouri: This is where the depth of the Big XII comes into play, good luck Vanderbilt, they might stay within 30 of Mizzou.
   
6. Kansas v Kentucky - Kansas: Kentucky doesn't have a defense like the top part of the SEC to stop Todd Reesing, Dezmon Briscoe, Kerry Meier and Jake Sharp.  KU's defense hasn't look great against Oklahoma or TTU but it's a lock they'll score more points than the Wildcats.

Across the whole conference the Big XII is putting up on average 36+ points and 442 ypg with average scoring defense of 25ppg.  The SEC is scoring 25ppg with 345 yards and posting an average scoring defense of just under 20ppg.  Basically, conference to conference the SEC will have a hard time keeping up with the Big XII head to head and the depth of the Big XII will win out if there was a showdown this year.