It's not rarely where I see threads from different people calling for a return to regional conferences and lamenting about how realignment has ruined college sports. At the same time, some would prefer avoiding certain opponents, even from within the same division, although they may be located less than 500 miles from their alma mater. This is the phenomenon that I see happen in the last ten years with Northeastern sports programs, where programs from one conference might end up going to up to five different conferences or independent.

There seems to be a great disconnect when bringing up the ideal of returning to regionalism because the definition of "region" changes when three different people are asked. For example, I consider the "East" a region. Sure, there may be different weather patterns when you go from North to South but both sides touch the Atlantic Ocean, have major cities located up and down the coast and once shared the same colonial master before independence. However, history has shown that there are some distinct differences once you cross on one side or the other side of the Potomac. There are people who say that the mountain states are too different from the Pacific Ocean states, even though I view them as the "West" coming from an East Coast perspective. There are even debates over what is considered the Midwest, with people arguing for the areas touching the Great Lakes vs those who include the Great Plains area.

Another issue is that people don't seem to reconcile the contradiction between wanting national focus games and preferring to avoid playing programs 500 miles or less from their school. For example, if I were to suggest that Duke doesn't play Arizona for one game even though it may have importance over the NCAA selection process, people would look at me silly. But if Virginia Commonwealth wanted to play Duke for one game and Duke refuses Duke is considered to be in the right for not wanting to play Virginia Commonwealth by many who follow college basketball. I tend to think that this disconnect that leads others to think that the power schools are arrogant, whether or not it's a fair assessment.

My question to you is how do you reconcile this contradiction?

Not everyone is able to keep up with changes. You always have folks that lag behind the present day reality thus you have a degree of perceived reality that lags behind from the past and how it used to be.

Regionalism is dying in all aspects and that is not just a coincidence. That was meant to be but I am not going to go further into that beyond saying that it has been a purposeful endeavor to destroy regionalism in this country that has been going on for decades.

Sports have always been used by civilizations to control. It is no surprise to see the popular sports pushing our culture into a singular national identity rather than a gathering of many different regional/local cultures.

There is no reconciliation in this, there is only compliance and defiance. Myself, I put my money in compliance because I do not think that highly of the American public's strength of will. They have been fully taught to follow.

There's a lot of competing elements in what people want as far as scheduling. Here's my breakdown.

1. Big Game: Big games (either with ranking or name appeal), regardless of distance are generally always games people look forward to.

2. Regional Games: People like playing games from areas they know better. To an extent, regions matter in this, but to another extent, distance does. For example, I think more people in Columbus, Ohio would probably get excited over playing Pitt than Iowa State even if they have the same record. The reason being that, while Iowa is in the Midwest and we might share that identification, Pitt is a heck of a lot closer.

3. History: All else being equal, programs will use free scheduling spots for teams they have a history of playing. Fans recognize the opponents and are more likely to pay to see someone they remember past games with.

4. State politics: Some games are very much pushed. When the Southwestern Conference collapsed, the Texas legislature forced 4 schools to stay together. The Kentucky legislature pushed Louisville-Kentucky and the Virginia legislature (due to extreme luck of voting) got the chance to push Virginia Tech-Virgina together. Generally speaking, the state legislature has power when a) conferences are realigning (this is limited by circumstances though), or b) when there are 2 and only 2 big state schools.

5. Avoiding Identity Confrontation Games: While most the rest above pushes neighboring teams to play, #5 here pushes them apart. Every fan has their idea of what their school is/should try to represent. It could be the region/state/city/religion/alumni/just the athletes. When the identity another school is pushing is counter to your goal (and there is no preexisting rivalry and a power differential so that one school is much more established) many fans want to avoid playing that school to avoid legitimating the other schools claim and weakening your own claim.
Examples:
a) UConn and Boston College both want to be New England's college football team. Boston College has the edge (in football) due to history and conference affiliation. A series has the potential to alter that balance. Therefore, Boston College will only agree to a series if other factors strongly push the game (for example, a belief that interest in college football in the region would be helped enough to offset potential lost fans, or a need for more local opponents to sell out).
b) Ohio State and Ohio instate programs: Ohio State has a following throughout the state of Ohio (although is not the dominant team in the Cincinnati and possibly Toledo areas). It's identity, is very much of being Ohio's college team. To preserve this identity, the school cannot have instate rivals (as fans of an instate rival will never root for you). This means few games vs. any particular instate opponent. Since college basketball loyalties spill over into football, that sport is treated the same way.
c) Boise State and Idaho: Boise State has clearly surpassed Idaho. Now that the Broncos are in the Mountain West, playing the Vandals regularly again would just give Idaho a chance to push itself back as the state's football team while taking that claim back without a series will likely take far longer.

it is really pretty simple

smaller conferences with fewer conference games and more OOC games

people get wrapped up in the idea that "regional" automatically means "rival" and nothing could be further from the truth

people also ignore the repeatedly proven concept that small tightly grouped regional conferences sift to weak and strong programs with the weak programs eventually struggling to gain any traction and that eventually weakens the conference overall

if you have some, but not all teams in a large enough region in a conference and those teams have the ability to schedule to meet individual program needs be it scheduling for the likelihood of a win, scheduling to excite fan base, scheduling for strength of schedule or any combination of the above in the out of conference while limiting themselves in the total number of teams tied to via conference affiliation that gives the best chance for each team to have success and to make the conference as successful overall as a whole

and when you have a conference filled with teams that are mostly doing well that excites everyone in the conference for conference games and when you realize that your conference mates all do not need to go 2-10 so that you can go 10-2 because they can get a lot of wins in the OOC that means you can tune into an OOC game of a conference mate and hope they win because your program is strong and does not need to be strong on the backs of weak conference mates and when that conference mate wins in the OOC that is a more meaningful game for your fans when you face them....when you want your program to be strong, but strength for your program comes mostly at the expense of your conference mates when your conference mates that are 1-6 face off against each other WHO CARES.....you don't and certainly no one outside the conference or even outside the fan base of those two teams cares

if everyone in a conference came into conference play 5-0 or 4-1 that is highly appealing to all involved.......when your conference mates come into conference play 2-1 or 1-2 it is all downhill from there......and when your conference beats up on itself mostly for 75% of their games over time that means that a large % of your conference will be weak......weak in conference and WEAK in the OOC as well.......you do not run a successful program going 3-0 in the OOC and then 1-8 or even 2-7 in conference.....that is a team looking to go 1-2 in conference soon and 1-8 or 2-7 in conference

when you have programs that can schedule with flexibility to go 4-1 or 5-0 in the out of conference and even if they go 2-5 in conference they can sneak into a bowl game.....get the practice time and try and mix in another win or two the next year and repeat

I personally like the idea of regional conferences. But what is regional? The old Pac-10 (yea somehow its the old Pac-10 now) was a perfect regional conference to me despite spanning 4 huge states in the West. The SEC is a perfect regional conference to me even though I think it has 3 somewhat different, yet fairly similar regions in its footprint. The Big Ten has abandoned regionality in favor of a biregional (perhaps triregional if we consider the "Old Northwest" Midwest as different than the Plains States) grouping of like institutions approach.

If we are talking about schedule policies, I think more teams should take use of the Hawaii rule and play 13 games.

This would allow (besides the Hawaii game itself) for SEC/ACC: 8 conference games, 1 homecoming matchup, 2 national matchups (including the in-state out of conference matchups) and 1 more "tune-up" game.

For PAC/Big 10/Big 12, just drop that last tune up game.

PSU fans are certainly in the cross-hairs of this topic.

Some want Pitt back because they were our first and best rival (the series from the late 60s to early 80s was transcendent!). Some feel like we get enough "regional" games simply by playing in the Big Ten and--like the poster above mentioned--we can accidentally legitimize Pitt (who has been relatively mediocre since the mid-80s) by playing them regularly.

I feel like part of the "problem" is the new dearth of OOC games. In the last decade, the furor for 7 home games (essentially a money grab) has made most teams schedule 3 patsies and 1 solid OOC foe each year. PSU even had a year or two with 8 home games.

I think if you told a typical PSU fan that they could have 9 Big Ten games, Pitt, a patsy home game, and a good "national" OOC foe every year (like Alabama, Notre Dame, or Miami), I think they'd take it. The problem comes up when Pitt is ALL we get. We'd rather not stay regional in the new system, since the Big Ten is regional enough.

Regional doesn't work. SUPER Regions do work.

The formula for success is to corner the market of a well populated particular super region by having a bunch of big public Flagships (LibArts & Landgrant) from the region with as little over lap in coveted states as possible

(07-27-2014 02:10 PM)allthatyoucantleavebehind Wrote:  PSU fans are certainly in the cross-hairs of this topic.

Some want Pitt back because they were our first and best rival (the series from the late 60s to early 80s was transcendent!). Some feel like we get enough "regional" games simply by playing in the Big Ten and--like the poster above mentioned--we can accidentally legitimize Pitt (who has been relatively mediocre since the mid-80s) by playing them regularly.

I feel like part of the "problem" is the new dearth of OOC games. In the last decade, the furor for 7 home games (essentially a money grab) has made most teams schedule 3 patsies and 1 solid OOC foe each year. PSU even had a year or two with 8 home games.

I think if you told a typical PSU fan that they could have 9 Big Ten games, Pitt, a patsy home game, and a good "national" OOC foe every year (like Alabama, Notre Dame, or Miami), I think they'd take it. The problem comes up when Pitt is ALL we get. We'd rather not stay regional in the new system, since the Big Ten is regional enough.

My brother-in-law is also a Penn State grad/fan and I have heard him express the same lament you have about playing PITT versus the importance of maintaining a national presence. As I have told him time and again, your premise is just ludicrously off base and amazingly arrogant.

This theory may have held some water pre-child sex scandal at Penn State and when PITT was still in the Big East, which struggled to gain the nation's respect as a football conference. I always thought it was little more than a weak excuse then but it's an out right insane position now that PITT is playing in the ACC, which hosts the defending national champion Florida State Seminoles.

If PITT can't be legitimized by playing the likes of Clemson and Florida State, they're not going to be legitimized by playing a mid tier Big Ten team as Penn State has been for most of the past two plus decades.

Personally, I think that is a game that needs to be played for both schools' sake. PITT does benefit more on a very superficial level (attendance) but both schools would benefit tremendously from having a marquee game that both schools' fan bases care about at the end of the season – something both teams currently lack.

Let's be real for a second and acknowledge that not many people respect or even know that for most of the past two decades Penn State and Michigan State have played for something called the "Land Grant Trophy". It just hasn't made an impact on anyone, and Michigan State is often been very good during this time and Penn State has occasionally been good too.

For its part, PITT has had more success in that department by virtue of being able to play an actual rival in West Virginia rather than a contrived one. However, even that has now gone by the wayside and PITT's end of the season rivalry now is set to be the Miami Hurricanes.

From PITT's perspective, Miami is okay, West Virginia would be even better (if they behaved themselves), but Penn State would absolutely be the best, most natural rivalry we could play. It would energize the fan base, but don't confuse that with legitimizing the program. No other program has that kind of power over any other program - especially not P5 to P5.

Let's try to apply this logic to other fairly similar scenarios. Does South Carolina legitimize Clemson by playing them? Does Georgia legitimize Georgia Tech by playing them? Does Florida legitimize Florida State by playing them? Does Kentucky legitimize Louisville but playing them? If so, then why do they all continue to play those in-state rivalry games? Why doesn't that seem theory apply to any of those other larger programs? Because it's manufactured BS designed to confuse the Penn State fan base, that's why.

It is absolutely true the PITT has fallen off a lot from where it was during that rivalry's halcyon days. There is just no question about that. I think it speaks to PITT's internal struggles over maintaining a high-quality football program and doing it in this sleazeball environment as well as the difficulty for an urban school to compete against all of these land-grant institutions with their almost limitless resources. However, people should also bear in mind just how far Penn State has fallen as well. They were one of the true behemoths of college football in the 1980s - sort of like Alabama and LSU are right now - and now they are roughly akin to an Iowa. That is not bad, certainly better than where PITT is, but it is nowhere near where they were in the 1980s. They're still drawing those huge crowds - a byproduct of an isolated location and an absolutely enormous student body - but they are not getting it done on the field, at least not to the level they think they should.

When I became convinced that Penn State also needed that game was in hearing a big recruit from Pittsburgh (I can't remember who, want to say Terrelle Pryor) say that he had always dreamt of playing in the Ohio State/Michigan game. Why would a kid who grew up in Pennsylvania dream of playing in the Ohio State/Michigan game? That makes no sense. That would be like a kid who grew up in Ohio saying that he always dreamt of playing in the Backyard Brawl. That just doesn't happen.

That is no disrespect towards Ohio State or Michigan or their wonderful game, which I think most would agree is among the best rivalries in college football. It is just that, before that quote, I had never in my life heard a PA kid speak of it with such reverence. Frankly, it was odd and spoke directly to a void existing in that department in Pennsylvania collegiate football.

I understand that a lot of the posters here are quite young but for those who don't know or who don't remember, PITT and Penn State, along with Oklahoma and Nebraska, basically invented that Friday afternoon following Thanksgiving college football tradition. It was usually a doubleheader on ABC and it was an awesome day of college football featuring two of the largest rivalries in the sport. It is a crying shame that neither game is now played and I don't their absence benefits college football in the broader context at all.

(07-27-2014 02:10 PM)allthatyoucantleavebehind Wrote:  PSU fans are certainly in the cross-hairs of this topic.

Some want Pitt back because they were our first and best rival (the series from the late 60s to early 80s was transcendent!). Some feel like we get enough "regional" games simply by playing in the Big Ten and--like the poster above mentioned--we can accidentally legitimize Pitt (who has been relatively mediocre since the mid-80s) by playing them regularly.

I feel like part of the "problem" is the new dearth of OOC games. In the last decade, the furor for 7 home games (essentially a money grab) has made most teams schedule 3 patsies and 1 solid OOC foe each year. PSU even had a year or two with 8 home games.

I think if you told a typical PSU fan that they could have 9 Big Ten games, Pitt, a patsy home game, and a good "national" OOC foe every year (like Alabama, Notre Dame, or Miami), I think they'd take it. The problem comes up when Pitt is ALL we get. We'd rather not stay regional in the new system, since the Big Ten is regional enough.

My brother-in-law is also a Penn State grad/fan and I have heard him express the same lament you have about playing PITT versus the importance of maintaining a national presence. As I have told him time and again, your premise is just ludicrously off base and amazingly arrogant.

This theory may have held some water pre-child sex scandal at Penn State and when PITT was still in the Big East, which struggled to gain the nation's respect as a football conference. I always thought it was little more than a weak excuse then but it's an out right insane position now that PITT is playing in the ACC, which hosts the defending national champion Florida State Seminoles.

If PITT can't be legitimized by playing the likes of Clemson and Florida State, they're not going to be legitimized by playing a mid tier Big Ten team as Penn State has been for most of the past two plus decades.

Personally, I think that is a game that needs to be played for both schools' sake.
PITT does benefit more on a very superficial level (attendance) but both schools would benefit tremendously from having a marquee game that both schools' fan bases care about at the end of the season – something both teams currently lack.

Let's be real for a second and acknowledge that not many people respect or even know that for most of the past two decades Penn State and Michigan State have played for something called the "Land Grant Trophy". It just hasn't made an impact on anyone, and Michigan State is often been very good during this time and Penn State has occasionally been good too.

For its part, PITT has had more success in that department by virtue of being able to play an actual rival in West Virginia rather than a contrived one. However, even that has now gone by the wayside and PITT's end of the season rivalry now is set to be the Miami Hurricanes.

From PITT's perspective, Miami is okay, West Virginia would be even better (if they behaved themselves), but Penn State would absolutely be the best, most natural rivalry we could play. It would energize the fan base, but don't confuse that with legitimizing the program. No other program has that kind of power over any other program - especially not P5 to P5.

Let's try to apply this logic to other fairly similar scenarios. Does South Carolina legitimize Clemson by playing them? Does Georgia legitimize Georgia Tech by playing them? Does Florida legitimize Florida State by playing them? Does Kentucky legitimize Louisville but playing them? If so, then why do they all continue to play those in-state rivalry games? Why doesn't that seem theory apply to any of those other larger programs? Because it's manufactured BS designed to confuse the Penn State fan base, that's why.

When I became convinced that Penn State also needed that game was in hearing a big recruit from Pittsburgh (I can't remember who, want to say Terrelle Pryor) say that he had always dreamt of playing in the Ohio State/Michigan game. Why would a kid who grew up in Pennsylvania dream of playing in the Ohio State/Michigan game? That makes no sense. That would be like a kid who grew up in Ohio saying that he always dreamt of playing in the Backyard Brawl. That just doesn't happen.

That is no disrespect towards Ohio State or Michigan or their wonderful game, which I think most would agree is among the best rivalries in college football. It is just that, before that quote, I had never in my life heard a PA kid speak of it with such reverence. Frankly, it was odd and spoke directly to a void existing in that department in Pennsylvania collegiate football.

I understand that a lot of the posters here are quite young but for those who don't know or who don't remember, PITT and Penn State, along with Oklahoma and Nebraska, basically invented that Friday afternoon following Thanksgiving college football tradition. It was usually a doubleheader on ABC and it was an awesome day of college football featuring two of the largest rivalries in the sport. It is a crying shame that neither game is now played and I don't their absence benefits college football in the broader context at all.

I want to be in a conference that includes the best of the programs within and easy travelling distance. Obviously, there are constraints on which programs would consider any given conference but I want to be able to drive to every conference opponent's stadium if I so desire. Non-conference is where I want my team to get creative and exit the region.