(05-23-2015 10:39 PM)Marge Schott Wrote:  F*** No! to conference semifinal games. My god, that is an horrendous idea.

Not if your champion is in the final 4 for the national championship. The bowls are still there for the runners up.

(05-23-2015 10:39 PM)JRsec Wrote:  

(05-23-2015 10:37 PM)ClairtonPanther Wrote:  

(05-23-2015 10:22 PM)JRsec Wrote:  

(05-23-2015 10:03 PM)Wolfman Wrote:  The conference model is changing. We seem to be headed towards the NFL model - smaller divisions or pods within a conference. There doesn't seem to be a good way to schedule 18 teams but I would lean towards the 6x3 model.

You play the 2 teams in your pod home/away every year (4 games)
You play 2 teams from pod 2 & 3 (4 games)
You play 4 teams from pods 4, 5 & 6 (4 games)
It is conceivable/probable that you would not play some teams very often.

That's simply not so. What would happen is that you would move to a 10 game conference schedule. This raises content value for the networks and makes them happy and pays us all more. We still have 2 OOC games to keep old rivals around. We have two rounds of conference playoffs for a conference champion which doubles the sites the first week so that each conference can locate a game near the centers of both halves of their geographical boundaries and a final that moves around to preferred destinations. This too means a couple of million more per school. The three divisional champs are all in along with the school with the best remaining conference record which keeps multiple fan bases energized late into the season. The three divisions are geographically based to keep minor sports competition less expensive. And by following the proper rotation of 5 divisional games 1 permanent rival (with an alternate for when that rival rotates onto the schedule naturally) and two games each year against 2 schools from each other division (rotated annually with home and away reciprocation being picked up in rotation) permits each school to play every school in the conference every three years. Your schedule has 6 games (3 home and 3 away) that are permanent and 4 fresh faces from your own conference every year (2 home and 2 away).

It is only difficult for those who are mathematically challenged, or just willfully obtuse.

For hoops you simply play everyone in your division twice and everyone else once. That's 22 conference games. Baseball could divide into two 9 school divisions and play 8 three game series against their own division and midweek games against schools from the other division. That's 33 conference games.

Tournaments could simply be more exclusive. The top 6 finishers for baseball from each 9 school division. In hoops it could be the top 16 schools (no byes).

It is actually more flexible than the other models.

10 game conference schedule? Unless there's a push to a 14 game season, NO THANKS.

The talk for some time among the coaches has been that we are moving to 12 P5 games in the not too distant future. So what if 10 of them are conference. If there are 18 schools to a conference is it really any different than playing 8 conference games and 4 against other P5 schools? 12 games is 12 games.

10 Conference games completely kills the thought of intriguing OOC games. Gone would be the idea of Pitt playing Tennessee. Gone would be even the hint of a Pitt-PSU revival post 2020. I highly doubt that we'll see 12 P5 game schedules.

College football is the only level of football that doesn't have a real preseason; high school has scrimmages, NFL has 4 preseason games. Teams simply need 1-2 cupcake games to get their players into the speed of the game and to make adequate adjustments.

(05-23-2015 10:39 PM)Marge Schott Wrote:  F*** No! to conference semifinal games. My god, that is an horrendous idea.

Especially considering the concussion issue. Is expanding the schedule exactly a good idea.

So we are getting our info from Orangebloods now, and that guy who was wrong on literally every expansion rumor?

And there is no major movement to have major conference schools only face other major conference schools. There isn't even minor movement.

And yes, a conference semifinal game is stupid. It just is. It's stupid in and of itself. But add in the 12 regular season games, the conference final, and in the not-too-distant future a playoff which requires teams to win 3 games (8-team playoff), and you're looking at 17-game seasons. That flies directly in the face of "academics", "player safety" and "amateurism".

(05-23-2015 11:25 PM)Marge Schott Wrote:  So we are getting our info from Orangebloods now, and that guy who was wrong on literally every expansion rumor?

And there is no major movement to have major conference schools only face other major conference schools. There isn't even minor movement.

And yes, a conference semifinal game is stupid. It just is. It's stupid in and of itself. But add in the 12 regular season games, the conference final, and in the not-too-distant future a playoff which requires teams to win 3 games (8-team playoff), and you're looking at 17-game seasons. That flies directly in the face of "academics", "player safety" and "amateurism".

With only 4 conferences the conference semi is your eight team playoff. The only difference is that the conference keeps all of the money instead of splitting it up. The appeal to the networks is that the emerging champions will be from all 4 advertising regions which means through the first round of the 4 team national playoff all regions of the country are producing the advertising money.

Now for academics, amateurism, and player safety. 1. Since when have academics been an issue anywhere but the Ivy League and the Service Academies?
2. Amateurism is even dead in the Olympics and it sure as hell has been dead in college athletics almost since its inception. As long as boosters have existed there has been cash payouts. 3. Player safety is a legal issue for future lawsuits. That is the only mud that you have thrown against the wall that could stick. Insurance will be the answer to that.

12 season games are a real issue now. Add two for the conference championship and you stand at 14. Add two for the national championship and that is 16 for only two schools. The losers of the national semis and the bowl participants will have played 15. Again it is a simple matter of math.

As for OOC games when the 9 game schedules are forced upon us by the networks (which are working hard for that now) we will only have 3. The push for 12 P5 games is a monetary one. The networks make more on advertising and the P5 or P4 conferences keep it all. With 10 conference games the Big 10 and SEC make more. With conference semis all conferences make more. 10 conference games with the Big 12 absorbed by the SEC and ACC is no different than playing 9 conference games and 1 challenge game against the present Big 12. Your argumentation is emotional and not rational.

When we started down this path I told the board that it was a hostile takeover of an undervalued product. Realignment has been a matter of product placement for enhanced value and sales. Restructuring the playoffs will insure maximum market participation through the championship. The schools have sold their souls for revenue. The networks have acquired a cheap and easily produced source of entertainment that is venerated in our culture. Now they need only to reshape its haphazard format to maximize their income. So whether you like it or not content, a network buzz word for playing only a P5 schedule, is going to drive the conversations of the next 4 or 5 years. Restructuring will combine the final moves of product placement with a rational and orderly delivery system for the final 4 participants. There will be no need of an 8 school national playoff. Larger conferences will provide the the sixteen participants and whittle them down to the final four. So each year schools will play 5 games that are geographically close and have rival potential if they aren't already rivals, they will keep on distant rival, and play about 12 regional schools every three years. They will keep two or three, depending upon the final structure form, out of conference games that will be against other P4 conferences. And that will be your annual schedule. If you look at what you are doing now, other than playing two local cupcakes, that is your schedule already, unless you are Notre Dame.

I think 4 pods. Two with 5 and two with 4. One 5 team pod and one 4 team pod form a division. The two four team pods rotate every year or two and all inter-division games are against the teams in the pod you are never locked in with. That would require 9 games though to even have one opening and all rivalries would have to be in-pod.

In short, no really good way to do it.

(05-24-2015 09:20 AM)ohio1317 Wrote:  I think 4 pods. Two with 5 and two with 4. One 5 team pod and one 4 team pod form a division. The two four team pods rotate every year or two and all inter-division games are against the teams in the pod you are never locked in with. That would require 9 games though to even have one opening and all rivalries would have to be in-pod.

In short, no really good way to do it.

As always form will follow function. It will depend upon what each conference is trying to accomplish internally. For the SEC regional divisions have worked quite well until Missouri's addition to the East. Expansion for the SEC to 16 or 18 or whatever number will need to address regional divisions and maintain rivalries. Once that function is established the form of the conference will follow.

I'm sure the same will be true for the Big 10, but since the Big 10 is similarly constructed to the SEC I would think that regional divisions of mostly old rivals would be the norm there as well.

The ACC is a different animal. They will struggle with whether regionalism is a good philosophy for minor sports, or whether placement for football balance is more important. And that will open a whole new can of worms for them.

The PAC should it expand, and I doubt that it will, will likely use regionalism as their norm as well.

Once the function is determined the math of scheduling will be worked out with regards to additional parameters: number of conference games required, size of the divisions, outlying rivalries that must be maintained, and number of OOC games required by certain schools. But once those parameters are determined and agreed upon a scheduling format to accommodate them will be constructed. So the difficulties are really just a matter of determining parameters, not of actual scheduling.

The real interesting factor in all of this will be psychology. The world is changing at a rapid rate. People push back at change just because they sense their lack of control over bigger, more global changes. Therefore something as simple and traditional as football will become an icon for push back when what seems to be too much change continues.

BTW: All of this stuff I'm speaking of with some degree of certitude are about things the plans of which were being discussed in the 1970's. After you watch the pieces fall into place for 40 years and all of them are fulfilling the ideas and plans of those who set it in motion in the late 70's then making some predictions with confidence is not a matter of clairvoyance, but simply of knowing the objectives of the plans set forth. Whether that is 4 conferences of 16 or 18 or 20 comprised of this or that team is not as relevant as the structure itself.

No divisions. Nine conference games. One permanent rival. The other sixteen opponents rotate on a two-year cycle.

The only downside is that while you keep Duke-UNC, FSU-Miami, etc. as annual games, some secondary rivalries would only be limited to twice every four years. Some opponents may need to be rotated to keep teams active in certain areas for recruiting. For example, if you took Florida State's schedule:

Miami (every year)
Georgia Tech/Clemson
Duke/UNC
Wake/NC State
Virginia/Virginia Tech
Syracuse/Boston College
Pittsburgh/Louisville
Notre Dame/Team 16
Team 17/Team 18

The only thing that would be a remote possibility would be having more than 2 undefeated teams, but I suppose with deregulation there could be a solution for that (CFP rankings, number of road wins, etc.)