(05-18-2022 07:19 PM)BewareThePhog Wrote: I’m sure I’m not the first with this idea, but I like a pod and group setup.
Football - 9 total games.
Play each team on your line (pod) every year.
2 from each other pod by Group. Alternate groups each year
Basketball - 18 games. Home and away. Play the opposite groupings as in football (e.g., if you play Group A in football, you play Group B in hoops).
Pod Group A - Group B
1. USC, FL - GA, TN
2. AL, Vandy - AUB, KY
3. LSU, Miss - Miss St, aTm
4. Tex, Miz - Ark, OU
That way you play 3 major rivals in both football and basketball every year. You play EVERYONE in either football or basketball every year.
You play everyone in each sport at least every other year. States with 2 schools are split across groups so you get to play someone from AL, MS, TN, and TX every season. Both groups have BIG brands attractive to TV.
I suspect that as an outsider I’m overlooking an annual matchup that some fan bases really value. But I do think that this is a good way to get maximum exposure, lots of good games every year, and even if you don’t see a key rival every year in football, you’d at least get them in basketball.
It is new to me. I think it can be generalized to allow more rivalry flexibility. Your main parameters seem to have been (a) 9 games, (b) maintain A & B round-robins, © geographic spread of play.
© unimportant. The Gators will play in Mississippi every other year regardless of if they play Ole Miss and Miss St on the same years or on opposite years.
(a) sure, let us presume 9
(b) this one is interesting because it wasn't until I rolled your model in my head a bit that I realized it could be done with 4 "lines"; I had previously thought 3 was the max. Here are some generalizations that can be made:
(1) Every team's 3 rivals do not need to be on the same line, they can be from anywhere provided they still play everyone on their "half" of the line and rivalries form a mirror with the other half of their line. For example, say USC and FL play each other and, for their other 4 rivalries, play a team in 1B, 1B, 2B, and 4A. This means GA and TN must, collectively, have rivals in 1A, 1A, 2A, and 4B.
(2) The pod/line halves need not all be 2 teams, though they do need to be even between A and B. They can be as big as 4 teams (all with each other as rivals) or as small as 1 team. There is a rivalry caveat when a half-line is as small as 1 team, that they must have a pair of rivals from opposite halves of the same line (1A, 1A, 3B is not acceptable but 1A, 1B, 3B is).
Here is another stab with your model using a few of the above tweaks and attempting to conform a popular SEC matrix to it. External rivals in parentheses.
Pod Group A - Group B
1. Tex(A&M),Okl(Miz),Ark(Miz) - A&M(Tex),LSU(MS),MSU(MS)
2. Miz(Okl,Ark),KY(Ala,Vdy) - MS(MSU,LSU),Vdy(KY,Ten)
3. Ala(Ten,KY),Aub(UF,UGA) - Ten(Ala,Vdy),USC(UF,UGA)
4. UF(Aub,USC,UGA) - UGA(Aub,USC,UF)
Get most (all?) of the big ones with this. And no possibility of 3+ undefeated teams. Also get my preferred 3 rivals for Florida.