(06-22-2022 11:07 PM)Nerdlinger Wrote: (06-22-2022 10:30 PM)Milwaukee Wrote: (06-22-2022 09:44 PM)Nerdlinger Wrote: (06-22-2022 09:18 PM)inutech Wrote: (06-22-2022 05:50 PM)Nerdlinger Wrote: Even number of teams means all can play at the same time in-conference.
This is why God gave us bye weeks.
And when you're forced to use bye weeks or OOC games to fill in the gaps in your conference schedule, that's not an ideal scenario.
Ok, why is it less than ideal to fill in the gaps in conference schedule with bye weeks or OOC games?
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It's awkward scheduling for one. Also, you've got a situation in rivalry week where someone goes without a conference rival. There are reasons why leagues generally try to aim for an even number of football members. It so happens that because they want to play 8 conference games a year, having 9 teams works for CUSA, but that doesn't make 9 an empirical ideal.
Ok. I didn't even realize that "rivalry week" was a thing, nationally. There are teams, such as Michigan, that have two major rivalries (OSU & MSU), so they have two "rivalry week(s)." In addition, there are teams that don't have a major rival that they play every year, so if it is national, it's not universal.
As far as bye weeks are concerned, it seems like their introduction, in and of itself, was probably a good thing, for a variety of reasons. Of course, bye weeks only work for the sport as a whole - from a viewership standpoint - because they are staggered across teams. Psychologically speaking, the week off probably builds viewership demand to a certain extent, by reducing the supply of games to watch.
I grew up as a huge Big Ten fan during my playing years growing up, but after a few years, I started to get really bored with the same old Indiana, Minnesota, Northwestern, Illinois games every single year. I have become much more of a G5 than a P5 fan since then, having moved from the midwest, but if I still lived there, I would find it easier to be a Big Ten fan and would like the option of watching the home team play Penn State
or Nebraska each year instead of Northwestern and Illinois, for example.
Thus, if I still were a Big Ten fan, I would consider their expansion to 14 to be a positive, and I would be in favor of seeing them expand to 16 to match the SEC. If I had my druthers, I would like to see them add Missouri and a team such as Pittsburgh.
p.s. btw, Maryland and Rutgers weren't great football additions from the perspective of the original Big Ten fans, but Maryland was a fine basketball addition.
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