I want UB to play the other East division teams every year. In basketball, UB played Ohio and Akron only once last year, which is just stupid.

I SHOULD ADD WHY THE B1G SHOULD NOT GO NO-DIVISION WITH 16 TEAMS:

What about a 3-team tie?

(1) Especially when the bigger your conference is, the greater the Degree of Variance in your schedule can be, and you don't even get to "hold ground" winning a division in this case? You're asking for a (not common) result of Big Backlash that has a good argument (on the level that causes changes). Ya don't want to make changes where a change, again, will be called for.

(2) You don't have the option of record against other-division to refer to as one of the levels on these

(3) What if the 3 teams never played each other? Sure, in the B12 that'd be impossible right now. B1G with 16 teams? There's 15 other teams for each to play in 9 games. So each team will miss out on 6 teams from their conference. Possible? Yes. Talk about fans and analysts going WTF! :) You'd basically have to use record against mutual teams you've played, I guess. That'd have the same confirmation of satisfaction as a gorgeous super model would have, hooking up with my cousin Tiny Tim who's got a steadfast limp.

In other words, it only will cause more havoc.

Divisions in football is very important to the MAC. Without divisions, most MAC team's season would be basically over before November. By that time there would probably be 3-5 teams still fighting to finish #1 or #2 in a 12 teams league. With divisions, when we enter November almost every team still has a theoretical chance, and 8 or 9 still have a realistic chance. This keeps interest alive in November. What a terrific game Kent and Miami had on the last day of the season last year to determine the divisional winner, a high scoring 1 point game in OT.

If the Western teams feel that the league is unbalanced, it would be far better to occasionally switch a couple of teams, like a BG for Toledo over recent years. That would have balanced off the divisions over the last few years nicely. Just moving one of the bottom teams for one of the top teams once in awhile could be used to rebalance the divisions. Some of the fans in the Western half seem to feel they are much better than the top teams in the East, but that dominance has not actually played out in the championship game. I know teams don't really want to switch divisions because of geography and rivalries, but it would be far better than doing away with divisions in football. Now in basketball divisions are fairly meaningless, but we should look into keeping 2 or 3 protected rivalries ( play those teams twice every year).

Keep Divisions.

(08-30-2022 07:58 PM)DICK Wrote:  Divisions in football is very important to the MAC. Without divisions, most MAC team's season would be basically over before November. By that time there would probably be 3-5 teams still fighting to finish #1 or #2 in a 12 teams league.

Okay but literally 4 times since 2010, a Loss to NIU has kept Toledo out of the title game as a run away for the 2nd spot. I dont give a crap about who wants 5,000 fans in November opposed o 2,000 because "they're fighting for something still." I want the two best teams, everytime. If our current model makes scheduling unequal and OFTEN doesnt send the 2 best teams (IE, NIU and CMU in 2021)... scrap it.

(08-30-2022 06:36 PM)toddjnsn Wrote:  I SHOULD ADD WHY THE B1G SHOULD NOT GO NO-DIVISION WITH 16 TEAMS:

What about a 3-team tie?

(1) Especially when the bigger your conference is, the greater the Degree of Variance in your schedule can be, and you don't even get to "hold ground" winning a division in this case? You're asking for a (not common) result of Big Backlash that has a good argument (on the level that causes changes). Ya don't want to make changes where a change, again, will be called for.

(2) You don't have the option of record against other-division to refer to as one of the levels on these

(3) What if the 3 teams never played each other? Sure, in the B12 that'd be impossible right now. B1G with 16 teams? There's 15 other teams for each to play in 9 games. So each team will miss out on 6 teams from their conference. Possible? Yes. Talk about fans and analysts going WTF! :) You'd basically have to use record against mutual teams you've played, I guess. That'd have the same confirmation of satisfaction as a gorgeous super model would have, hooking up with my cousin Tiny Tim who's got a steadfast limp.

In other words, it only will cause more havoc.

For 16 teams i agree you need divisions. I was explaining the current order of business. Id vote for 4, four team pods, where you play all 3 of your pod, all 4 of another pod which rotates every year, and 1 from the other two pods...

UCLA
USC
Nebraska
Minny

Wisconsin
Iowa
Illinois
NW

Michigan
Michigan State
Purdue
Indiana

Ohio State
Penn State
Rutgers
Maryland

(08-31-2022 07:15 AM)UofToledoFans Wrote:  literally 4 times since 2010, a Loss to NIU has kept Toledo out of the title game

I know of a solution for that.

Get rid of Divisions! Let the best two teams play for the championship

Quote:For 16 teams i agree you need divisions. I was explaining the current order of business.

Oh, I agree. That's when MORE divisions come into the equation -- when your conference gets SO BIG. Not the opposite -- that'd be really really stupid with so many teams not playing each other in a big conference with such few games.

The MAC (12) altogether? I basically see 12 as the MAX you could feasibly do it with, without Too Much WTF. But still, in the MAC, you have the problem of wanting to play *4* OOC games for $$. The MAC ain't going to give on that, so anyone doing the "But WHAT IF" game on this, is applying it to the same concept as get laid by 2 hot married models on Sat night. It's not even worth considering.

Caveats for 1 Division: Lack of playing against each other if too big. Also, if #1 is WAY ahead of #2, while #2 is tied with #3 -- it kinda, well, makes it bad. No other sport plays this way for a championship. And yes, not even college basketball.

MAC: 12 teams, 8 In-Conf Games. Only 3 other teams you didn't play.

But there can still be some discrepancy. Remember, this is the only sport to do this. We're not looking to Call a division champ (aka conference champ; only 1 division) -- we're looking to call the Top 2 to play for it.

For the Big Ten, 16 is just fine for 9 conference games and no divisions. Play three schools every year, the rest of the conference you play two year home and away, two years you don't play: 3+6/6.

Indeed, it's when the conference gets so big that you see the schools in the other division too rarely that going divisionless helps, because you can have school "A" play school "B" and "C" every year without forcing "B" and "C" to play together just because they have a rival in common ... and then "B" and "C" are free to play OTHER schools more often.

Now, I don't think divisions are an issue at 8 conference games and 12 conference schools, so I don't think the MAC has any urgent need to drop divisions, but I think it would start to be a more serious loss of contact with the Western division schools if the MAC went to 14 schools and still had 8 conference games.

SO if the MAC went to 14, maybe it ought to ditch the divisions, because it lets you see the schools that would be in the "other division" more frequently ... 3+5/5.

As far as who the "3" are, I can see a part of the skeleton, and fill in some tentative additions from KnowRivalry.com (in parentheses):

EMU: WMU/CMU/.
CMU: CMU/EMU/.
WMU: CMU/EMU/.
Miami: Ohio/BallState/(Bowling Green)
Ohio: Miami/(Buffalo)/(Akron)
Ball State: Miami/./.
Toledo: Bowling Green/(NIU)/.
Bowling Green: Toledo/(Kent State)/(Miami)
Kent State: Akron/(Bowling Green)/.
Akron: Kent State/(Ohio)/.
NIU: (Toledo)/./.
Buffalo: (Ohio)/./.

... but I don't know who NIU and Buffalo would pick as their first picks, let alone their top two, so all I have there is the survey results from Know Rivalry.

And of course we couldn't really fill out the three annual rivals without knowing who the two hypothetical adds would be.

Stupid Convo... keep divisions... especially as they talk of 16 team playoffs... divisions make every game important.

(09-01-2022 09:02 PM)BruceMcF Wrote:  For the Big Ten, 16 is just fine for 9 conference games and no divisions. Play three schools every year, the rest of the conference you play two year home and away, two years you don't play: 3+6/6.

Indeed, it's when the conference gets so big that you see the schools in the other division too rarely that going divisionless helps, because you can have school "A" play school "B" and "C" every year without forcing "B" and "C" to play together just because they have a rival in common ... and then "B" and "C" are free to play OTHER schools more often.

Now, I don't think divisions are an issue at 8 conference games and 12 conference schools, so I don't think the MAC has any urgent need to drop divisions, but I think it would start to be a more serious loss of contact with the Western division schools if the MAC went to 14 schools and still had 8 conference games.

SO if the MAC went to 14, maybe it ought to ditch the divisions, because it lets you see the schools that would be in the "other division" more frequently ... 3+5/5.

As far as who the "3" are, I can see a part of the skeleton:

EMU: WMU/CMU/.
CMU: CMU/EMU/.
WMU: CMU/EMU/.
Miami: Ohio/BallState/.
Ohio: Miami/./.
Ball State: Miami/./.
Toledo: Bowling Green/./.
Bowling Green: Toledo/./.
Kent State: Akron/./.
Akron: Kent State/./.

... but I don't know who NIU and Buffalo would pick as their first picks, let alone their top two. And of course we couldn't really fill out the three annual rivals without knowing who the two hypothetical adds would be.

Ball State vs Miami is not a rivalry.... a fabricated rivalry by the MAC Commish... and maybe someday.... but not MU vs OU. Love the Fly the Flag deal though.

(09-02-2022 08:38 AM)Miami (Oh) Yeah ! Wrote:  ... Ball State vs Miami is not a rivalry.... a fabricated rivalry by the MAC Commish... and maybe someday.... but not MU vs OU. Love the Fly the Flag deal though.

It's not like the Battle of the Bricks, but I think Ball State feels it a bit, and a 3+5/5 set-up will include match-ups where one team wants the annual game more than the other.

Know Rivalry sets the main NIU rivals as Toledo, and the main Toledo rivals as Bowling Green (index 72.6) and NIU (index 16.2), so I guess that could be added to the skeleton, but evidently they don't have enough data on Ball State, as they give a "please take the survey" plea instead of rivalry data when you click on Ball State. EMU gives the same "please take survey" page.

I've updated the above list with KnowRivalry data, but IIRC, all of the strong indexes were already up there, so these are indexes of under 30 (out of 100). So I've put the KnowRivalry adds in parentheses.

And, again, while the locked cross division games means Eastern division schools other than Bowling Green see Toledo (and Ball State) a bit less often, that also lets us see the Michigans and Northern Illinois a fraction more often. I don't see any real issue unless the MAC goes to 14 and (wisely) stays at 8 conference games.