Big Ten and other Conference Expansion

[UpNorth_Buckeye]

I'm sure we could find 14 non P5 schools (Assuming ND and BYU fall in) with consistent enough performance to get an invite.



I just don't see an odd number of 16 team conferences solving any issues. Nothing really clean cut about it.

Also, sorry for the derailment. If someone wants to split this conversation into an appropriate setting I'd appreciate it.

No offense, but you're crazy. You'd essentially have to get 14 teams from the American, conference USA, and Mountain West conferences. Best gets would be: Memphis, cinci, UCF, east Carolina, Houston, and temple out of the american; marshall, Louisiana tech, and rice out of c-usa; and Nevada, San Diego state, Fresno state, Hawaii, Colorado state, Boise state, and Utah state. Firstly, think about that list you're talking about. Just let the power houses run through your veins. Then remember you have to fit the numbers geographically. Trust me, if it goes to 4 power conferences it will be 16 team conferences. Even 18 is probably too much since you'd have to add 6 of the above teams. Idk, maybe that's doable but no way you can take 14 of the above and consider the power 4 to be the elite of the elite.

As for an odd number of 16 team conferences, I don't think you want that. 4 16 team conferences. Won't be any dilution. Already at 64 teams. Most likely when the Big 12 dissolves in this scenario ND and BYU would replace a Kansas and maybe an Iowa state or Texas tech. It would also make it much easier for geography purposes since you're reassigning 10 teams and not 26.

 

[kujirakira]

I spent a lot of time mulling that over in a conversation with my wife a few days ago. There really isn't a good option.

She's pretty convinced that we're on our way to the P5 splitting off from the rest of D1 and forming four 20 team regional conferences. If that were to happen I think you get the West (Pac-12 + BigXII defectors), North (B1G + BigXII defectors), South (SEC + BigXII defectors) and East (ACC + BigXII defectors).

• 10 game regular season round robin.
• Conference championship games stay as is.
• Regional winners get automatic playoff bid.
• 4 at-large teams chosen from the rest of the pool.
• First round playoff games at higher seeds' stadiums.
• Final Four stays the same as it is now.

You lose some significance to the non-playoff "traditional bowls", but I could be okay with that for a system of the ilk.

The total number of teams in the Power Five is no where near 80 teams, so I don't know where those 80 teams would come from...


Five 16-team conferences is doable if we really needed 80 teams...that way we can keep the current Power Five conference just by adding teams in each to reach 16 teams. Take the five conference champs and three wild-cards and put them in an eight-team playoff.

While Milli is right that 80 is overblown... the general idea is already happening imo.
The Autonomous Five will make rules akin to what separates DIA from DIAA - more benefits for scholarship athletes, higher standard of facilities and staff, etc.
At any given time there's usually right around 60 teams competing at the top level. The Power5 today represents 66 schools... throw in ND and you have 67.
Another issue with that post is that 10-team divisions yield 9-game round robins. After 12game seasons... who wants to go back to 9? Besides 4x16 (64) makes more sense. 7 round-robin + a few cross-conference + a few OOC.

In any case, I think PAC will eventually kick off the next round of conference expansion into Texas. Don't know which one they grab but the Texas4 Conference needs to either overhaul how they do business or find more programs getting poached off in the next 10 years.

No offense, but you're crazy. You'd essentially have to get 14 teams from the American, conference USA, and Mountain West conferences. Best gets would be: Memphis, cinci, UCF, east Carolina, Houston, and temple out of the american; marshall, Louisiana tech, and rice out of c-usa; and Nevada, San Diego state, Fresno state, Hawaii, Colorado state, Boise state, and Utah state. Firstly, think about that list you're talking about. Just let the power houses run through your veins. Then remember you have to fit the numbers geographically. Trust me, if it goes to 4 power conferences it will be 16 team conferences. Even 18 is probably too much since you'd have to add 6 of the above teams. Idk, maybe that's doable but no way you can take 14 of the above and consider the power 4 to be the elite of the elite.

As for an odd number of 16 team conferences, I don't think you want that. 4 16 team conferences. Won't be any dilution. Already at 64 teams. Most likely when the Big 12 dissolves in this scenario ND and BYU would replace a Kansas and maybe an Iowa state or Texas tech. It would also make it much easier for geography purposes since you're reassigning 10 teams and not 26.

The way I see it playing is ND + WVU to the ACC... that's them at 16.
Then PAC, SEC, and B1G fight over who gets Texas & OU. Texas Tech, TCU, and Baylor provide a plan B since everyone wants a footprint in that State. Kansas State, Kansas, Oklahoma State, Iowa State, BYU provide a decent range of filler... a few will get picked up by somebody, others will be left behind.
B1G and SEC need 2 each, PAC needs 4. If the B1G doesn't like where the chips fall, they could always go back to ACC (Virgina? Georgia Tech? Duke? UNC?), Rice could also be an outside shot for a Texas foothold... but meh.

 

[LordJeffBuck]

I spent a lot of time mulling that over in a conversation with my wife a few days ago. There really isn't a good option.

She's pretty convinced that we're on our way to the P5 splitting off from the rest of D1 and forming four 20 team regional conferences. If that were to happen I think you get the West (Pac-12 + BigXII defectors), North (B1G + BigXII defectors), South (SEC + BigXII defectors) and East (ACC + BigXII defectors).

• 10 game regular season round robin.
• Conference championship games stay as is.
• Regional winners get automatic playoff bid.
• 4 at-large teams chosen from the rest of the pool.
• First round playoff games at higher seeds' stadiums.
• Final Four stays the same as it is now.

You lose some significance to the non-playoff "traditional bowls", but I could be okay with that for a system of the ilk.

I've said this for years, except with 64 teams. There are 64 Power5 teams right now, plus Notre Dame and BYU, so maybe 72 is the right number (although I would not be adverse to telling ND and BYU to go screw themselves and sticking with the current 64). 80 seems a bit high.

To get to four conferences, you'd have to dismantle the Big 12 and assign their teams to other conferences.

In any event, you have four conferences, each split into two divisions, so there will be eight division winners in all.

The division winners within each conference play for the conference championship. The four conference champions go to the playoff with playoff games to be held at neutral sites (call them bowl games, if you'd like).

So basically you have an eight team playoff with no wild cards or polls or committees or computers deciding anything except seeding among the four conference champions.

 

[MililaniBuckeye]

I've said this for years, except with 64 teams. There are 64 Power5 teams right now, plus Notre Dame and BYU, so maybe 72 is the right number (although I would not be adverse to telling ND and BYU to go screw themselves and sticking with the current 64). 80 seems a bit high.

ACC = 14 teams
B1G = 14 teams
SEC = 14 teams
XII =10 teams
PAC = 12 teams

There's your 64 right there, but you still have to deal with ND and BYU (unfortunately). Maybe six 12-team conferences (72 teams), with the six conference champs plus two wild cards going to an eight-team playoff.

I personally feel a great solution is going back to the old BCS selection methodology and just take the top eight teams period. Yeah, there was always whining and moaning about #3 and #4 being worthy and #2, but I don't think you'll get that much grief arguing over who's #8 and who's #9...

 

[buckeyesin07]

That sort of [Mark May] happens every ear, where a team fails to live up to expectations. I also used to think that there should be no polls until the 4th or 5th week, but if the polls make the corrections like they should, then having Punxsutawney Central Tech at #5 in the preseason polls is no big deal as long as you drop them like a bad habit if they start to lose a lot. As long as there are preseason polls, there has to be some sort of methodology of racking and stacking teams. It's not necessarily the polls' fault for Oklahoma failing to play like they should...

"like they should" is the key phrase in your post. At what point do we stop giving Oklahoma the benefit of the doubt in preseason polls and start realizing they're a perpetual underachiever? You're right--it happens every year to "a" team, and it just so happens to "that" team (OU) just about every season.

 

[MililaniBuckeye]

"like they should" is the key phrase in your post. At what point do we stop giving Oklahoma the benefit of the doubt in preseason polls and start realizing they're a perpetual underachiever? You're right--it happens every year to "a" team, and it just so happens to "that" team (OU) just about every season.

Well, Oklahoma didn't "underachieve" in 2013, so I can see why they got a pass for the start of 2014.

 

[BUCKYLE]

So basically you have an eight team playoff with no wild cards or polls or committees or computers deciding anything except seeding among the four conference champions.

This. Right. Here.

There are too many teams in CFB that don't play each other often enough to "select" the clear cut best every year.

You can talk about this conference being shitty or that conference being an NFL division, but it's not fact.

If you're a playoff proponent because it's "fair", then the only truly fair way to do it is for conference champs to play each other.

 

[Jaxbuck]

This. Right. Here.

There are too many teams in CFB that don't play each other often enough to "select" the clear cut best every year.

You can talk about this conference being [Mark May]ty or that conference being an NFL division, but it's not fact.

If you're a playoff proponent because it's "fair", then the only truly fair way to do it is for conference champs to play each other.

I'm not in the "it's fair" camp but I disagree that only conference champs should play each other.

Some nod needs to be given for the years when a conference is loaded and its second best team is a legit title contender.

Every major pro sport does this, it would be crazy to eliminate it from CFB when its a sport with wildly varying degrees of "toughness" among conferences.

EDIT*****

My proposed solution remains an 8 team playoff, 5 major conf champs, 3 WC

BCS style rankings are for seeding purposes

Higher seed gets home field up to championship game (come on up SEC teams, the weather's great)

 

[matcar]

I'd gladly just take conference and division champs. It really would cut out much of the "they didn't play anybody" chatter that is so prevalent these days.

 

[LordJeffBuck]

If you're a playoff proponent because it's "fair", then the only truly fair way to do it is for conference champs to play each other.

My proposed solution remains an 8 team playoff, 5 major conf champs, 3 WC

Whichever way you go, you could make the regular season a lot more interesting by (1) requiring that each team play nine conference games; (2) requiring each team play one team from each other conference; (3) which would be determined by random draw. To make it fair, you'd have to have the non-conference teams play a home-and-home series (or home-and-away series, if you prefer to call it that), so that every two years you'd have the non-conference draw. Non-conference games would be slotted randomly throughout the year, so that teams from the south might have to travel north in November. The final week of the season would be reserved for traditional rivalry games. No more playing MAC or FCS teams to pad your record.

 

[scarletmike]

As much as I'd like to see MACtion off the B1G schedules, the Ohio MAC schools would probably pitch a fit and likely try to take it to court to keep that money coming in from OSU. I'd imagine there could be similar problems for a few other schools in the conference as well, so we could well be stuck with one week of MACtion unless the NCAA forced the issue.

 

[Jaxbuck]

Whichever way you go, you could make the regular season a lot more interesting by (1) requiring that each team play nine conference games; (2) requiring each team play one team from each other conference; (3) which would be determined by random draw. To make it fair, you'd have to have the non-conference teams play a home-and-home series (or home-and-away series, if you prefer to call it that), so that every two years you'd have the non-conference draw. Non-conference games would be slotted randomly throughout the year, so that teams from the south might have to travel north in November. The final week of the season would be reserved for traditional rivalry games. No more playing MAC or FCS teams to pad your record.

Make it happen.

Tell them I said it was ok

 

[BUCKYLE]

Tell them my beard doesn't want to hurt anyone, but it will. And tell them Jax said it was ok.

 

[BUCKYLE]

I'm not in the "it's fair" camp but I disagree that only conference champs should play each other.

Some nod needs to be given for the years when a conference is loaded and its second best team is a legit title contender.

Every major pro sport does this, it would be crazy to eliminate it from CFB when its a sport with wildly varying degrees of "toughness" among conferences.

EDIT*****

My proposed solution remains an 8 team playoff, 5 major conf champs, 3 WC

BCS style rankings are for seeding purposes

Higher seed gets home field up to championship game (come on up SEC teams, the weather's great)

Right, but in 2006, the B1G clearly had the two best teams in CFB. We knew that.

 

[Jaxbuck]

Right, but in 2006, the B1G clearly had the two best teams in CFB. We knew that.

You trying to say Herbie was wrong?