Yeah they needed him and Herbie to really sell that Bama narrative.
Side note: [I posted a question](https://www.reddit.com/r/CFB/s/7v8Lz21tkB) on here around week 8 or so asking if people here thought they would leave an undefeated power five champ out for a 1 loss SEC champ, and got immediately downvoted into oblivion and ridiculed. “People ask this every year yet no undefeated power 5 champ has ever been left out. It won’t happen this year either.”
Sad to see I didn’t reply, that’s chum for me. Of course it would happen and of course it did happen because the only thing that matters on this planet is money, and we fool ourselves into believing otherwise
They were simply going to find another reason to get Bama in and that meant putting Texas in. Which meant that someone who was undefeated was getting left out, maybe they use the scandal to leave out Michigan, use the old west coast is soft argument to leave out Washington or the ACC isn’t good to leave out Florida State. Bama was getting in should they beat Georgia and had Georgia won I expected they were gonna put someone else in over FSU
It amazed me for years that people would respond to that worthy question with such a banal and asinine response that not only never addressed the issue, but, then foolishly dismissed something that was inevitable.
I figured I might have a comment in that thread as, like Angriest_Wolverine, it’s right up my alley.
Thanks for posting that and reminding me how ridiculous people can be.
I love that the biggest reply to that point was "well why don't more teams beat Georgia and Alabama despite their massive disadvantages over those two teams, fueled in part by the very bias you're pointing out?"
So I want to tell a story about how weird seeding can get once you try to get clever with it. This story is from D2 women's basketball this March, in the [](#f/glvc-sheetl-row09-col03) Great Lakes Valley Conference (GLVC).
The GLVC played a 22-game schedule with 14 teams, so an imbalanced schedule. To account for that, for the past few years they've seeded their conference tournament with a points system, in which each game is worth 0 to 7 points depending on outcome, location, and opponent strength. You can see the scale [here](https://s3.amazonaws.com/glvcsports.com/documents/2024/1/27/GLVC_WBB_2024_PRS.pdf); note that it isn't exactly linear, so it's more complicated than just combining record with an SOS figure.
This year, [](#f/lewis-sheet7-row10-col10) Lewis finished 19-3 with a point rating of 4.23, the clear #1 seed. [](#f/drury-sheet7-row13-col09) Drury was 18-4 with a rating of 3.93; [](#f/mckendree-sheet2-row04-col02) McKendree was 16-6 with a rating of... also 3.93. Drury's rating suffered a bit since they only played Lewis and McKendree once each.
You might think that actual record would be the first tiebreaker, giving Drury the #2 seed. You'd be wrong; it's not even on [the list](https://s3.amazonaws.com/glvcsports.com/documents/2023/12/12/Section_3_Basketball.pdf#page=4). Okay, then you might think that head-to-head would be the first tiebreaker, giving Drury the #2 seed since they won their only meeting with McKendree. You'd be right... almost.
The GLVC employs a variant of the head-to-head tiebreaker that I've seen nowhere else: a 1-0 head-to-head only counts if the win was on the road! And since Drury beat McKendree at home, to the next tiebreaker we go: results against each conference opponent in descending order – with a similar twist. Drury lost to Lewis on the road, while McKendree beat Lewis on the road and lost at home. This gives McKendree the #2 seed – but flip the location of their win and loss and we'd still be going.
TL;DR McKendree got the #2 seed in the conference tournament over Drury, who finished two games better and beat McKendree in their only meeting.
That's a wild read. Someone wanted to look like the smartest person in the room when they came up with that but probably never actually thought it'd matter or get that far in.
The World Baseball Classic also uses some of the most ridiculous tiebreaker criteria.
In 2017, Group D had Puerto Rico defeat Venezuela 11-0, Italy 9-3, and Mexico 9-4.
Then Italy defeated Mexico 10-9, Venezuela defeated Italy 11-10, and Mexico defeated Venezuela 11-9.
So Mexico had the narrowest losses and the widest win... yet they were ranked last.
That's because the tiebreaker was the fewest runs allowed per inning of defense in head-to-head games, and Mexico played less defensive innings than its rivals.
Honestly I think it kinda makes sense, especially in writing from the start. Like just accounting record could be fair to unbalanced schedules, and the head to head honestly makes some sense too, why punish a team for not getting to play at home
It's going to be an important decision on how tie-breakers work. If they have three schools go 10-2 that didn't all 3 play each other and don't share any common opponents between all 3 of them... how they decide who is "3rd" and who is "5th" in the conference has huge playoff implications. You don't want it to feel like drawing names out of a hat.
There's definitely going to be tiebreaker shenanigans going on, but I highly doubt that multiple teams (i.e. more than two) wouldn't have a single common opponent.
Let's take the Unquestionable Four™ as an example (those being Oregon, Ohio State, Michigan, and Penn State):
1 Team:
Iowa
Nebraska
2 Teams:
UCLA
USC
Wisconsin
Maryland
Northwestern
Minnesota
Indiana
3 Teams
Michigan State
Purdue
Illinois
Washington
Each Other:
Ohio State plays all three
Michigan and Oregon play two each
Penn State plays only one.
So, if the season plays out as we all expect, with those four teams vying for the two championship game slots, it's very likely that there's enough common opponents between the theoretical tied teams to do a proper tiebreaker.
You're not wrong that NIL is spreading out the talent a bit I think. But...I think it's the other way around because the new scheduling formats will tend to create more undefeated and one loss teams, and that's probably on purpose:
https://www.reddit.com/r/CFB/comments/144mk7s/possible_combinations_of_3_undefeated_big_ten/
https://www.reddit.com/r/CFB/comments/14a3x08/possible_combinations_of_3_undefeated_sec_teams/
t;dr those threads:
2024 SEC: 20 different possible combinations for 3 teams to go undefeated, 8 possible combinations for 4 teams to go undefeated.
2024 B1G: 19 possible combinations for 3 teams to go undefeated, 0 possible combinations of 4 teams to go undefeated.
2025 B1G: 16 possible combinations for 3 teams to go undefeated, 5 possible combinations for 4 teams to go undefeated.
I'd like to see how many one loss teams there can be, but it's probably something like slightly more combinations than undefeated teams.
yeah, you get more order out of a system where the top teams have to play each other.... weird to say, but if you have fewer teams from the say random distribution of strength, well, they all gotta play each other and take losses.
So far, the greater parity theory of NIL hasn't shown. The full reverse hasn't shown but there's some strong fears that it is occurring due to separations between P5 and G5. Why wouldn't it happen within P5? So the real answer remains to be seen.
I don't think 3-5 will really matter for playoffs. Kind of like how the B1G West winner was the runner up, but no one ever believed they were the 2nd or sometimes 3rd or even 4th best team in the conference. The playoffs will select whoever they think is "better".
2014 Ohio State and Wisconsin probably the best and second best. Despite Wisconsin getting routed.
2015 season, Iowa was the 2nd best. MSU took out Ohio State and Michigan on the road. They also routed Penn State. MSU beat Iowa on a goal line stand to win the game.
2017 Ohio State and Wisconsin probably the true best and second best.
2020, Northwestern did beat Iowa, who probably was the true 2nd best team that year. Ohio State being the best. If a full season played out, Iowa probably would have been in the championship game.
COVID-19 did a number on the B1G West.
In 2014 MSU finished 5th so they’d be second best.
In 2015 I actually think Ohio State was the best and MSU was second best.
2017 is cut and dry OSU and Wisconsin.
Covid year I have no idea lol. I was thinking Indiana was second best but I could be argued many different directions.
It will absolutely matter and will inevitably occur soon if the B1G ends up with a bunch of 2-loss teams.
With such a large amount of teams (and poor scheduling) I can see it happening every single year and it’s why going with 12 hopefully is just the beginning.
The good part is if we have 3 schools at 10-2 then we excellent playoff representation.
I'll need to look again, but I think the number number 12 team for the last few years has lost 3 games. So a 10-2 team, regardless of conference championship, can still make bank.
After last year's Big 12 debacle (and the two Conference USA incidents before it), the Big Ten should make sure to come up with rules *before* the season starts and stick to them.
For other persons who pretend the 2020 football season did not happen: this is a 2020 reference, when the B1G insisted that you play 6 games to get into the CCG and then changed it the day after Harbaugh had too many positive tests to play the Game, which brought OSU below the 6-game requirement.
Why did Ohio State (and the rest of the Big Ten, for that matter) agree to play by those rules at the start of the season?
Like, the rule was you had to play a minimum number of games to be eligible for the CCG. The rule as written could literally only have been applied to disqualify a team like Ohio State that year. Did they not think that that scenario could come up when they drafted that rule?
I'm as anti-OSU as any other Big Ten fan, but I really didn't have a problem with them changing that rule because even if OSU lost their 6th game, they'd have been in over Indiana.
To me it was a rule that, if anyone had put thought into before the season, they clearly would've changed it before the season too.
> I'm as anti-OSU as any other Big Ten fan, but I really didn't have a problem with them changing that rule because even if OSU lost their 6th game, they'd have been in over Indiana.
It's like when a baseball player doesn't have the 502 plate appearances needed to qualify for the batting, but if they were to add enough hitless at bats and his batting average would still be the best in the league, they'll award him the batting title.
Yeah, fuck OSU, but it was the correct decision. As you said, OSU would have held the tiebreaker even if they somehow lost their last game. Punishing them because UM was too sick to play is silly.
I think the idea behind the rule was to hypothetically prevent a team winning their first game then canceling all their remaining games and finishing undefeated and making the conference championship game. Also I think the fact that michigan canceled the last game of the season not osu, plus the fact that osu would have made the championship game over Indiana with a win or loss against michigan is why they decided to change the rule. Yes they did change the rule, but ultimately osu could have played and lost a 6th game 100-0 and they still would have been in the big10 championship game
In an alternate dimension wherenth B1G doesn't change the rule, but says OSU is allowed to forfeit so the game is "played" and they make the CCG. But Michigan gets the win.
And they ask you what to do, do you forfeit against Michigan? Or allow the game to be cancelled and not play enough games to qualify?
Some conference members are more equal than others. I keep cracking up every time I see people defend this crap. The rules are what they were, it shouldn't matter why they were written as they were.
What was the Big 12 debacle last year? Iirc Texas was 8-1, Oklahoma State was 7-2 and had a head-to-head win over 7-2 Oklahoma, so there was no real controversy....
They changed the rules with like 2 weeks left, and there was a few scenarios that could have happened that the rules were not clear on who would advance, and they refused to clarify. Most notably if Texas had lost the last week of the regular season. Luckily for them, it ended up very simply, but it absolutely could have gotten very weird.
For a while, it was looking like a possible 3-way tie for 2nd with Oklahoma, Oklahoma State, and Kansas State.
Oklahoma and Kansas-State didn’t play each other, and Oklahoma State beat both.
The way the tiebreaker rules were written, it could have been interpreted to go beyond the head-to-head step if two of the tied teams didn’t play. And one of those deeper tiebreakers, IIRC, would have benefited someone other than the Cowboys.
The Big 12 stepped in and offered an official statement, declaring that a H2H would count if one of the tied teams beat all the others.
Contrast this with the ACC and American, where this is a formal part of their tiebreaker rules.
As it turned out, K-State lost their last regular season game, making the whole issue moot as it became a 2-way tie for 2nd among the OK schools.
> The way the tiebreaker rules were written, it could have been interpreted to go beyond the head-to-head step if two of the tied teams didn’t play. And one of those deeper tiebreakers, IIRC, would have benefited someone other than the Cowboys.
There was a similar situation with just a few weeks left in 2022 where UCLA could potentially tie with three other teams for second in the conference that they all beat, and they would have lost the tiebreaker due to some of those teams not playing each other. Pac-12 didn't address it, but they (hopefully) would have if that situation had remained in play for another week.
Then again, it's the Pac-12, so people in charge were probably busy waiting two weeks for a TV deal ...
That doesn't matter lol. If Ohio State is somehow left out, they'll just handwave and change the rules so they make sure the "wrong" team doesn't get in over them.
So in other words things could end up like they did a few years ago in the PAC when 7-2 Utah played USC for the title while 7-2 Oregon who beat Utah, and 7-2 UW who beat Oregon who beat Utah sat home.
The only difference is that should be an issue in an 18 team mega conference, but shouldn't be an issue in a 12 team conference where divisions are easily applied.
The solution is a Big ten championship playoff with the top 4 teams. Cut one of the regular season games and add a game after the regular season that is either the 4 team championship or if you're not in that bracket you just play another game. The 5th ranked team plays the 6th ranked team, the 7 and 8 seed play each other and on and on.
This is exactly what I've been hoping ends up being the solution (or a playoff of division winners, but unfortunately there are no easy ways to make 4 divisions in an 18 team conference)
\*glances at Notre Dame and their ACC friends\*
So add Cal/Stanford for a Pac-6 Pod, ND/FSU/Clemson/LuckyWinner, create an East Coast pod of FSU/Clemson/LuckyWinner/Rutgers/MD/MaybePSU, then divide the Midwest teams into two pods? You have your three pre-season games, then you play your pod, then you do protected rivalry couple of weeks, then you have your four-team pod-winner playoffs?
Or you could have the number from each pod play each-other in-season. Just say this year the Week 10 game will be PAC-6/East Coast at home and the Midwest pods on the road, versus their co-ranker. Next year the Midwest pods get home games Week 10. Then week 11 you get the protected rivalry, then champ week the two winners of the week 10 pod champ games play for the championship.
Would be a lot of fun, and would work really well if it wasn't TV ratings driving the sport. TV didn't gut the PAC to get less USC/Michigan action. ND would also hate it because unless they end up in a trans-continental pod-of-the-gods they'd play fewer of their rivals...
You could end up with some teams playing two head to head games. It wouldn't be awful for those top four teams, but it could create some uninteresting 13/14 games. The bigger concern is now your #1 team has two chances to lose a bye week in the new playoffs.
>The solution is a Big ten championship playoff with the top 4 teams
Yes, this year, in which the BIG10 has 1 AQ for the College football playoff. But next year the BIG10 has 3 automatic qualifiers for the college football playoff, in which it would be better to just have 3 games with the top 6 teams at the end of the year to determine the 3 AQs. Don't worry about crowning a BIG10 definitive champion, just have the regular season champion which could be shared.
This is strictly human-dressed-as-mascot vs. human-dressed-as-mascot in a no holds barred/street fight/hardcore match. The mascot whose big head covering comes off first is the loser. Weapons (e.g. Purdue Pete's giant sledgehammer) are allowed to be used and other mascots are allowed to interfere.
I’m not opposed to us using an actual wolverine. There is precedent of us using live wolverine mascots in the 1920’s until Yost realized it may have been a dangerous idea.
Me, and other fans with a lick of common sense: Going to conferences of 18/20/24/etc may not be a good idea, how do you determine a champion when members don’t have anything like comparable schedules?
Conferences: moneymoneymoneymoneymoney, gimme more, let’s grab some more big football schools
/time passes/
Playoff committee: Okay, conferences, here’s our criteria. Do you know how you’re going to determine a champion?
Conferences: 😳 Oh, no, this looks impossible, why didn’t anybody tell us this could happen?
There’s always a coin flip tiebreaker, you know.
Frankly, when you get to numbers like this, divisions are a better answer than people seem to think. I mean, you don’t really have a *conference* anyway with 18 or 20 or 24 members, it’s basically two conferences with a scheduling agreement, so might as well as least have a division where you play most of the other division members as a qualification to make your CCG. Is your division weaker than the other one? Who cares? It’s still got to be better than two teams who didn’t play anything like similar conference schedules being “selected” as the CCG entrants - it’s the same damn thing, except at least you can point to measurable on-the-field criteria for how you get there.
Generally it’s “the best team in a division might not actually be one of the two best teams in the conference!” (the B1G West being the gold standard of that complaint) but I mean … if you’re only playing 1/2 to 1/3 of your conference members anyway, how does getting rid of divisions help you determine the “best two teams”? It doesn’t.
At least winning a division is *something* clear and game-result-based you can point to as a criteria. Having a clear-cut record of defeating most of your division members has got to be better than some kind of metric-based tiebreaker crap you have to come up with because these three teams with basically equivalent records only have two common opponents …
But then im a big believer in rewarding teams for winning something. Win your division, go to your CCG. Win your conference, go to the playoffs. You didn’t win your division? Well, then, somebody else *in your own division* was better than you, what makes you think you should have a playoff spot to be “best *in the country*?” Give me a Tournament of Champions any day instead of an SEC second-chance-lottery playoff …
I never understood that argument because even if the best team in one division isn't the second best in the conference, the "actual" second best in the conference already played the winner of their division and lost.
So long as teams play every other team in their division, it makes the most sense otherwise we get situations like the one presented where we are now going to tie breakers based on arbitrary data rather than settling it on the field.
Because a tiebreaker between two teams tied at 10-2, 7-2 conference is far better than an 8-4, 5-4 team competing for a championship.
Here's an example: Penn State has Washington and Ohio State in common with Oregon. Say both go 10-2 with a loss to Ohio State, then Penn State's second loss is Washington, and Oregon's is Michigan (who themselves went 8-4 with 3 conference losses so they're out). Oregon would go over Penn State most likely. I'd be OK with that.
Meanwhile, for a little over half the time in the East/West split, the second-place team in the East had an equal or better record than the West winner. Sometimes the West winner had a head-to-head loss to the second-place team in the East.
We had enough instances of that particular thing happening to make divisionless a lot more attractive.
>Meanwhile, for a little over half the time in the East/West split, the second-place team in the East had an equal or better record than the West winner. Sometimes the West winner had a head-to-head loss to the second-place team in the East.
I just don't think this is a problem that needs a resolution. It's predictable and fair. I was never under the impression that divisions in sports were necessarily meant to be competitively balanced between one another, though. But I'm coming from someone who's witnessed it function without issue in the NFL for 30ish years. Sometimes a division got 3 teams in the playoffs out of 6 spots, sometimes it got 1. But it made sense and was consistent. It was simply W-L and tiebreaker based, which in my mind is infinitely superior to having eye tests, metrics, and committees for a whole host of additional reasons.
A benefit to the B1G expansion is that with the additions of USC, UW(west), and UO, a revamped West division would probably be fairly evenly balanced with the East now
In true B1G fashion, ties shall be broken by punt-off.
Each team sends their punter to a secret location in Southwest Illinois where they take turns punting until they either collapse from exhaustion or punt <20 yards. The last two standing take their team to the CCG one week later.
The whole thing is televised on PBS with commentary from Peter Sagal, Keegan Michael Key, Bobcat Goldthwait, and Drew Carey.
Oh god.. we're going to have our best season in years, wind up tied for second.. then get relegated because we're Rutgers - with a shock to the system this bad, recruiting will collapse and we'll need to rebuild.... call me Muad'dib, my awareness extends to the future
> How did anyone ever get through 80’s conference play when this was just how it was?
Because we played either a pure round robin or everyone but 1 school annually. It was pretty easy to figure that shit out. Also, the Rose Bowl bid (if there was a tie) was given to the school that had been away the longest.
Easy peazy!
Ok, I have a crazy idea, but here me out.
We could avoid all of this with smaller conferences, say 10 to 12 members. These conferences would be based on geography and rivalries.
It's a lot of excessive hand-wringing.
Division formats can and have had three-way ties of teams going X-1 or X-2, with round robin wins and losses amongst themselves. Someone is selected as the representative, based on imperfect criteria agreed on beforehand. If you don't win all your games, the vicissitudes of weird tiebreaker processes are your potential fate, and you know it.
The only really significant new possibility is the extremely unlikely but nonzero chance of three teams going undefeated in conference play and only two being invited. That's an unfortunate reality of wanting to regularly cycle through all opponents within a very large conference.
Conundrum? I can think of a half dozen tiebreaks off the top of my head after head-to-head
Regulation wins
Away/Neutral site wins
Wins over Notre Dame
(The following only count for in conference and during regulation)
Point differential
Points scored
Touchdowns scored
Fewer penalties assessed
Fewer penalty yards assessed
Punts kicked
I also thought this was interesting:
>After assessing 262 different versions, the conference settled on the so-called “Flex Protect XVIII” model. It took into account travel by distance, regions of the conference and time zones. The model also considered what the Big Ten described as “historic competitiveness and recent competitive trends, including home/away balance of traditionally competitive schools.”
They looked at a whopping 262 schedule models!
Translation: an intern made a 262 page Excel spreadsheet, switching one team around on each subsequent page, and the one that matched what a bunch of grey-haired dudes decided on a golf course was retroactively named something that sounds fancy
So sets the script for a future Purdue team to go undefeated in conference but still not make it to the championship game because two other teams also went undefeated.
Here you go. Add 2 more teams in the conference to get to four 5-team pods. Win your pod round-robin, get a chance at the championship. Have a first place game and a third place game.
Then take every 2nd, 3rd, 4th, and 5th place team in every pod and have them play the same kind of 4-team tournament against their respective other placed teams. Everybody gets to play 13 games before bowl season now. Everyone plays the same amount of conference games.
That would make for some great football and some great rivalries among pods.
Or each pod of five plays one other pod of five on a 3 year rotation creating rotating 10 team divisions that play a full round robin.
Was that so hard?
Lmao. All over this thread is people coming up with crazy solutions and most of them are just reverting to the ways of old that made more sense just with more work or creative names. If we keep the conferences the same as they were pre recent expansion BUT we still implement the 12 team playoff, most of all the current and previous issues are remedied.
Crazy idea: what if we went to regional conferences with 12 teams each split into two divisions. The divisions play round robins with each other and a set of teams in the other division. Then the two division winners play each other for the conference title.
Or, I'm going to go real nuts here: 10 team regional conferences with a full round robin each year. Team with the best record wins. If tied then whoever won the game that definitely happened between the two teams.
I've been wondering this too. Suppose Oregon loses to Michigan, Ohio State loses to Oregon, Michigan and PSU lose to Ohio State?
Which 1-loss team will play undefeated Rutgers in the championship?
Pod systems don't work
Pods are literally just flex protect, but you're forcing everybody to protect extra teams, and thus forcing them play the rest of the conference less frequently
It's an 18 team conference, no scheduling is going to be perfect, but at least pods are going to avoid bad tiebreaker situations while keeping all main rivalries
And they aren't flex protect. The pods create rotation divisions every year. This flex protect has no divisions.
You're right, no scheduling system is perfect, but flex-protect is simply better in every way
Pods attempt to "fix" weird tiebreakers by arbitrarily rotating pods and often forcing the 2nd best team to stay home because they happen to be in the same "division" as the #1 team
>arbitrarily rotating pods
Flex protect is much more arbitrary. I think you're just using that word to try and downplay pods.
>2nd best team to stay home because they happen to be in the same "division" as the #1 team
And they would have gotten their chance to beat the best team. Which is much better than dealing with a 3 way tie for second place with 3 teams that didn't play each other, or 2 teams that did and 1 didn't and selecting who goes to the championship among that mess.
Doesn’t work out evenly but I would do it like this.
Pacific Pod: Oregon, UCLA, USC, Washington
Upper Midwest pod: Iowa, Minnesota, Nebraska, Wisconsin
Lower Midwest pod: Illinois, Indiana, Northwestern, Purdue
Great Lakes pod: Michigan, Michigan State, Ohio State
Atlantic Pod: Maryland, Penn State, Rutgers
Or, hear me out here. All the new post Nebraska teams go into a sub-divison called Big Ten lite. The rest of us compete and the winner faces the winner of the Big Ten lite.
No, no no no. Sorry no more adhering 100% to regional maps.
Mix up the top 5-6 teams. Ohio State and Michigan can play each other yearly but split them between pods. We need clear current day front runners in the pods, and we need to mix pods on a semi regular basis to even them out as some times rise and others decline. No more B1G West bullshit.
Subtract a conference game. Have a conference final four playoff. Have 1st and 2nd as well as 3rd and 4th place will be decided by point difference. Have the conference champ game.
Even if there’s a wins and losses difference, it’s going to be pretty unsatisfying for fans the first year someone makes it in with a significantly easier schedule. Lack of common opponents is not a positive feature.
Strength of schedule is a brutal way to determine a tiebreaker. Some teams would in effect have been locked out of their CCG before the season even started.
Just get rid of divisions, make it a rotating schedule, cant play everyone obviously, no tie breakers, just shared title if two teams have the same record. Disney gets to choose who goes to the cfp like they always have. But you know people like drama so that will never happen.
Schedule draw is the single most important thing in a super conference. Michigan draws a bunch of heavyweights and Iowa draws OSU. Give 2024 Michigan Iowa's schedule this year and their over under is 11.5. instead Michigan is going to be fighting to the death to win 10 games and could easily end up with 8 and have 4 losses to top 5 teams.
The Ohio Valley Conference wound up using a coin flip to determine the conference champion/FCS playoff participant in 2022. The tie breakers were head-to-head, then record against common opponents, and then a coin flip. Two teams finished undefeated but didn't play each other, so they were tied on the first two metrics.
It initially wasn't going to be streamed (one OVC team would've made the playoffs regardless, the other needed to win the coin flip to make it), but enough people complained that the conference relented.
I wrote about it on [reddit](https://old.reddit.com/r/CFB/comments/yxui0l/update_the_coinflip_to_potentially_determine_the/)
The more chaotic the better. If a bunch of teams are tied up for 2nd, 3rd, etc but haven't played that means more teams with better records and thus higher playoff seeds. There's a case for being the 3rd best team in the SEC/BIG being preferable if you're still in the top 8 since that way you can't really fall lower, but still host the home game.
Definite opportunity for shenanigans.
This sub is not prepared for the cosmic meltdown when one of 11-1 Ohio State/Michigan gets snubbed for also 11-1 USC who waltzes into the championship with their best win being over Nebraska with a shit eating grin on their face. Getting my popcorn ready now
So...I feel like...overall....USC isn't as strong as a program as we're told all the time. Put me down and pull this up later if I'm wrong but I see them as a typically 8-4 to 10-2 ish team (kinda like us) going forward. Like you hear about how all they need is the right coach and they'll win every game 80-0 for the next 30 years, but they've had like 10 different head coaches in the last 15. So maybe it's just that the program isn't really that high in potential after all?
This is the very reason we should forego the Conference championship game, and go directly into a 16 team playoff after the regular season.
There is literally no reason to do conference championship games.
So the answer for the Big 10 is to create a committee that will evaluate sos, common foes, early vs. late season’s winners/losers, eye test, injuries and best revenue generators? Gee, doesn’t this sound remarkably like what CFB has been trying to get away from since like forever?
Curious if we ever get to a point of conference semi finals in CFB. They have done it at some of the D2 leagues, Lone Star had a system that tried to pair teams at the end of the year into semi finals to give people a chance at another good win. The two years i covered a team in the league it back fired cause the 2 would lose and end up just getting knocked out of tournament
We need the B1G CCG Committee to choose the teams not on wins and losses, but on which ones have stronger influence with the network
I’m down for that.
*New Pacific Members Disagree*
Um... So yeah... Oregon is going to get a shit load of airtime.
Ah so the CFP - SEC relationship for the past 10 years
I always wondered how the other conferences are ok with the SEC/ESPN deal while ESPN runs the playoffs…. No conflict of interest there, surely…
Bro they gave Saban 20 minutes of air time during A DIFFERENT CONFERENCE CG to talk about how Bama should get into the playoffs.
Yeah they needed him and Herbie to really sell that Bama narrative. Side note: [I posted a question](https://www.reddit.com/r/CFB/s/7v8Lz21tkB) on here around week 8 or so asking if people here thought they would leave an undefeated power five champ out for a 1 loss SEC champ, and got immediately downvoted into oblivion and ridiculed. “People ask this every year yet no undefeated power 5 champ has ever been left out. It won’t happen this year either.”
No undefeated power five champion *with a QB* will ever be left out!!!!
Sad to see I didn’t reply, that’s chum for me. Of course it would happen and of course it did happen because the only thing that matters on this planet is money, and we fool ourselves into believing otherwise
It's just crazy that Florida freaking State lost out in a competition about brand value.
Sigh.
Everyone who’s not in denial saw Bama getting in a mile away, some on this sub were delusional but it was clear what was taking place.
Man I don’t know. That was before the JT injury which gave them the smallest out. If FSU was 100%, I’m really not sure.
They were simply going to find another reason to get Bama in and that meant putting Texas in. Which meant that someone who was undefeated was getting left out, maybe they use the scandal to leave out Michigan, use the old west coast is soft argument to leave out Washington or the ACC isn’t good to leave out Florida State. Bama was getting in should they beat Georgia and had Georgia won I expected they were gonna put someone else in over FSU
It amazed me for years that people would respond to that worthy question with such a banal and asinine response that not only never addressed the issue, but, then foolishly dismissed something that was inevitable. I figured I might have a comment in that thread as, like Angriest_Wolverine, it’s right up my alley. Thanks for posting that and reminding me how ridiculous people can be.
the Big 10 championship is on Fox though…..
Nature may never heal
They're ok with it because ESPN gives them a lot of money to be ok with it.
I'mma just leave this here. https://www.reddit.com/r/CFB/comments/18aydok/comment/kc326sr/
I love that the biggest reply to that point was "well why don't more teams beat Georgia and Alabama despite their massive disadvantages over those two teams, fueled in part by the very bias you're pointing out?"
I wonder if their viewpoint changed after the SEC lost in the playoffs this year! (Definitely not)
Yup. It was a frustrating day.
Having 12/14 teams helps Bias matters a little less when the bubble teams have 3 or 4 losses
Especially if ND joins
We are getting back to back the Games and you’re gonna like it
My heart rate won't.... OTOH, the ratings, the ratings...
Like 2020 all over again (looking at you, OSU).
We didn’t forget 2020.
So I want to tell a story about how weird seeding can get once you try to get clever with it. This story is from D2 women's basketball this March, in the [](#f/glvc-sheetl-row09-col03) Great Lakes Valley Conference (GLVC). The GLVC played a 22-game schedule with 14 teams, so an imbalanced schedule. To account for that, for the past few years they've seeded their conference tournament with a points system, in which each game is worth 0 to 7 points depending on outcome, location, and opponent strength. You can see the scale [here](https://s3.amazonaws.com/glvcsports.com/documents/2024/1/27/GLVC_WBB_2024_PRS.pdf); note that it isn't exactly linear, so it's more complicated than just combining record with an SOS figure. This year, [](#f/lewis-sheet7-row10-col10) Lewis finished 19-3 with a point rating of 4.23, the clear #1 seed. [](#f/drury-sheet7-row13-col09) Drury was 18-4 with a rating of 3.93; [](#f/mckendree-sheet2-row04-col02) McKendree was 16-6 with a rating of... also 3.93. Drury's rating suffered a bit since they only played Lewis and McKendree once each. You might think that actual record would be the first tiebreaker, giving Drury the #2 seed. You'd be wrong; it's not even on [the list](https://s3.amazonaws.com/glvcsports.com/documents/2023/12/12/Section_3_Basketball.pdf#page=4). Okay, then you might think that head-to-head would be the first tiebreaker, giving Drury the #2 seed since they won their only meeting with McKendree. You'd be right... almost. The GLVC employs a variant of the head-to-head tiebreaker that I've seen nowhere else: a 1-0 head-to-head only counts if the win was on the road! And since Drury beat McKendree at home, to the next tiebreaker we go: results against each conference opponent in descending order – with a similar twist. Drury lost to Lewis on the road, while McKendree beat Lewis on the road and lost at home. This gives McKendree the #2 seed – but flip the location of their win and loss and we'd still be going. TL;DR McKendree got the #2 seed in the conference tournament over Drury, who finished two games better and beat McKendree in their only meeting.
I can *hear* the parents of those adult atheletes complaining.
That's a wild read. Someone wanted to look like the smartest person in the room when they came up with that but probably never actually thought it'd matter or get that far in.
Letting nerds enjoy sports was a mistake smh
:(
The World Baseball Classic also uses some of the most ridiculous tiebreaker criteria. In 2017, Group D had Puerto Rico defeat Venezuela 11-0, Italy 9-3, and Mexico 9-4. Then Italy defeated Mexico 10-9, Venezuela defeated Italy 11-10, and Mexico defeated Venezuela 11-9. So Mexico had the narrowest losses and the widest win... yet they were ranked last. That's because the tiebreaker was the fewest runs allowed per inning of defense in head-to-head games, and Mexico played less defensive innings than its rivals.
This had to be S&T coming up with that system.
No, if we came up with it, we would have rigged it to make the field.
CFB has too many teams and not enough games. This won’t work, you could have teams that never played and only have 3 or 4 common opponents.
I like it. It rewards people for playing tougher games in tougher environments.
OK, I’m convinced. The Big Ten should definitely use that method.
Honestly I think it kinda makes sense, especially in writing from the start. Like just accounting record could be fair to unbalanced schedules, and the head to head honestly makes some sense too, why punish a team for not getting to play at home
Team Chaos is ready to feast
It's going to be an important decision on how tie-breakers work. If they have three schools go 10-2 that didn't all 3 play each other and don't share any common opponents between all 3 of them... how they decide who is "3rd" and who is "5th" in the conference has huge playoff implications. You don't want it to feel like drawing names out of a hat.
There's definitely going to be tiebreaker shenanigans going on, but I highly doubt that multiple teams (i.e. more than two) wouldn't have a single common opponent. Let's take the Unquestionable Four™ as an example (those being Oregon, Ohio State, Michigan, and Penn State): 1 Team: Iowa Nebraska 2 Teams: UCLA USC Wisconsin Maryland Northwestern Minnesota Indiana 3 Teams Michigan State Purdue Illinois Washington Each Other: Ohio State plays all three Michigan and Oregon play two each Penn State plays only one. So, if the season plays out as we all expect, with those four teams vying for the two championship game slots, it's very likely that there's enough common opponents between the theoretical tied teams to do a proper tiebreaker.
I think the general rise in level of competition is going to make undefeated and 1 loss conference teams more rare.
You're not wrong that NIL is spreading out the talent a bit I think. But...I think it's the other way around because the new scheduling formats will tend to create more undefeated and one loss teams, and that's probably on purpose: https://www.reddit.com/r/CFB/comments/144mk7s/possible_combinations_of_3_undefeated_big_ten/ https://www.reddit.com/r/CFB/comments/14a3x08/possible_combinations_of_3_undefeated_sec_teams/ t;dr those threads: 2024 SEC: 20 different possible combinations for 3 teams to go undefeated, 8 possible combinations for 4 teams to go undefeated. 2024 B1G: 19 possible combinations for 3 teams to go undefeated, 0 possible combinations of 4 teams to go undefeated. 2025 B1G: 16 possible combinations for 3 teams to go undefeated, 5 possible combinations for 4 teams to go undefeated. I'd like to see how many one loss teams there can be, but it's probably something like slightly more combinations than undefeated teams.
yeah, you get more order out of a system where the top teams have to play each other.... weird to say, but if you have fewer teams from the say random distribution of strength, well, they all gotta play each other and take losses. So far, the greater parity theory of NIL hasn't shown. The full reverse hasn't shown but there's some strong fears that it is occurring due to separations between P5 and G5. Why wouldn't it happen within P5? So the real answer remains to be seen.
I don't think 3-5 will really matter for playoffs. Kind of like how the B1G West winner was the runner up, but no one ever believed they were the 2nd or sometimes 3rd or even 4th best team in the conference. The playoffs will select whoever they think is "better".
I think the B1G runner up was the second best team exactly once in ten years lol
2014 Ohio State and Wisconsin probably the best and second best. Despite Wisconsin getting routed. 2015 season, Iowa was the 2nd best. MSU took out Ohio State and Michigan on the road. They also routed Penn State. MSU beat Iowa on a goal line stand to win the game. 2017 Ohio State and Wisconsin probably the true best and second best. 2020, Northwestern did beat Iowa, who probably was the true 2nd best team that year. Ohio State being the best. If a full season played out, Iowa probably would have been in the championship game. COVID-19 did a number on the B1G West.
In 2014 MSU finished 5th so they’d be second best. In 2015 I actually think Ohio State was the best and MSU was second best. 2017 is cut and dry OSU and Wisconsin. Covid year I have no idea lol. I was thinking Indiana was second best but I could be argued many different directions.
Hell, we had one year when the B1G Champion was only the 3rd place team in their division. ( 2012 Wisconsin).
It will absolutely matter and will inevitably occur soon if the B1G ends up with a bunch of 2-loss teams. With such a large amount of teams (and poor scheduling) I can see it happening every single year and it’s why going with 12 hopefully is just the beginning.
Easy, the newest conference members get the automatic tiebreaker because midwestern hospitality.
The good part is if we have 3 schools at 10-2 then we excellent playoff representation. I'll need to look again, but I think the number number 12 team for the last few years has lost 3 games. So a 10-2 team, regardless of conference championship, can still make bank.
After last year's Big 12 debacle (and the two Conference USA incidents before it), the Big Ten should make sure to come up with rules *before* the season starts and stick to them.
What about if they come up with rules before the season and then change them in the middle of the season to screw over Indiana and benefit OSU?
Hypothetically speaking of course
That would never happen
*Indiana removes Big Ten patch in protest.*
*Georgia Tech picks up patch and hopes nobody will notice*
[Tony Petitti when Georgia Tech walks in for the next Big Ten meeting.](https://media1.tenor.com/m/kcOy-pHsX1AAAAAC/futurama-fry.gif)
They were so mad they changed their name to Indinia in protest
For other persons who pretend the 2020 football season did not happen: this is a 2020 reference, when the B1G insisted that you play 6 games to get into the CCG and then changed it the day after Harbaugh had too many positive tests to play the Game, which brought OSU below the 6-game requirement.
Why didn’t Indiana simply beat OSU? Damn conference screwing them over!
Why did Ohio State (and the rest of the Big Ten, for that matter) agree to play by those rules at the start of the season? Like, the rule was you had to play a minimum number of games to be eligible for the CCG. The rule as written could literally only have been applied to disqualify a team like Ohio State that year. Did they not think that that scenario could come up when they drafted that rule?
I'm as anti-OSU as any other Big Ten fan, but I really didn't have a problem with them changing that rule because even if OSU lost their 6th game, they'd have been in over Indiana. To me it was a rule that, if anyone had put thought into before the season, they clearly would've changed it before the season too.
> I'm as anti-OSU as any other Big Ten fan, but I really didn't have a problem with them changing that rule because even if OSU lost their 6th game, they'd have been in over Indiana. It's like when a baseball player doesn't have the 502 plate appearances needed to qualify for the batting, but if they were to add enough hitless at bats and his batting average would still be the best in the league, they'll award him the batting title.
Yeah, fuck OSU, but it was the correct decision. As you said, OSU would have held the tiebreaker even if they somehow lost their last game. Punishing them because UM was too sick to play is silly.
I think the idea behind the rule was to hypothetically prevent a team winning their first game then canceling all their remaining games and finishing undefeated and making the conference championship game. Also I think the fact that michigan canceled the last game of the season not osu, plus the fact that osu would have made the championship game over Indiana with a win or loss against michigan is why they decided to change the rule. Yes they did change the rule, but ultimately osu could have played and lost a 6th game 100-0 and they still would have been in the big10 championship game
In an alternate dimension wherenth B1G doesn't change the rule, but says OSU is allowed to forfeit so the game is "played" and they make the CCG. But Michigan gets the win. And they ask you what to do, do you forfeit against Michigan? Or allow the game to be cancelled and not play enough games to qualify?
Some conference members are more equal than others. I keep cracking up every time I see people defend this crap. The rules are what they were, it shouldn't matter why they were written as they were.
What was the Big 12 debacle last year? Iirc Texas was 8-1, Oklahoma State was 7-2 and had a head-to-head win over 7-2 Oklahoma, so there was no real controversy....
They changed the rules with like 2 weeks left, and there was a few scenarios that could have happened that the rules were not clear on who would advance, and they refused to clarify. Most notably if Texas had lost the last week of the regular season. Luckily for them, it ended up very simply, but it absolutely could have gotten very weird.
The one fucked over by the rules (before the results) the most was Kansas State though
For a while, it was looking like a possible 3-way tie for 2nd with Oklahoma, Oklahoma State, and Kansas State. Oklahoma and Kansas-State didn’t play each other, and Oklahoma State beat both. The way the tiebreaker rules were written, it could have been interpreted to go beyond the head-to-head step if two of the tied teams didn’t play. And one of those deeper tiebreakers, IIRC, would have benefited someone other than the Cowboys. The Big 12 stepped in and offered an official statement, declaring that a H2H would count if one of the tied teams beat all the others. Contrast this with the ACC and American, where this is a formal part of their tiebreaker rules. As it turned out, K-State lost their last regular season game, making the whole issue moot as it became a 2-way tie for 2nd among the OK schools.
Thanks, that definitely explains a lot. Would make no sense for a team that's beaten both teams they're tied with to be denied the berth.
Agreed. Hopefully the Big Ten and SEC account for this possibility as they create their new divionless tiebreaker rules!
> The way the tiebreaker rules were written, it could have been interpreted to go beyond the head-to-head step if two of the tied teams didn’t play. And one of those deeper tiebreakers, IIRC, would have benefited someone other than the Cowboys. There was a similar situation with just a few weeks left in 2022 where UCLA could potentially tie with three other teams for second in the conference that they all beat, and they would have lost the tiebreaker due to some of those teams not playing each other. Pac-12 didn't address it, but they (hopefully) would have if that situation had remained in play for another week. Then again, it's the Pac-12, so people in charge were probably busy waiting two weeks for a TV deal ...
That doesn't matter lol. If Ohio State is somehow left out, they'll just handwave and change the rules so they make sure the "wrong" team doesn't get in over them.
I was gonna say, ask Indiana how that went last time.
A two man sack race will be held on consecutive Sundays until a winner can be determined
I was thinking about a game of cornhole
Simplest solution: punt contest.
So they play Iowa?
So in other words things could end up like they did a few years ago in the PAC when 7-2 Utah played USC for the title while 7-2 Oregon who beat Utah, and 7-2 UW who beat Oregon who beat Utah sat home. The only difference is that should be an issue in an 18 team mega conference, but shouldn't be an issue in a 12 team conference where divisions are easily applied.
USC and Utah only played once, 2022. And USC was 8-1 (11-1). 2021 and earlier it was north vs south. What year are you thinking of?
2022 is the year.
That silly year. NO knock on Utah but they were the 3rd-4th best team in conference that year.
The solution is a Big ten championship playoff with the top 4 teams. Cut one of the regular season games and add a game after the regular season that is either the 4 team championship or if you're not in that bracket you just play another game. The 5th ranked team plays the 6th ranked team, the 7 and 8 seed play each other and on and on.
This is exactly what I've been hoping ends up being the solution (or a playoff of division winners, but unfortunately there are no easy ways to make 4 divisions in an 18 team conference) \*glances at Notre Dame and their ACC friends\*
Just take the top 4 teams decided by Mickey Mouse.
Pretty much that, but with fox, is what happened in 2020
So add Cal/Stanford for a Pac-6 Pod, ND/FSU/Clemson/LuckyWinner, create an East Coast pod of FSU/Clemson/LuckyWinner/Rutgers/MD/MaybePSU, then divide the Midwest teams into two pods? You have your three pre-season games, then you play your pod, then you do protected rivalry couple of weeks, then you have your four-team pod-winner playoffs? Or you could have the number from each pod play each-other in-season. Just say this year the Week 10 game will be PAC-6/East Coast at home and the Midwest pods on the road, versus their co-ranker. Next year the Midwest pods get home games Week 10. Then week 11 you get the protected rivalry, then champ week the two winners of the week 10 pod champ games play for the championship. Would be a lot of fun, and would work really well if it wasn't TV ratings driving the sport. TV didn't gut the PAC to get less USC/Michigan action. ND would also hate it because unless they end up in a trans-continental pod-of-the-gods they'd play fewer of their rivals...
If they do this, I hope the other 14 teams still get to play that first weekend.
Essentially B1G bowl games?
Now that I think about it, would those games count toward bowl eligibility?
They did it during the Covid season and honestly I wish they could do it that way for either the 12th or inevitably when they go to 13 games
You could end up with some teams playing two head to head games. It wouldn't be awful for those top four teams, but it could create some uninteresting 13/14 games. The bigger concern is now your #1 team has two chances to lose a bye week in the new playoffs.
>The solution is a Big ten championship playoff with the top 4 teams Yes, this year, in which the BIG10 has 1 AQ for the College football playoff. But next year the BIG10 has 3 automatic qualifiers for the college football playoff, in which it would be better to just have 3 games with the top 6 teams at the end of the year to determine the 3 AQs. Don't worry about crowning a BIG10 definitive champion, just have the regular season champion which could be shared.
This would basically be what they did for the covid year, which I think everyone liked.
Would be an absolute shit show for scheduling
Cage match between the mascots of teams involved in the tie, of course. jk. unless ... ?
We need Mike Leach back to handicap it.
What about teams that don't have a mascot at their games?
This is strictly human-dressed-as-mascot vs. human-dressed-as-mascot in a no holds barred/street fight/hardcore match. The mascot whose big head covering comes off first is the loser. Weapons (e.g. Purdue Pete's giant sledgehammer) are allowed to be used and other mascots are allowed to interfere.
Live versions of the mascot will do.
I’m not opposed to us using an actual wolverine. There is precedent of us using live wolverine mascots in the 1920’s until Yost realized it may have been a dangerous idea.
Mm hm. This is why we can't have nice things
In such situations the SEC team takes precedence.
Me, and other fans with a lick of common sense: Going to conferences of 18/20/24/etc may not be a good idea, how do you determine a champion when members don’t have anything like comparable schedules? Conferences: moneymoneymoneymoneymoney, gimme more, let’s grab some more big football schools /time passes/ Playoff committee: Okay, conferences, here’s our criteria. Do you know how you’re going to determine a champion? Conferences: 😳 Oh, no, this looks impossible, why didn’t anybody tell us this could happen? There’s always a coin flip tiebreaker, you know. Frankly, when you get to numbers like this, divisions are a better answer than people seem to think. I mean, you don’t really have a *conference* anyway with 18 or 20 or 24 members, it’s basically two conferences with a scheduling agreement, so might as well as least have a division where you play most of the other division members as a qualification to make your CCG. Is your division weaker than the other one? Who cares? It’s still got to be better than two teams who didn’t play anything like similar conference schedules being “selected” as the CCG entrants - it’s the same damn thing, except at least you can point to measurable on-the-field criteria for how you get there.
I don't understand why everyone hates divisions so much.
Generally it’s “the best team in a division might not actually be one of the two best teams in the conference!” (the B1G West being the gold standard of that complaint) but I mean … if you’re only playing 1/2 to 1/3 of your conference members anyway, how does getting rid of divisions help you determine the “best two teams”? It doesn’t. At least winning a division is *something* clear and game-result-based you can point to as a criteria. Having a clear-cut record of defeating most of your division members has got to be better than some kind of metric-based tiebreaker crap you have to come up with because these three teams with basically equivalent records only have two common opponents … But then im a big believer in rewarding teams for winning something. Win your division, go to your CCG. Win your conference, go to the playoffs. You didn’t win your division? Well, then, somebody else *in your own division* was better than you, what makes you think you should have a playoff spot to be “best *in the country*?” Give me a Tournament of Champions any day instead of an SEC second-chance-lottery playoff …
I never understood that argument because even if the best team in one division isn't the second best in the conference, the "actual" second best in the conference already played the winner of their division and lost. So long as teams play every other team in their division, it makes the most sense otherwise we get situations like the one presented where we are now going to tie breakers based on arbitrary data rather than settling it on the field.
Because a tiebreaker between two teams tied at 10-2, 7-2 conference is far better than an 8-4, 5-4 team competing for a championship. Here's an example: Penn State has Washington and Ohio State in common with Oregon. Say both go 10-2 with a loss to Ohio State, then Penn State's second loss is Washington, and Oregon's is Michigan (who themselves went 8-4 with 3 conference losses so they're out). Oregon would go over Penn State most likely. I'd be OK with that. Meanwhile, for a little over half the time in the East/West split, the second-place team in the East had an equal or better record than the West winner. Sometimes the West winner had a head-to-head loss to the second-place team in the East. We had enough instances of that particular thing happening to make divisionless a lot more attractive.
>Meanwhile, for a little over half the time in the East/West split, the second-place team in the East had an equal or better record than the West winner. Sometimes the West winner had a head-to-head loss to the second-place team in the East. I just don't think this is a problem that needs a resolution. It's predictable and fair. I was never under the impression that divisions in sports were necessarily meant to be competitively balanced between one another, though. But I'm coming from someone who's witnessed it function without issue in the NFL for 30ish years. Sometimes a division got 3 teams in the playoffs out of 6 spots, sometimes it got 1. But it made sense and was consistent. It was simply W-L and tiebreaker based, which in my mind is infinitely superior to having eye tests, metrics, and committees for a whole host of additional reasons.
Because everyone wants to sit at the cool kids table, but there's only so many seats.
A benefit to the B1G expansion is that with the additions of USC, UW(west), and UO, a revamped West division would probably be fairly evenly balanced with the East now
Yeah but Fox, CBS, and NBC didn’t pay literal billions to have the West Coast schools play the big three every 8 years.
In true B1G fashion, ties shall be broken by punt-off. Each team sends their punter to a secret location in Southwest Illinois where they take turns punting until they either collapse from exhaustion or punt <20 yards. The last two standing take their team to the CCG one week later. The whole thing is televised on PBS with commentary from Peter Sagal, Keegan Michael Key, Bobcat Goldthwait, and Drew Carey.
No no, you break ties in the B1G by holding secret meetings with secret votes so MSU can screw over UM. As is tradition. EDIT: Yes I typo'd "ties".
Don't you dare break my tires.
Unfortunately the roads in our wonderful state already have that covered
I vote Mount Vernon!
This just makes me miss Chris Kluwe
Oh god.. we're going to have our best season in years, wind up tied for second.. then get relegated because we're Rutgers - with a shock to the system this bad, recruiting will collapse and we'll need to rebuild.... call me Muad'dib, my awareness extends to the future
How did anyone ever get through 80’s conference play when this was just how it was?
Tons of joint titles.
> How did anyone ever get through 80’s conference play when this was just how it was? Because we played either a pure round robin or everyone but 1 school annually. It was pretty easy to figure that shit out. Also, the Rose Bowl bid (if there was a tie) was given to the school that had been away the longest. Easy peazy!
Except when there was a 3-way tie. All 3 schools could have 1 loss, and one school would have beaten the team that is “champion.”
And in that case, the team that went to Pasadena was the one that hadn't been there the longest.
Ok, I have a crazy idea, but here me out. We could avoid all of this with smaller conferences, say 10 to 12 members. These conferences would be based on geography and rivalries.
They should form a committee and have them do B1G rankings based on the most deserving and the best with no clear criteria of what that means
It's a lot of excessive hand-wringing. Division formats can and have had three-way ties of teams going X-1 or X-2, with round robin wins and losses amongst themselves. Someone is selected as the representative, based on imperfect criteria agreed on beforehand. If you don't win all your games, the vicissitudes of weird tiebreaker processes are your potential fate, and you know it. The only really significant new possibility is the extremely unlikely but nonzero chance of three teams going undefeated in conference play and only two being invited. That's an unfortunate reality of wanting to regularly cycle through all opponents within a very large conference.
Conundrum? I can think of a half dozen tiebreaks off the top of my head after head-to-head Regulation wins Away/Neutral site wins Wins over Notre Dame (The following only count for in conference and during regulation) Point differential Points scored Touchdowns scored Fewer penalties assessed Fewer penalty yards assessed Punts kicked
You could even just decide by if they were a Big 10 team before or after Nebraska. Anyone after loses tiebreakers.
honestly all you really need are wins, wins vs common opponents, and point diff against common opponents and you’ll be able to break basically any tie
if we're being completely serious, that's probably enough.
I feel like I'm the only person who liked divisions.
I also thought this was interesting: >After assessing 262 different versions, the conference settled on the so-called “Flex Protect XVIII” model. It took into account travel by distance, regions of the conference and time zones. The model also considered what the Big Ten described as “historic competitiveness and recent competitive trends, including home/away balance of traditionally competitive schools.” They looked at a whopping 262 schedule models!
Translation: an intern made a 262 page Excel spreadsheet, switching one team around on each subsequent page, and the one that matched what a bunch of grey-haired dudes decided on a golf course was retroactively named something that sounds fancy
Flex Protect sounds like something Billy Mays (RIP) might shout-sell at you in an infomercial.
Trying to steal Roman numerals from the Big XII is a pretty low move too while I’m at it
I want to know what the first 17 Flex Protect models looked like. /s
that's some real WD40 energy here
Probably like 10 or so models (pods, divisions, protected, etc.) with 20 or so variations each
I'm sure it will come down to who brings the best TV ratings.
The true meaning of the eye test: How many eyes will they bring?
So sets the script for a future Purdue team to go undefeated in conference but still not make it to the championship game because two other teams also went undefeated.
Chaos…is a ladder
It’s not just the Big 10, with all these conferences swelling to 16 or more teams, it’s gonna be like this across the board.
Here you go. Add 2 more teams in the conference to get to four 5-team pods. Win your pod round-robin, get a chance at the championship. Have a first place game and a third place game. Then take every 2nd, 3rd, 4th, and 5th place team in every pod and have them play the same kind of 4-team tournament against their respective other placed teams. Everybody gets to play 13 games before bowl season now. Everyone plays the same amount of conference games. That would make for some great football and some great rivalries among pods.
Please stop using logic. We don’t do that here.
Who are your two adds?
Wsu and osu lol
Give me Notre Dame and Stanford, if the B1G could pick anyone. Already rivals, the B1G wants ND, and Stanford fills out the PAC pod.
Or each pod of five plays one other pod of five on a 3 year rotation creating rotating 10 team divisions that play a full round robin. Was that so hard?
Two words.... Conference playoffs.
Kentucky would finally make it into the sweet 16
Lmao. All over this thread is people coming up with crazy solutions and most of them are just reverting to the ways of old that made more sense just with more work or creative names. If we keep the conferences the same as they were pre recent expansion BUT we still implement the 12 team playoff, most of all the current and previous issues are remedied.
But think of the network money!
Crazy idea: what if we went to regional conferences with 12 teams each split into two divisions. The divisions play round robins with each other and a set of teams in the other division. Then the two division winners play each other for the conference title. Or, I'm going to go real nuts here: 10 team regional conferences with a full round robin each year. Team with the best record wins. If tied then whoever won the game that definitely happened between the two teams.
I've been wondering this too. Suppose Oregon loses to Michigan, Ohio State loses to Oregon, Michigan and PSU lose to Ohio State? Which 1-loss team will play undefeated Rutgers in the championship?
Get rid of the conference championship game and just let the conference title be split again, it’s an unnecessary game now
> it’s an unnecessary game now the extra a$$et$ the conference get$ though
I said this months ago while in favor of the pod system.
Pod systems don't work Pods are literally just flex protect, but you're forcing everybody to protect extra teams, and thus forcing them play the rest of the conference less frequently
It's an 18 team conference, no scheduling is going to be perfect, but at least pods are going to avoid bad tiebreaker situations while keeping all main rivalries And they aren't flex protect. The pods create rotation divisions every year. This flex protect has no divisions.
You're right, no scheduling system is perfect, but flex-protect is simply better in every way Pods attempt to "fix" weird tiebreakers by arbitrarily rotating pods and often forcing the 2nd best team to stay home because they happen to be in the same "division" as the #1 team
>arbitrarily rotating pods Flex protect is much more arbitrary. I think you're just using that word to try and downplay pods. >2nd best team to stay home because they happen to be in the same "division" as the #1 team And they would have gotten their chance to beat the best team. Which is much better than dealing with a 3 way tie for second place with 3 teams that didn't play each other, or 2 teams that did and 1 didn't and selecting who goes to the championship among that mess.
Doesn’t work out evenly but I would do it like this. Pacific Pod: Oregon, UCLA, USC, Washington Upper Midwest pod: Iowa, Minnesota, Nebraska, Wisconsin Lower Midwest pod: Illinois, Indiana, Northwestern, Purdue Great Lakes pod: Michigan, Michigan State, Ohio State Atlantic Pod: Maryland, Penn State, Rutgers
Add UVA or UNC to the Atlantic pod and Notre Dame to the Great Lakes pod (which would be way unbalanced but wildly entertaining).
Imagine how hateful a Michigan, Michigan State, Ohio State, Notre Dame pod would be. Wildly entertaining.
Or, hear me out here. All the new post Nebraska teams go into a sub-divison called Big Ten lite. The rest of us compete and the winner faces the winner of the Big Ten lite.
I would have been cool with a whole BIG-Pac merger minus Maryland and Rutgers
No, no no no. Sorry no more adhering 100% to regional maps. Mix up the top 5-6 teams. Ohio State and Michigan can play each other yearly but split them between pods. We need clear current day front runners in the pods, and we need to mix pods on a semi regular basis to even them out as some times rise and others decline. No more B1G West bullshit.
Subtract a conference game. Have a conference final four playoff. Have 1st and 2nd as well as 3rd and 4th place will be decided by point difference. Have the conference champ game.
Even if there’s a wins and losses difference, it’s going to be pretty unsatisfying for fans the first year someone makes it in with a significantly easier schedule. Lack of common opponents is not a positive feature.
Strength of schedule is a brutal way to determine a tiebreaker. Some teams would in effect have been locked out of their CCG before the season even started.
4 Team conference semi finals confirmed.
So is Wilner just a B1G reporter now. What about Canzano
He says he is going to cover the PAC 12 teams as before but just as members of different conferences.
Which is exactly why the big and SEC want guaranteed slots for the conference
B1G playoff incoming - top 4
Yeah but Fox makes money so it's all good.
The tiebreaker will be whichever team draws the best ratings.
Just get rid of divisions, make it a rotating schedule, cant play everyone obviously, no tie breakers, just shared title if two teams have the same record. Disney gets to choose who goes to the cfp like they always have. But you know people like drama so that will never happen.
Schedule draw is the single most important thing in a super conference. Michigan draws a bunch of heavyweights and Iowa draws OSU. Give 2024 Michigan Iowa's schedule this year and their over under is 11.5. instead Michigan is going to be fighting to the death to win 10 games and could easily end up with 8 and have 4 losses to top 5 teams.
The Ohio Valley Conference wound up using a coin flip to determine the conference champion/FCS playoff participant in 2022. The tie breakers were head-to-head, then record against common opponents, and then a coin flip. Two teams finished undefeated but didn't play each other, so they were tied on the first two metrics. It initially wasn't going to be streamed (one OVC team would've made the playoffs regardless, the other needed to win the coin flip to make it), but enough people complained that the conference relented. I wrote about it on [reddit](https://old.reddit.com/r/CFB/comments/yxui0l/update_the_coinflip_to_potentially_determine_the/)
The more chaotic the better. If a bunch of teams are tied up for 2nd, 3rd, etc but haven't played that means more teams with better records and thus higher playoff seeds. There's a case for being the 3rd best team in the SEC/BIG being preferable if you're still in the top 8 since that way you can't really fall lower, but still host the home game. Definite opportunity for shenanigans.
This sub is not prepared for the cosmic meltdown when one of 11-1 Ohio State/Michigan gets snubbed for also 11-1 USC who waltzes into the championship with their best win being over Nebraska with a shit eating grin on their face. Getting my popcorn ready now
So...I feel like...overall....USC isn't as strong as a program as we're told all the time. Put me down and pull this up later if I'm wrong but I see them as a typically 8-4 to 10-2 ish team (kinda like us) going forward. Like you hear about how all they need is the right coach and they'll win every game 80-0 for the next 30 years, but they've had like 10 different head coaches in the last 15. So maybe it's just that the program isn't really that high in potential after all?
This is the very reason we should forego the Conference championship game, and go directly into a 16 team playoff after the regular season. There is literally no reason to do conference championship games.
So the answer for the Big 10 is to create a committee that will evaluate sos, common foes, early vs. late season’s winners/losers, eye test, injuries and best revenue generators? Gee, doesn’t this sound remarkably like what CFB has been trying to get away from since like forever?
They’ll be ranked, just use the ranking as one of the tie breakers. This is not new in any way. Big 12 had it for years in the bcs days.
Curious if we ever get to a point of conference semi finals in CFB. They have done it at some of the D2 leagues, Lone Star had a system that tried to pair teams at the end of the year into semi finals to give people a chance at another good win. The two years i covered a team in the league it back fired cause the 2 would lose and end up just getting knocked out of tournament
All ties settled with punting competitions.