The newer, stronger PAC-12/B1g Ten alliance is an interesting idea. Every school in those conferences will play a cross-conference game under the new agreement.
In the current BCS system, this makes no sense. Required scheduling of harder OOC games would make it harder to climb BCS polls. So why would the Big-12-10 do this?
So they can change the rules to their benefit. So they can put strength of schedule into the BCS formula. So the number of good teams you play against carries more weight than how good each opponent actually is. For example playing a #25 team and #19 team would carry more weight than playing a #4 team and a unranked team.
So what?
So SEC teams get penalized for playing 4 cupcakes per year. So SEC teams get less credit for playing a few very highly ranked SEC teams per year. So Big-12-10 schools get more credit for playing 9 BCS opponents per year (several that also play Notre Dame would play 10 BCS opponents per year), whereas SEC schools would only be playing 8 BCS opponents per year.
Well couldn't SEC teams just schedule more quality OOC games to match any change to BCS polling formulas?
Well they could, but a bunch off potential opponents were just swept off the table. The Big-12-10 who just set themselves up for 9 intra/inter conference games (or 10 when Notre Dame is on the schedule) isn't going to schedule any SEC teams. That leaves SEC teams begging for games against teams from the 4th and 5th best conferences. So the SEC could get BCS OOC opponents, but they would generally be less strong than what the Big-12-10 is getting.
The SEC could just make a 9-game conference schedule, but we don't want to do this for obvious reasons. We would also miss out on spreading our brand across they country as the Big12-10 is doing.
So this alliance is clearly a shot across the bow of the SEC. Those conferences couldn't beat the SEC on the football field, but they just made a hell of a move to do it off the field.
In the current BCS system, this makes no sense. Required scheduling of harder OOC games would make it harder to climb BCS polls. So why would the Big-12-10 do this?
So they can change the rules to their benefit. So they can put strength of schedule into the BCS formula. So the number of good teams you play against carries more weight than how good each opponent actually is. For example playing a #25 team and #19 team would carry more weight than playing a #4 team and a unranked team.
So what?
So SEC teams get penalized for playing 4 cupcakes per year. So SEC teams get less credit for playing a few very highly ranked SEC teams per year. So Big-12-10 schools get more credit for playing 9 BCS opponents per year (several that also play Notre Dame would play 10 BCS opponents per year), whereas SEC schools would only be playing 8 BCS opponents per year.
Well couldn't SEC teams just schedule more quality OOC games to match any change to BCS polling formulas?
Well they could, but a bunch off potential opponents were just swept off the table. The Big-12-10 who just set themselves up for 9 intra/inter conference games (or 10 when Notre Dame is on the schedule) isn't going to schedule any SEC teams. That leaves SEC teams begging for games against teams from the 4th and 5th best conferences. So the SEC could get BCS OOC opponents, but they would generally be less strong than what the Big-12-10 is getting.
The SEC could just make a 9-game conference schedule, but we don't want to do this for obvious reasons. We would also miss out on spreading our brand across they country as the Big12-10 is doing.
So this alliance is clearly a shot across the bow of the SEC. Those conferences couldn't beat the SEC on the football field, but they just made a hell of a move to do it off the field.
