Looks as if the other conferences are getting nervous...
- Thread starter hattdawg
- Start date
then the SEC needs to take off these "we don't want to be seen as a conference killer" kid gloves. Sorry, but that's ********! While they are doing that the SEC needs to meet with the PAC-12 and the Big-10 and decide how we want to divy the country up and where the expansion stops.
too much, IMO..........When you start getting 18 to 20 teams in one league, you'll have teams you won't play but every few years and rivalries don't develop like that..........
Big 12 adds Houston. Conference USA left to wallow in its own retardation.
At least that's what I hope. Maybe this Marinatto guy realizes that having crazy conference geography and odd numbers of teams isn't good for the sport.
Edit: Another fleeting thought that I had - I'd gladly trade Arkansas to the Big 12 for A&M.
At least that's what I hope. Maybe this Marinatto guy realizes that having crazy conference geography and odd numbers of teams isn't good for the sport.
Edit: Another fleeting thought that I had - I'd gladly trade Arkansas to the Big 12 for A&M.
You make a good point, and you even see that now with the 12 team league and the two divisions.
We rotate teams in the East, outside of the one permanent for football. For basketball, you play your division twice and the others once. For baseball, the only teams that rotate off every few years is a team from the other division.
So you already play some members significantly more than others. Familiarity breeds contempt, or in this case rivalries. If you were to ask all the SEC fans to list 1-11 the teams in the league they hate the most, most of them would have the teams from their division at the top, with exceptions of traditional rivalries like UT-Bama, Georgia-Auburn that take precedent over many of the division rivals.
Personally, I hate the other 5 West schools way more than the East schools already, just because we don't cross paths with them as often. If you expand to 14, 16, or 20, you'll really water down the rivalries. If we did go to 20 teams, I guarantee it would turn into basically two 10 team leagues. We'd feel like we were a part of our 10 team league, but we would feel more like cousins with the other half of the league than actual sharing members.
Something that hasn't been discussed is the fact that a 16 team league is not unprecedented. The WAC was a 16 team league for a few years before 8 of the schools chose to split off and create the MWC. I think it would be wise for Slive and his cronies to people that were involved in that league to get an idea what the issues were. I felt like it was way too big at the time. Granted, it wasn't a power conference, which made it easier to collapse, but I think the 16 team model is risky. That said, I also think it's risky to not make a move and get left behind in the movement.
I'd like to see the NCAA change the rules so that 16 team leagues could have a 2 round championship playoff for the conference title. If they'd do that, you could split the league into 4 divisions, essentially like the NFC and AFC and have each division winner fight it out. That would help with the issue of schedule rotation, because you'd only have 3 permanent opponents and could rotate the other 5 or 6 slots on the conference slate.
We rotate teams in the East, outside of the one permanent for football. For basketball, you play your division twice and the others once. For baseball, the only teams that rotate off every few years is a team from the other division.
So you already play some members significantly more than others. Familiarity breeds contempt, or in this case rivalries. If you were to ask all the SEC fans to list 1-11 the teams in the league they hate the most, most of them would have the teams from their division at the top, with exceptions of traditional rivalries like UT-Bama, Georgia-Auburn that take precedent over many of the division rivals.
Personally, I hate the other 5 West schools way more than the East schools already, just because we don't cross paths with them as often. If you expand to 14, 16, or 20, you'll really water down the rivalries. If we did go to 20 teams, I guarantee it would turn into basically two 10 team leagues. We'd feel like we were a part of our 10 team league, but we would feel more like cousins with the other half of the league than actual sharing members.
Something that hasn't been discussed is the fact that a 16 team league is not unprecedented. The WAC was a 16 team league for a few years before 8 of the schools chose to split off and create the MWC. I think it would be wise for Slive and his cronies to people that were involved in that league to get an idea what the issues were. I felt like it was way too big at the time. Granted, it wasn't a power conference, which made it easier to collapse, but I think the 16 team model is risky. That said, I also think it's risky to not make a move and get left behind in the movement.
I'd like to see the NCAA change the rules so that 16 team leagues could have a 2 round championship playoff for the conference title. If they'd do that, you could split the league into 4 divisions, essentially like the NFC and AFC and have each division winner fight it out. That would help with the issue of schedule rotation, because you'd only have 3 permanent opponents and could rotate the other 5 or 6 slots on the conference slate.
i've seen a few people talking about a 4 division sec if we went to 16 teams<div>
</div><div>west: ark, a&m (?), mizzou (?), lsu</div><div>south: msu, ole miss, bama, aub</div><div>east: fla, uga, f$u (?), vandy (more for competitive reasons)</div><div>north: tenn, ky, usc, vt (?)</div><div>
</div><div>you could switch vandy and usc if you wished. and obviously we wouldn't be able to really parcel it up till we knew who the new teams were. for now i just plugged in the 4 most commonly mentioned programs.</div><div>
</div><div>you'd play your 3 intradivisional rivals yearly (3 conf games), rotate an entire division every 2 years (4 conf games), and have 2 floater games that rotated among the rest of the teams and/or accounted for rivalries like tenn-bama, uga-aub, etc. (2 conf games), for a total of 9 conf games.</div>
</div><div>west: ark, a&m (?), mizzou (?), lsu</div><div>south: msu, ole miss, bama, aub</div><div>east: fla, uga, f$u (?), vandy (more for competitive reasons)</div><div>north: tenn, ky, usc, vt (?)</div><div>
</div><div>you could switch vandy and usc if you wished. and obviously we wouldn't be able to really parcel it up till we knew who the new teams were. for now i just plugged in the 4 most commonly mentioned programs.</div><div>
</div><div>you'd play your 3 intradivisional rivals yearly (3 conf games), rotate an entire division every 2 years (4 conf games), and have 2 floater games that rotated among the rest of the teams and/or accounted for rivalries like tenn-bama, uga-aub, etc. (2 conf games), for a total of 9 conf games.</div>
For that to work though, you'd have to have the NCAA change its by-laws to allow a 2 week championship playoff.
Not sure if that will happen, but it would be good to see that happen.
I like your thought of rotating an entire division, matching up say the West and South and then the East and North or something like that, to keep the schedule balanced.
It would really be unfair if you did a full rotation with the other 5 or 6 games so that one team could end up with Vandy, UK, Missouri, South Carolina, and Arkansas one year while another could end up with Florida, Georgia, Virginia Tech, LSU, and Tennessee or something like that competing for the same division title.
If you had 7 games that were either in your division or against the same foes the rest of your division plays with only 2 floaters, that balances the schedules much better.
ETA: I see this going one of two ways in terms of future scheduling. Whether you end up with three 20 team leagues or four 16 team leagues, I could see those leagues breaking off and creating their own division, in which case the majority of your non-conference games would be against teams from those other leagues, or if the other leagues get to continue to be D-1, I envision 9 or 10 game conference schedules and virtually no one playing major OOC opponents outside of their league.
It could either create a lot more intra-regional games if the leagues break off and basically secede, or it could be the virtual end of the intra-regional games we typically see.
Not sure if that will happen, but it would be good to see that happen.
I like your thought of rotating an entire division, matching up say the West and South and then the East and North or something like that, to keep the schedule balanced.
It would really be unfair if you did a full rotation with the other 5 or 6 games so that one team could end up with Vandy, UK, Missouri, South Carolina, and Arkansas one year while another could end up with Florida, Georgia, Virginia Tech, LSU, and Tennessee or something like that competing for the same division title.
If you had 7 games that were either in your division or against the same foes the rest of your division plays with only 2 floaters, that balances the schedules much better.
ETA: I see this going one of two ways in terms of future scheduling. Whether you end up with three 20 team leagues or four 16 team leagues, I could see those leagues breaking off and creating their own division, in which case the majority of your non-conference games would be against teams from those other leagues, or if the other leagues get to continue to be D-1, I envision 9 or 10 game conference schedules and virtually no one playing major OOC opponents outside of their league.
It could either create a lot more intra-regional games if the leagues break off and basically secede, or it could be the virtual end of the intra-regional games we typically see.
Each year you'd have 2 divisions with each division made up of 2 pods. You'd rotate which pods were assigned to which divisions based on the scheduling rotation. You'd wind up with each team playing the other 3 teams in their pod, plus all 4 teams from the other pod in the divison, plus 1 team from each of the other 2 pods. The NCAA will NEVER allow a 4-team conference playoff. And really, the conferences wouldn't want one anyway. Way too much chance of a 5-4 team pulling off a big upset and costing the conference a BCS bid. The NCAA never really intened for I-A schools to even have a championship game. That was an old obscure rule that had been put in for some Div. III conference a long time ago. In the late 80s someone in the SEC office came across the rule and realized that if the SEC expanded it could hold a championship game that would be like another major bowl. The SEC really kind of pulled one over on the NCAA on that, and by the time the NCAA realized it there wasn't much they could do.
Would it work for future superconferences or people will just have to get accustomed to it because money is involved?
But the other option is to basically have 2 almost completely separate conferences which to me is even worse. One other option might be to use the 4 pods for scheduling but group the whole conference together for standings purposes and just have the top 2 play for the title. Not sure if the NCAA would allow a championship game without divisions and the standings would look like the EPL soccer standings. 16 teams in one group is a lot. The simple fact is, once you get more than 12 teams a conference starts to get real unwieldy real fast.