I'm 50/50 on the matter it was the Ohio State game last year that cost us from winning the west but beating Wisconsin would of helped too.
Should cross over divisional games be counted towards your conference record?
- Thread starter Cam82huskers
- Start date
Yes, there still conference games maybe the B1G should have not added so many teams to balance it out better.
So if the Huskers' loss to Ohio State didn't count, neither would Wisconsin's loss to Michigan. So either way, NU needed to beat Wisconsin to be the division winner, right?
Not really following the logic of how the loss to Ohio State had any more impact than the other two losses.
Not really following the logic of how the loss to Ohio State had any more impact than the other two losses.
Absolutely they should count. If they didn't, you could have a situation where one team goes 6-3 in conference play, losing all of their crossover games but winning all of their divisional games and thus wins the division over a team that went 8-1, winning all of their crossover games and losing just one divisional game. Divisional games should not count that much more than crossover games.
I'm torn on the issue of whether to count divisional games. The main reason is the variability in crossover opponent strength from year to year and from team to team. The conference is too big imo.
A coworker and I were having this conversation with regard to the NFL. A few years ago, the Raiders went undefeated in their division, but 8-8 overall and missed the playoffs. They were clearly the best team among that division, but struggled against teams in other divisions. If you want to reward the best team in a vacuum, you just count division games. If you want to have more competitive and intriguing postseason games, you count all games.
Maybe we should just do away with divisions and have a random draw for opponents?
A coworker and I were having this conversation with regard to the NFL. A few years ago, the Raiders went undefeated in their division, but 8-8 overall and missed the playoffs. They were clearly the best team among that division, but struggled against teams in other divisions. If you want to reward the best team in a vacuum, you just count division games. If you want to have more competitive and intriguing postseason games, you count all games.
Maybe we should just do away with divisions and have a random draw for opponents?
You mean there's no scenario in which we can lose to Wisconsin, get boat raced by Iowa and still win the division? The world really is out to get our beloved Huskers.
I can't help but lump this kind of thinking into the "Everybody's a winner and should get a trophy" kind of thinking. Things I've recently read on this site....Playoffs should be expanded because we aren't good enough to make it as it is with just 4 teams. We don't want our losses to Michigan and OSU to count. What next? We get to cancel/forfeit one game a year and not have it count towards our record? How about we just get better?
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I guess I'm in the minority here. I just think the best team should go to the championship game and it seems to generally work out that way. But there probably will come a time when someone wins their division over a better team simply because they had a cake walk with their cross division games. Honestly, if Whisky beat us by 40 points but we won the division simply because we played Rutgers, Indy &Maryland while Whisky played OSU, Mich &PSU, I wouldn't feel right about it.
Oh well though, it is what it is so no sense fussing about it now.
Oh well though, it is what it is so no sense fussing about it now.