rams80

So...um....World War Three seems to have erupted between the WAC and MWC.

At the moment:

BYU football: Independent

BYU everything else: WAC

Fresno State: MWC

Colorado State: Invited to MWC

Nevada-Reno: MWC

Boise State: Pondering Options

TCU: Killed a man with a trident.

WAC: Getting hammered and frantically looking at the Sun Belt, Conference USA, and Division I-AA

Everyone Else: Wonder WTF precisely happened in the last 72 hours to send everything higgledy-piggledy and praying there's a home left when the ICBMs fall.

EDIT: Updated for Nevada move. Please note you need 8 programs to exist as a football conference and the WAC is currently below that.

I'm a little confused -- I was just responding to "Most other conferences do use the divisions though" (since that's not totally true). I think I'm missing your point.

For example, The Big XII basketball schedule calls for each team to have a home-and-home with its division mates, and play one game against each team in other division.

I'd rather be able to remember who division foes are kthxbye. The problem with ACC and this alignment is that you could shuffle the lineup annually and nobody would know the difference.

EDIT-Also, the Big Ten plays more than football. Michigan State and (sometimes) Illinois aside, the Land Division is one craptacular basketball division.

Well the Big Ten doesn't have to use the division in the other sports. The ACC only uses theirs in football, basketball is just a single table. But you do have a point. I have no idea what the ACC's divisions are for football. That may have something to do though, with the fact that I slowly stopped watching the conference after expansion.

Most other conferences do use the divisions though. The fact that the ACC doesn't probably stands as further testament to the patent ridiculousness of their divisional setup.

Not really, though. Of all FBS conferences that use divisions, only the SEC and MAC use them for basketball. The ACC, Big XII, and Conference USA lose the divisions for basketball.

EDIT: The CAA and SWAC also lose them for basketball, while the Sun Belt, Southern, and Southland only use divisions for basketball.

I should have made myself clearer. The divisions are used for scheduling purposes.

I'd rather be able to remember who division foes are kthxbye. The problem with ACC and this alignment is that you could shuffle the lineup annually and nobody would know the difference.

EDIT-Also, the Big Ten plays more than football. Michigan State and (sometimes) Illinois aside, the Land Division is one craptacular basketball division.

Well the Big Ten doesn't have to use the division in the other sports. The ACC only uses theirs in football, basketball is just a single table. But you do have a point. I have no idea what the ACC's divisions are for football. That may have something to do though, with the fact that I slowly stopped watching the conference after expansion.

Most other conferences do use the divisions though. The fact that the ACC doesn't probably stands as further testament to the patent ridiculousness of their divisional setup.

Wait, so is the Lakes Division.

Presently it is, but the Lakes Division has a lot of the historic Big Ten powerhouses, so would likely get better once Indiana and Michigan dig out from the rubble.

Michigan's not really a traditional hoops power. They just had one pretty spectacular run. Michigan State and Illinois are arguably the strongest basketball programs in the conference. Iowa is solid at basketball (plenty of deep NCAA runs in their history and two conference tourney championships this decade), and Minnesota is passionate and usually competitive.

I'm not quite sure what the frame of reference here is, because historically Indiana is far stronger than Illinois, and Purdue is roughly similar, Minnesota was the team with the one spectacular (if since vacated) run, Iowa scuffled around with mostly early tournament flameouts before cratering over the last 2-3 decades, while Wisconsin has been on the opposite trajectory. Also, Ohio State hasn't exactly been terrible either. Also, Penn State and Nebraska have been awful at basketball under any frame of reference. Incidently, if we ignore vacations, Michigan has more NCAA Final Four Births (6) than Illinois (5) and 1 National Title and 4 Runner's up to no National Titles and 1 Runner Up.

Wait, so is the Lakes Division.

Presently it is, but the Lakes Division has a lot of the historic Big Ten powerhouses, so would likely get better once Indiana and Michigan dig out from the rubble.

Aha! I have figured out how the Big Ten alignment should work. It keeps things balanced in football (which is pretty much impossible to do with a straight geographic model), somewhat balanced in basketball (which is pretty much irrelevant, but whatever) and preserves traditional rivalries - either by keeping rivals in like divisions or designating that they are required to play each other every season.

Since the conference is going to go to a 9-game schedule with the expansion, we can afford to assign two annual cross-divisional foes for half the teams to help with competitive balance and traditional or potential rivalries. Only Penn State will be really geographically isolated from their divisional opponents, but they always have been since joining anyway. Plus, this keeps them from having to be in a conference with U-M and OSU so they should be happy.

Lakes Division ...............Annual rival(s)

Michigan ....................Nebraska, Michigan State

Ohio State ..................Penn State, Illinois

Wisconsin ...................Iowa, Minnesota

Purdue ......................Penn State

Indiana .....................Michigan State

Northwestern ................Illinois

Land Division

Penn State .................Ohio State, Purdue

Nebraska ...................Michigan

Iowa .......................Wisconsin

Illinois ...................Ohio State, Northwestern

Michigan State .............Michigan, Indiana

Minnesota ..................Wisconsin

I'd rather be able to remember who division foes are kthxbye. The problem with ACC and this alignment is that you could shuffle the lineup annually and nobody would know the difference.

EDIT-Also, the Big Ten plays more than football. Michigan State and (sometimes) Illinois aside, the Land Division is one craptacular basketball division.

If and when the superconference era comes, they had better scrap the BCS with it. The superconferences would suck all the fun out of the BCS.

The BCS sucks all the fun out of itself.

There's also nowhere to park, at least reasonably and affordably.

FieldTurf is no panacea for Soldier Field's ills. If the Park District installed FieldTurf, they'd still manage to half-ass that too. Watch, they'd forget to install a drainage system so that there are inches of standing water that nobody would know how to get rid of. If the Redskins can ask for another new stadium because 91,000 seats with ample parking doesn't cut it, the Bears should be able to play the same card with 61,000 seats and no parking. I don't care if that means they play in Itasca or something. What a dump.

Why does the NFL's second largest market, with a slavishly devoted fanbase, have its smallest stadium by capacity?

Except for the years the Rays finish in the top 2 in the AL East. And the years that 2 of Minnesota, Chicago, and Detroit are super good. And having 2 spots for 28 teams doesn't strike me as fair.

It's a spambot.

Playing around with the Big Ten. Schedule includes divisional Round Robin, and 1 protected out of division rival

East West

Penn State ---- Nebraska

Ohio State ---- Iowa

Michigan ---- Michigan State

Indiana ---- Wisconsin

Purdue ---- Minnesota

Illinois ---- Northwestern

Pretty much a geographic split, only Illinois and Michigan State trade places.

Rationales for some of the decisions: I could seriously see Indiana insisting that one "Red" team play at Bloomington annually (those who have ever followed IU football know what I'm talking about). Putting Penn State and Nebraska in a Division, especially in what would likely be the "West" Division, creates undue logistical stress for Penn State and also puts your two worst basketball programs in the same division. The imbalance only gets worse if you think of Northwestern.

The Illinois-Northwestern "rivalry" is probably the least intense major college in state rivalry and can be readily sacrificed. By the same token, Michigan-Michigan State is much less significant to the conference than Michigan-Ohio State, and honestly, anything that puts an end to the Land Grant Trophy's annual contesting is a good thing.

2-On expansion, Dan Beebe said the following: "At this point in time, and based upon all the feedback from our membership, it's dead on both levels. The first level is there's no interest in looking at expansion. The second level is ? that in the remote chance we would consider expansion and that would be a few years in the future ? there seems to be no interest and really no motivation to look at expansion with institutions that are already within the five-state region."

"Anyway, expansion is pointless because Texas will be pulling the rug out from under this Conference in 2-3 years anyway." Beebe continued.

they could go the route of the ACC, the other coastal conference, and align their divisions with no rhyme or reason whatsoever.

Or they could keep their travel pairs together, have some geographic rhyme and reason, and remember that nobody remembers who is in a given ACC Division.

New Pac-12 division alignment?

PAC-12 NORTH

California

Oregon

Oregon State

Stanford

Washington

Washington State

PAC-12 SOUTH

Arizona

Arizona State

Colorado

UCLA

USC

Utah

However, I could see Colorado/Utah being swapped for Cal/Stanford to keep the California rivalries intact.

Maybe an Eastern/Western:

Eastern:

Colorado

Utah

AZ State

Arizona

Wash St

Wash

Western:

Oregon

Oregon St

Stanford

Cal

USC

UCLA

I'm pretty sure USC and UCLA are the furthest east of the old Pac 8 Schools. Or at least the easternmost "travel pair"

You know, the Big East is being extremely proactive in all this expansion stuff.....

http://www.clickorlando.com/knights/23927913/detail.html

http://ncaafootball.fanhouse.com/2010/06/16/big-east-commissioner-john-marinatto-thanks-big-12-with-roses/

This story blew up on some USF forums I visited yesterday. Problem is, there really has been no proof so far. Memphis is a good choice, probably the best "available" option, "available" in the sense that they'd probably accept. Central FL on the other hand I'm semi-questionable on. I know, I may sound biased as a USF fan, but I really think there are some better options to make a splash before inviting Central FL (Maryland, TCU, E. Carolina, Houston, Navy, Army - all are extreme stretches, but the worst they can say is NO)

Considering the basketball schools' insistence on preserving the Big East's "delicate balance" I'll believe this when I see it.

The Big East has some issues as they have only eight teams in football, but also need to protect the interest of the basketball schools. In addition, they have TV contracts all over the place with ESPN/ABC family, CBS, CBS college, and SNY.

Overall, former NFL commissioner Paul Tagliabue, who is now a consultant for the Big East explained their issues pretty well days following his hire.

"Our assumption right now is, No. 1, we've got 16 members and we're looking at the common and collective interest of those 16 members.

No. 2, the fundamentals are changing, technology is changing, the network arrangements are changing, the business models underlying those network arrangements are changing. Congress is going to be interested in all of this and so, within that kind of a framework, the [No. 3] assumption is, you're a hell of a lot better being proactive in shaping the future rather than reactive and just having it delivered to you by somebody else.

You have 11 members of the Big East in nine of the top 30 or 35 largest media markets. You're talking about a section of the country which is 25 percent of the households in the country when you have schools in New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, Washington, Pittsburgh, you have to put Hartford in there, which picks up a big chunk of New England. Then you say, OK we have those markets, how do we develop our product?"

By jettisoning some of the low performers or make enough threatening comments about them to get an improvement. DePaul hasn't done anything to give you Chicago and is a failure in every sense of the word, St. John's and Seton Hall seem very much content to rest on past and rapidly fading laurels, and what, precisely, has Providence done since the Reagan Administration to justify their death grip on the league Presidency?

The Pac-10 goes for Texas and Oklahoma and gets Colorado and Utah? That's like going out for champaigne and coming home with flat diet Sprite.

Did the conference get some magic beans too?

Considering how they've pretty much done irreparable damage to the Big XII, scored the Denver and Salt Lake City markets, and set up the money-winning Conference Championship Game, I think they got the champagne they were looking for. They achieved all of their goals with expansion, and set things up to nab Texas and Oklahoma in the future when Texas gets their beloved TV channel running and then proceeds to immediately blow up the Big XII Conference.

AGREED, I would've preferred Hawaii http://bleacherreport.com/articles/407042-the-pac-10-would-be-wise-to-add-hawaii-not-utah-as-12. What about colorado state for the big 12?

Travel hurts for adding Hawaii (especially since there is no travel partner for them), not enough people live in the islands to make it worth while financially, oh...and the athletic department is one of the most debt-ridden in the country. That's why anybody with greater journalistic integrity than the bleacher report (read "everybody") immediately discounted Hawaii is a possible add for the Pac 10.

Just because you bitchmade the only BCS Bowl team that *counts years back* 2007 Hawaii could have put up a fight against does not mean you could have beaten another one of those unbeatens. USC would have murdered your defense, Oklahoma would probably do fairly well against you, and Utah's offense never had to confront anything approaching Auburn's defense, while also likely being overwhelmed by the Auburn offense.

Also-Auburn under Tuberville seemed to do better than anyone against Urban Meyer's Florida teams.

Thanks for clearing that up for me. I'm glad you know what would have happened.

USC dropped 55 points on an elite Oklahoma team. And USC's strength was its defense. You might have been competitive against Oklahoma. Auburn wouldn't become a blowout, but it still be a solid Auburn victory and, again, Tommy Tuberville never lost to Urban Meyer in the SEC. There's no way in hell you or any team beats that USC team however.

Considering the basketball schools' insistence on preserving the Big East's "delicate balance" I'll believe this when I see it.

Just because you bitchmade the only BCS Bowl team that *counts years back* 2007 Hawaii could have put up a fight against does not mean you could have beaten another one of those unbeatens. USC would have murdered your defense, Oklahoma would probably do fairly well against you, and Utah's offense never had to confront anything approaching Auburn's defense, while also likely being overwhelmed by the Auburn offense.

Also-Auburn under Tuberville seemed to do better than anyone against Urban Meyer's Florida teams.

They have an argument for 2007. Not for 2004. And barring them being on the good side of the annual "random inexplicable USC upset conference loss"^TM, they wouldn't be in a position to be considered either.

Look, this is a good move for Utah, but let's not pretend being in the MWC was utter crap for them either. And this is also better news for the research arm than the football team.

Except the Utes haven't exactly been overlooked....

What was illegitimate about the Mountain West?

His purported deal does far more than double the Big Twelve's money. And the ACC hadn't lost any teams-let alone their 3rd largest market and one of their nationally prominent flagships. Those losses also weaken the earning potential of any future Big XII Network, because the subscriber footprint just lost two states.

Turner and Versus weren't going to go that far over the top for a highly regionalized Conference in the Great Plains that has a footprint of just Iowa, Missouri, Kansas, Oklahoma, and Texas-especially when the biggest school/market/what have you is planning on launching its own network.