Nine-Game conference schedule coming in 2017?

[knapplc]

Big Ten 9-game schedule coming
With Big Ten Conference staging its annual kickoff luncheon and media days later this week in Chicago, playing nine conference games is sure to be a topic of discussion. It’s always been a matter of when, not if the conference would add one more league game to the schedule.

“We were told to clear the calendar from 2017 and we’ve done that,” Purdue athletic director Morgan Burke said Monday morning.

When the Big Ten moves to a nine-game schedule, Burke doesn’t anticipate

another crossover divisional game.

“That hasn’t been talked about,” Burke said of adding a second crossover game. “They’ll speed up the (schedule rotation).”

Instead of playing three games against the other division, teams would play four in addition to the five within the division.

 

[Blaze1up]

Drop the division 2 game then add a noncon game from the majority. We should have a rival conference game, Big XII would be cool.

 

[Lyons in the Sea of Red.]

Please no. 9 conference games would be brutal.

 

[Caven]

9 conference games becomes a requirement if you go to 16 teams. Just saying

 

[kchusker_chris]

Please no. 9 conference games would be brutal.

It would just make this years schedule occur a little more frequently. We already play 7 of the top 8 teams. I don't see how adding a game against Illinois, Indianna, or Purdue would make this year's schedule any more difficult.

9 conference games becomes a requirement if you go to 16 teams. Just saying

why is that? 7 divisional and 1 rotating = 8. You wouldn't play teams in the other division very often - but you'd have 7 other teams in your own division so who cares.

 

[knapplc]

9 conference games becomes a requirement if you go to 16 teams. Just saying

why is that? 7 divisional and 1 rotating = 8. You wouldn't play teams in the other division very often - but you'd have 7 other teams in your own division so who cares.

Would they do two divisions or four? Three in-division games, plus two from each of the other divisions, rotating the other two every couple of years. No rivalry games, no dedicated crossovers.

 

[huzkerbob]

First word that comes to mind is OVERKILL. Other than bowl games, how are the fans and media supposed to gauge a team or conference's general strength or talent level if they are scheduling fewer quality opponents in non-conf? I think we may see a lot more Chattanoogas in the future due to coaches not wanting to "load" an already heavy conference schedule with a possible loss to an AQ or even quality mid-major opponent.

And apologies to our new B1G brethren, but I'm personally not all that excited about the guarantee of more Hoosier, Illini, or Boilermaker football. Nope, doesn't even move the needle...

 

[knapplc]

Other than bowl games, how are the fans and media supposed to gauge a team or conference's general strength or talent level if they are scheduling fewer quality opponents in non-conf?

This is a really good point, and brings up something I had a problem with last year in the normally-reliable Sagarin rankings. I exchanged several emails with Sag about the fact that the Pac-10 was such a highly-rated conference in his system last year, and he blamed part of the issue on the fact that they play a nine-game round-robin conference schedule, and only three non-con games. They (apparently) did well enough in their non-con games that, entering the conference schedule, they were all right up top for SOS. They finished last year with all ten of the top ten highest SOS last year - clearly a statistical anomaly, although Sag didn't cop to it.

 

[kchusker_chris]

Yeah - I'd much rather see an agreement between the BCS conferences (or a partnership w/ the Pac10 and/or the SEC) that allows for more non-con games. It would be awesome to see us stay at 8 conference games, and pick up a Pac10 and an SEC game every year to go along with the 2 powder puffs. Imagine getting something like LSU/Oregon on that non-con schedule.

EDIT: The Pac10/B1G and SEC should come together on something like this. It would ensure solid non-con games and also discourage anyone in the 3 conferences from scheduling the Big12/Notre Dame since they'd all already have 2 difficult non-con games. That would cause trouble for both, which sounds good to me

 

[Malth]

Please no. 9 conference games would be brutal.

And then add in a tenth if you make it to the CCG.

I agree that extra conference games take away incentive to play quality non-conf opponents. I'd rather see a different good non-conf opponent every two years than an extra conf game every year. Playing odd teams like VT is one of the highlights of the season, imo.

 

[Caven]

9 conference games becomes a requirement if you go to 16 teams. Just saying

why is that? 7 divisional and 1 rotating = 8. You wouldn't play teams in the other division very often - but you'd have 7 other teams in your own division so who cares.

Would they do two divisions or four? Three in-division games, plus two from each of the other divisions, rotating the other two every couple of years. No rivalry games, no dedicated crossovers.

I would hope they would do four 4 team divisions so that you could end up playing every team in the conference in a 2 on 2 off schedule.

 

[josh]

You know scrap the whole thing and play all 11 in the conference! No more crying from anyone!