B1G Crossover Scheduling

there is no universe that OSU skipping out on the 3 best teams in the West (2 of which are perennial favorites i.e. predictable) isnt obviously unfair and in need of altering.

you don't need a better algorithm or dynamic scheduling to fix this...you just need common sense and some backbone. 

I am personally in favor of all conferences shrinking to ten teams (sorry PSU, Rutgers, Maryland, Nebraska) and playing every team in the conference. You could eliminate the need of conference championship games. This would allow more time to expand the playoffs. This will never happen however.

Every other conference with more than ten teams manages to play crossover games that count. Change that rule and the chances that the whiners will whine about something else is 100%. 

If you want to change the system, going to one with fewer meaningful games is going backwards.  

The basic flaw in all attempts to try to achieve "fairness" or "parity" or "consistency" is that no one in charge of college football gives a rat's ass about any of these things.  The only thing the NCAA or the BIG10 care about is maximizing revenue. It is the same as thinking Mitch McConnell cares about what Joe Biden thinks of him.  He doesn't, so preparing ideas for him to demonstrate that he does is a fool's errand.  

We have played at ND 3x since 2011.

We have played at Nebraska 1x since they joined in 2011.

Something is off.

The only way to ensure parity is get rid of divisions, have a rotating schedule, and let the top two winning percentages play in the conference championship.  But, the rivalries blah, blah, blah.  So, it will never happen.  Unfortunately our biggest rivalry is with the best team in the conference plus everyone else on earth so whoa is us.

The problem is the divisions themselves.  Get rid of them and the BTCG and go back to each team having two protected rivalries, so that everyone else in the league can rotate on and off the schedule.  If two teams share the league title, great.  That's how it was before 2011 and we survived just fine.

Let's face it the B1G scheduling is not about parity.  There are two objectives:

1. Maximize TV revenue
2. Protect its strongest potential playoff team (OSU)

Giving OSU Nebraska at home and Illinois away is just such a sham in regards to cross-over parity as those are the two weakest teams in the West.  Just a joke.  Even Urban Meyer said the same thing on TV.  I hope it comes back to bite them in the ass relative to SOS and their CFP qualification.  

Kevin Warren is not the commissioner for the entire Big Ten. When it is football season he is the commissioner for OSU. When it is basketball season he is commissioner for Staee. Just like Delany. 

As long as they didn't put Illinois back on ours, we good  ;)

I agree that it doesn't make sense to use all B1G games to determine the winner of the division since the schedules can be so different. I think we'd get into tie-breakers a lot more if we only used division games, though. I'd like to see the schedules change every year with the goal of giving each team a similar out-of-division experience (one bad team and one good team, or two average teams) as much as possible. Then performance in those games could possibly be used as a tie-breaker in the event two teams have the same divisional record.

B1G should drop two teams, and play an 11-game conference schedule plus a rematch week - 1v2, 3v4, 5v6, etc. to name the B1G champion/set the final standings. This makes bowl games interesting again, because it'd be the only time of year that the B1G plays out of conference. 

I've always been a fan of the floating divisions idea. Crossover games should be less important because the division each year is based on the prior year results. Randomness should even things out.

And takeaway the ability for the B1G to manipulate Michigan's schedule?

Hey Sleepy, thanks for linking to my diary.  Glad to see that research get brought up in this discussion. 

I think what poster ESC25419 has linked to in his comment above with the pods is the best idea for creating schedule parity that I've seen so far. (Edit: and now that I've posted this, what Seth just mentioned in the comment above mine).  That means it will probably be adopted and go into effect right before OSU is due to get their six year crossover with Wisconsin wiping out what would be a difficult series for them.  

I see a lot of people referencing the divisions as the reason for sos disparities.  While that probably is the case on the whole for the conference, it is not so for OSU and Michigan.  I just did a quick look at the data, and the schedule disparity between us and OSU was actually worse from '90 to '10 than it has been since the divisions came into play in '11 to the present.  UM's opponent SRS was .9 points higher than OSU's from '90-'10 (4.91-4.01) and .5 points higher from '11-present (4.29-3.79).  Opponent win % is similar; 3.4% higher from '90-'10 (49.6%-46.2%) and 2.8% higher from '11-present (48.3%-45.5%).  It seems like it's one sided luck that has to even out at some point right?  Right?  

Simple solution. Bring back Leaders and Legends. Any takers?

It's actually pretty simple, especially now when you have preseason rankings.

There's no excuse not to have a more balanced crossover schedule. 

How about this?

"What if Division winners were determined only by a team's record within their division?  What's the downside?"