Bill Connelly's B10 Schedule Revamp
I posted this in the UV thread, but thought it might merit it's own topic.
Bill Connelly just did the same exercise for the B10 that he did for the SEC (which inspired Brian's UV post). Similar overall results, with the same outcome for Michigan's three annual games. Worth a read:
I think we would always get boned with this sort of schedule, though if Sparty regresses to the mean over time it might not be so bad. I'd rather keep the divisions so our biggest rivals have to go down roughly the same road as us to Indy.
he doesn't even have Rutgers as one of our rivals /s
He did cover it with a smarmy comment, though:
"We do regret not making space to protect the burgeoning blood feud between Michigan and Rutgers, two of the country's most spirited antagonists."
I think Rutgers should steal Jim Harbaugh's hat and challenge Michigan to "come take it back." They would never see the irony that their most prized trophy is the sweat off of Harbaugh's forehead.
At least he doesn't have us playing Ohio and STAEE on the road in the same year.
Hypothetically, though, if ND were to ever join, would they accept playing in the Western markets more often than the EasternDoubtful. I can see MSU being the team that gets bumped in favor of ND, fueling Sparty's cries of "disrespeckt" for decades to come. In reality, if ND were to join, another complete realignment is probably in the offing.
want to be in the West originally? Or am I remembering wrong?
You're right though. If ND ever joins they're going to be in the East or there will be a complete realignment. No way would those drunken Irish midgets agree to being stuck in the West with the Big 10's basement dwellers.
The did everything in their power to be opposite UM & tOSU.
Makes perfect sense. Does not affect Michigan (or anyone else) in any meaningful way. There's no tradition to these divisions. Scrap them like the Leaders/Legends and balance this thing out.
I think it puts Michigan in an unfair compromise of being tied to playing 2 of the 4 best programs over the last 10 years every single season.
I think it makes more sense to have 1 protected game (Sparty can play Penn State every year). Go to 10 conference games, spread across 13 teams. You would have less issues with competitive balance of schedules and guarantee playing every team 3 out of 5 years and playing most 3 out of 4 years.
If PSU returns to a power (or even a quasi-power) then the set of three rivals for M, MSU, OSU, and PSU looks a lot better.
Really, that's all. Poor damn Rutgers, what with its shitty rivals (IU, Maryland and Purdue*), losing its prized NJ recruits to ... everyone, and its one-sided romance with OSU.
*Presumably because those were the last girls at the bar 'round about 2 a.m. when Connelly was pairing up teams.
Bill Connelly may have accidentally created a potential snuff film legend - something that could win the festivals for this that do exist - by pairing up Purdue and Rutgers though. I can't imagine airing that game on anything but Cinemax, and even then only after 10 PM and only if we lie a bit about the main players to the network first.
screw noter dame. that pompous collection of dickheads has had the chance to join the B10 repeatedly over the years. now in an era of 'mega-conferences' they're left twisting in the wind alongside BYU ...screw 'em. they'd never join the B10 without conditions and loopholes (see their ACC membership) and don't deserve our conference.
They wanted to join several times in the past, badly.
However, another set of pompous dickheads prevented them from joining.
The same pompous dickheads who tried to prevent Michigan State from joining the Big Ten.
It's a reasonable breakdown. I also think that expecting MSU to continue to be a top-10 program is probably a bit optimistic; this is a program that made a great hire in Dantonio but already some of the cracks are showing and I'm assuming that a historically-mediocre team isn't assumed to continue this run especially when it is surrounded by far more tradition-rich programs. So in that sense, this breaks down sort of how you'd like it; a major, national-importance game against OSU every year, a locally important, sometimes nationally relevant game against MSU, and then a feisty matchup with Minny that will likely continue to be one-sided.
Instead of all this buisiness about maintaining rival(s), which always leads to some teams getting more favorable schedules than others, how about just treating each team as A, B, C, D, etc and then just going...
Week 1:
A vs B
C vs D
E vs F
etc
Week 2
A vs C
B vs D
etc
Every team plays every other team in a huge, systematic cycle that repeats itself eventually. If you treat this as a permutation instead of a combination (i.e. that schedule order matters), then this cycle could be on the order of 30 years or so, but each team will of course play every other team every other year at least. The only varying factor over 30-ish years would be whose home vs whose away and the order of the schedule.
Granted, this would mean that you wouldn't necessarily play your rival every year, but... dare I say it... so what? Part of the intrigue of rivals, to me anyway, is that they form on their own. They are not forced.
At least with this method the schedules are as even as they can be accross all teams. Doing this to its purest form also necessitates getting rid of divisions, too. The top 2 teams every year would play for the title, regardless of whether they previously played each other or not.
EDIT: You could always tweak this whereby if you do play someone you consider a "rival", then that game is always last on both team's schedules. This means it's possible to have some years without a UM vs. OSU game, but when it does happen (which would be most years, given 9 conf games and 12 Big Ten teams) it would always be the last game.
Sure, let's just NOT play OSU every year. That will go over well.
Meh. To me, though, it makes the games you do play all the more special.
Same reason I was happy to see the Notre Dame series end for a short time. I'd rather see more varied (and competitively consistent) schedules.
I think the NFL does scheduling the way I'm suggesting? Not positive though.
EDIT: Not quite - the NFL has divisions after all. But they may do this method for scheduling teams outside of a given team's divisional/conference.
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are not the same thing. ND is a great rival and I can't wait to have them back on the schedule. But as much as I hate them, ND and Michigan are like two sides of the same coin. Both are excellent schools that have more in common than they would care to admit.
OSU (and all of Ohio for that matter) is Satan incarnate. When we play OSU it is a battle of good v's evil. That battle must be fought every year until the sun explodes.
You know - The Game is more or less considered the Big Ten Championship Game (TM), historically speaking anyway. Why not treat it as such? Put the two teams in opposing divisions and let them meet in the Championship Game every year.
I know this is ridiculous and won't happen. I'm not sure how I would feel about not having the rivalry every year. At the same time, I'm not a fan of the disparity between the two divisions and can't see a way out of it with Michigan and tOSU in the same one.
has us playing Fucking Rutgers less.
In his model, in Year 3, Michigan plays all 9 of the other teams that made up the Big 10 (when there were actually 10)!
Completely misread the title and was sad to discover this man had nothing to do with scheduling
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Aren't we their main rival?
i read some of the pipe dream replies of ND and was gonna ignore this, then took a chance on the article...
i definitely would prefer not playing pedo st, indiana, rutgers, maryland every year. At the least, no more often than iowa, wisconsin etc. My concern with such a large 'division' would be 3-4 way ties and possibly more unbalanced schedules. Now, what helps is our division competition has to play ohio state/mich st too, but with protected rivalry + random 7 games, could be very out of whack. That's the problem with huge conferences
But i would take his idea over the current setup just because the divisions are unfixable
Some teams can't justify having three rivals.
I care about playing Ohio State and Michigan State every year. We need to play them, we need to beat them, and I hope it's normalized that both teams aren't away or home on the same year. Sure, the Little Brown Jug is cute. Yes, we've lost to Maryland and Rutgers recently and these wrongs must be righted. I absolutely want to play Wisconsin more often.
But I really only care about OSU and MSU, getting ND back in the fold, and scheduling some strong OOC opponents. Playing Minnesota or Rutgers every year is less important than a coin flip to me.
That said, I can't see how the Purdue/Indiana/Northwestern/Illinois or the Minnesota/Nebraska/Iowa/Wisconsin blocks are broken up. Each of those teams deserves those three rivals, as they are geographic matches and have relate strengthwise historically.
The roommate switch seems less arbitrary to me.