What are your thoughts on the 9-conference-game schedule?

more B1G football is better than less B1G football.

I know it's not going to happen, but getting rid of MD, PSU, and (most of all) Rutgers and then adding Pitt (or ND because they are not Rutgers) while keeping the 9 game schedule would be wonderful.

my thought is it wouldn't at all be necessary if we hadn't added shitty rutgers and maryland and booted penn st. I'm also not too thrilled that some teams play 5 on the road and others 5 at home, and i don't see it as much correcting the schedule imbalance that 14 teams caused - some teams will face iowa and wisconsin and others neither

that we could have the pac-12 challenge instead or a 2nd quality OOC opponent

then i realize the pac-12 ran from this first and we've had 2 decent opponents the same season exactly 0 times since 2007. So i guess it doesn't matter and i just look at rutgers as the 9th game...think it's a tossup between them and miami-ohio at home every year

Conference expansion beyond 12 teams is stupid.  The negative consequences are widespread and systemic.  Classic example of the power of money eroding the power of love.

I think it would be perfect ... if we could go back to 10 teams. A true round robin.

It happened to the PAC12 last year.  As a whole, there is going to be more losses by a majority of the conference.  That makes the conference appear weaker than an 8-game schedule played by some.  When the second tier of teams goes from 2 losses to 3 losses it's not good.

As a fan, I like it because in my heirarchy of viewing pleasure seeing 2 Big Ten teams play is at the top.

 

No non conference scheduled game's. Earn the championship game the only one way. Play your conference scheduled opponent's. Only way for a TRUE champion. If they would have been content with 12 teams in then you play a 11game conference schedule and your twelfth game is the championship game. Your non conference game will be your bowl game if you win seven game's in conference . EARN IT. Have TA get rid of Maryland and Rutgers so you avoid a two team's each season of the schedule crap. Keep Maryland have a 12 game conference schedule and play game 13 for the championship. Bye Rutgers. 

For many years, we played three non-conference opponents per season.  We're doing that again.  It was only from 2006-15, and a couple of individual seasons prior to that, that playing four was the rule.  So I don't see that as a big loss.

A game against a conference opponent is most likely going to be more meaningful than whatever that fourth non-con team would have been.  And in a 14-team league, eight games just isn't enough.  (Nine really isn't either, but it's an improvement.)

 

It's too bad there is no preseason exhibition games. If there were you could make some rare, really interesting match ups and just play them out. Michigan at LSU, Clemson at Michigan, etc. The games would not officially count but would serve the purpose of national exposure anyway and assessing what you have. Afterward proceed to play out an 11 or 12 conference game schedule. Big Ten conference champions are, and always were, the champions of the Midwest anyway.

In favor

It lessens the opportunity for games against no-names. The more nonconference games you have, the more opportunity there is for opponents to cancel or ADs to make weird choices or teams to change dramatically (since the contracts are signed so far in advance). If we knew for sure that 2 of the 4 nonconference games would be against Power 5 programs, that would be great, but we all know it wouldn't work out that way.

Better to just play someone from the West. Even if it's a team that's irrelevant on the field, they're still relevant to us because of the conference affiliation.

The biggest problem for me is that this extra game is making it harder to play Notre Dame. But not only this. when we had 4 OOC games, everybody in the conference almost had to play a big time opponent to bolster their schedule. Only having 3 OOC games takes away from that a bit. 

Great if this results in playing Wisconsin, Nebraska, etc., more often, but I also wanted more quality nonconference opponents on the schedule.

Going to a nine-game conference schedule makes perfect sense to do so now that the Big Ten has fourteen members.

First off, as one poster noted above, Michigan played three non-conference opponents starting in 1965, which is when college football and the Big Ten went from nine to ten regular season games (for the record, the three OOC games were at North Carolina, Georgia and California and the team went 2-1 in those contests, 4-6 overall).   That lasted until the 1995 season when the NCAA allowed teams to go from eleven to twelve regular games (the Big Ten did have a round robin schedule from 1981 to 1985 and U-M played just two non-conference games those seasons).  From 1996 onward, the Wolverines had four non-conference games.

Secondly, having nine conference games allows teams to schedule a majority of their games at their home stadiums every season while still keeping at least one home-and-home series.  Because the Big Ten has stopped the practice of scheduling FCS teams in the future (Iowa has two grandfathered in, but no more after that), then it's more likely than not that one of those games will be part of a home-and-home series while the other two will be pay for play scenarios.

The nine conference game setup also accomodates a couple of the conference's objectives.  The primary one is that it presents a better inventory for the networks to bid on when it comes to third tier rights.  Also, by matching up teams between the two divisions based on their relative rankings over a four year time span (which is why Michigan plays Wisconsin each season from 2016 to 2019),  it means better matchups and schedules where top teams from each division play its counterpart at least once (something that Iowa missed on last season).

It's pretty obvious that the Big Ten East schedule is set up to ensure that two of Michigan, Michigan State, Penn State and Ohio State are either at Rutgers or at Maryland each season.   It also appears that the conference still felt that Penn State > Michigan State in the relative pecking order (which was something apparent when the Legends and Leaders Conferences existed).  From that perspective, havng Ohio State and Michigan State on one schedule home/away schedule cycle with Penn State and Indiana on the other makes sense.

In fact, when you do look at the scheduling cycles for Michigan over the next four years, we see Ohio State-Michigan State-Rutgers in one home/road rotation and Penn State-Wisconsin-Maryland-Indiana on another.  That's as "balanced" a home/road rotation you're going to get with a 14-team conference that's in two divisions.

That scheduling cycle also allows Michigan to rotate through the other six teams in the Big Ten East over a three-year time period.  In 2016, it's Illinois and at Iowa.  In 2017, it's Minnesota and at Purdue.  In 2018, it's Nebraska and at Northwestern.  Not surprisingly, 2019 is Iowa and at Illinois.  To it's credit, the Big Ten is also trending towards putting all the inter-divisional games early in the conference schedule so that the intra-divisional games are largely played in October and November.

As far as playing Notre Dame is concerned, the only way to realistically get them on any future schedule is to either have U-M play two Power Five teams the years ND is on it (such as in 2020/1 when Washington and Virginia Tech are both on the schedule) or to take a program off that's currently on the future schedules.  Other teams that U-M is playing home-and-home series are Arkansas (2018/9), UCLA (2022/3), Texas (2024/7) and Oklahoma (2025/6).  U-M has only played UT and OU once and that was in bowl games.  I frankly don't want to get rid of them in order to accomodate a game with Notre Dame (the same goes with ND replacing UCLA as well).

We play in the B1G conference, let's play the teams in the conference and find out who is the best every year in that conference. 3 OCC games is plenty every year. Play one top flight team and a couple of easier opponents to kick off the year then get into conference play.