sycasey said:
fat_slice said:
4 more spots...do we make it?
First off, I'm not sure the B1G is definitely going to stop at 20, but if they are . . .
If they just want to add a west coast pod to ease travel burdens on USC/UCLA, then yes I think Cal would be part of it (Oregon, Washington, Cal, Stanford). If they are adding Notre Dame or someone else back east, then maybe not, but it all depends a lot on what other schools are doing. For example, does Furd even want to get into the business of paying players? Is ND staying independent (seems that way for now)? Is the ACC breaking apart or staying together?
You gotta think they are thinking about breaking it down into divisions or pods.
2 8 team divisions makes some sense (if you have 9 conference games that gives you everyone in your division + 2 in the other, giving a collegiate player who stays 4 years a chance to play vs everyone in the conference at least once).
2 10 team divisions is harder. To play everyone in your division takes up all 9 games. To add cross division games requires adding more games to the schedule. This is where you start breaking things into pods. Really anything past 16 gets you in this spot.
At this point you have to decide on 3 pods vs 4 pods. With a 3 pod system you would have to have a mini playoff at the end of the year, where the winner of each division + the best runner up in a division make a 4 team mini playoff (think baseball when it had 1 wild card). With 18 teams that would give you 3 6 team pods, but that would only leave room for two new west coast schools, and they would be in a pod with 2 teams no where near the west coast.
With 21 teams that gives you 3 7 team pods, which would give us the 6 west coast schools + 1 other (Nebraska?) and room for the b1g to add one additional school anywhere in the country beyond Oregon/Washington/Cal/stanford. Schedule would be 6 games against your division + 1 each against the other 2 pods for an 8 game schedule, or 2 each against the other pods for a 10 game schedule. With 2 each you would play all the teams in the conference over a 4 year stretch (and 1 team twice).
If they go to 4 pods, then you have two options, 20 teams or 24 teams. At 20 teams that would be 4 5 team pods, and one of Cal/Stanford/Washington/Oregon gets left out. This isn't ideal for travel scenarios for non football sports, but maybe that isn't a concern. I know people are saying Cal would be the obvious one to be left out if we did that, but I'm not convinced it wouldn't be Stanford who has stated they will not pay student athletes when the B1G says they want to.
Schedule wise that would be 4 games against your pod and 2 each against the other 3 for a 10 game schedule. Trying to split it up any other way would be difficult (but possible).
Either way, 20 teams doesn't make a whole lot of sense other than as a stop gap to get to 24 teams, where there would be 4 6 team pods. With 4 6 team pods you play everyone in your pod for 5 games, and if you want an 8 game schedule 1 team in every other pod, or if you are willing to go to 11 conference games, 2 against every other pod, leaving 1 game open for non conference rivalry. At 2 games in every other pod that means you play a game vs every other team in the conference every 3 years.
To me either 21 teams (3 pod winners + wild card for championship) or 24 teams (4 pod winners for championship) makes the most sense. 20 is too high for divisions and too low for pods, and I don't see the B1G going higher than 20 teams until they have a firm answer on whether or not they can get members of the ACC.
Which really brings us down to the big major point:
16 teams works great for now. 24 teams including Notre Dame and ACC teams is the desired end goal. The question is how quickly do they rush towards the end goal without a response from Notre Dame / ACC teams. As it stands now I don't see why they wouldnt' stand pat and wait for the ACC GoR to fall apart...then make their move.
