ND Fans arguing over Big 10 | Page 2 | The Boneyard

ND Fans arguing over Big 10

When was the last time ND won anything in a major sport M/W hoops or football? Not sure how they expect to maintain their lofty rep with the new generation that has never seen them win anything and views them as another small school in the Midwest that never wins anything.
 
SubZero said:
Most college sports fans would not consider women's basketball a major sport.
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Probably not, but it is still basketball and gets national coverage. I mean if you were to rank college sports in order of importance based on amount of media coverage it's pretty clearly football, men's basketball, and then women's basketball.
 
SubZero said:
Most college sports fans would not consider women's basketball a major sport.
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What about the millions of college sports fans that turned off ESPN'S channels broadcasting men's college basketball and MSG broadcasting the Knicks, and NHL hockey? All in favor of the Uconn Women in a ho-hum game at Temple last Feb.
 
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It is in everyone's best interest to treat GoRs as inviolate until it isn't. When the stakes are right, someone will challenge one.
 
I'd wonder how that translates nationally. Very good local/regional ratings, though, for UConn Women.

The big Miss State upset over UConn women in the Final Four drew a national 1.9 (the largest Women's Final Four draw in five years).

UConn-UCLA scored a 1.0 in the Elite Eight.

I would suspect that most regular season games would be a fraction of that...


Saying that, I suspect that a regional performance becomes valuable when you are attempting to sell a network. A NY TV Market rating of 5.0 would be 5% of the 7.4 million households in New York or 370,000 households.

The Nets ratings dropped in NY 28% last year to .33 (1/3 of 1% of New York's 7.4 million households). The women would outpull several men's basketball teams, I think.
 
dayooper said:
Not if the pods rotated every two years. As of right now, there can only be a conference final, no semi's. I highly doubt the ACC would facilitate the move by placating the Big10. By combining two of the pods, they become one division. Rotating the divisions every two years gives each team a chance to play each other more often.
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Swofford has been begging to give conferences the chances to do pods forever. The B10 is the one saying no.
 
JeepCSC said:
Swofford has been begging to give conferences the chances to do pods forever. The B10 is the one saying no.
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The pods, as described, would form two divisions, that are rotated. So each year, there are always two divisions, just the composition changes. As long as there is a round robin within the divisions, and the division winners play each other, this is allowed.

What is not allowed is having three or more divisions with semifinals, or even just a conference final (say between the top two division winners). Also not permitted is one division, non-round robin with a championship game. It wasn't just the Big Ten that was opposed. The other P5 conferences were opposed as well. Only two models for conference championship games were allowed.

Swofford will simply have to convince two other conferences next time around to allow arbitrary championship models, or better yet. propose the model he is seeking in addition to the current models allowed.
 
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I guess the ACC (and B12) were pushing to deregulate how conferences schedule. Which could mean pods, or it could mean something else. That didn't benefit the B10, and Delaney has been the most vocal about keeping things status quo. Theoretically, you could simply have divisions which rotate every year, but honestly pods probably won't be viable until we get 16-team conferences and allow semifinals.

Mostly it was just weird to hear a B10 fan complain that Swofford was behind playing politics by trying to keep the system in place as it exists. The opposite has been the issue.
 
JeepCSC said:
I guess the ACC (and B12) were pushing to deregulate how conferences schedule. Which could mean pods, or it could mean something else. That didn't benefit the B10, and Delaney has been the most vocal about keeping things status quo. Theoretically, you could simply have divisions which rotate every year, but honestly pods probably won't be viable until we get 16-team conferences and allow semifinals.

Mostly it was just weird to hear a B10 fan complain that Swofford was behind playing politics by trying to keep the system in place as it exists. The opposite has been the issue.
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I think Delany's Reservation on The ACC's Proposal, or any similar proposal for that matter, was that it could have potentially opened the door for conferences to try to rig the system even more than it already is. With the playoff being such an enormous revenue generator the temptation to play with conference title match ups in order to produce or protect potential playoff spots would be very high. JMO but this didn't appeal to him or the conferences currently running a fixed divisional format who could be an upset in the conference title game away from being shutout of the playoff. I don't see an issue with those suggesting pods that rotate but form divisions. This seems like a good solution for larger conferences whose members complain about playing each other less.
 
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I thought Delaney was against pods because it could encourage the ACC to expand a little more and he wants things to stay status quo until he is ready for more expansion.
 
The CCG's are sometimes not between the best teams in a conference..maybe even often.

Example:

In the Big Ten, # 6 Wisconsin met #7 Penn State while, maybe the two best teams, #2 Ohio State and #5 Michigan stayed home after playing a terrific double overtime game.

This with Wisconsin losing to both Ohio State and Michigan and Penn State losing by 39 points to Michigan while edging Ohio State on a blocked FG touchdown return.

But, I don't think that fans generally like a rematch...we'll see in the Big 12 how that works out.

I know that we didn't love, as #2 FSU, beating #1 Florida the last game of the season...only to have have a rematch in post season between #1 FSU and #2 Florida....the record ended up being split 12-1 both teams with a loss to each other. Florida was awarded the NC.
 
Hoophound said:
I thought Delaney was against pods because it could encourage the ACC to expand a little more and he wants things to stay status quo until he is ready for more expansion.
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If that's the case then we need to focus our entire budget on lobbying for pods.
 
Hoophound said:
I thought Delaney was against pods because it could encourage the ACC to expand a little more and he wants things to stay status quo until he is ready for more expansion.
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Swofford was worried about match-ups like

2016 #3 Clemson 42–35 #19 Virginia Tech

Historically the ACC, probably more than most, ran the risk of not showing many quality wins and losing out to an otherwise closely matched competitor for a playoff spot. I think that was in their heads because they seemed to whine about the system more than most.

Now that the ACC is on a roll, with a better image and all, I don't think he has to worry about losing a 3 or 4 spot in the playoffs on the last weekend even when his best team wins.
 
On the other hand, the Big Ten places teams that lose their CCG, so maybe he's justified with wanting to game the system a bit.
 
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The ACC wanted the two highest ranked teams to meet rather than division winners from a sometimes unbalanced division.

I think that you are wrong about the motivation.

Swofford and others concede the awkwardness of the present structure -- playing six of the seven teams from the opposite division once every six years. Such infrequency, the antithesis of a conference concept, is underscored by the ACC’s arrangement with Notre Dame, by which the Fighting Irish play every league team, on average, once every three years.
 
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Seaa Blue said:
On the other hand, the Big Ten places teams that lose, so maybe he's justified with wanting to game the system a bit.
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But they don't place the conference champion.
 
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Delaney was rueful about his conference champ not being in the CFP while another conference team was selected....something he campaigned against in the past. The higher ranked team was selected instead.

INDIANAPOLIS — A Big Ten team will make the College Football Playoff. It probably won’t be the Big Ten champion. Penn State beat Wisconsin 38-31 Saturday night in a game that was thrilling and classic and anointed a nominal league titleist but in reality featured the third- and fourth-best teams in the conference, a scenario that earns them rings and a lifetime of debating semantics with sneering graduates of other schools. Arguments can and will be made that the all-consuming specter of the playoff significantly diminished the proceedings at Lucas Oil Stadium, that the Nittany Lions sifted through the streamers and confetti for a consolation prize. And all this after the commissioner of the league went on television earlier in the day and conceded he had to be O.K. with a non-champion representing his league in the playoff, when he campaigned against that very thing when the playoff was first built.
 
The problem with unbalanced division schedules is every much a Big Ten problem as an ACC problem...

As Land Grant Holyland put it...

This happened last year too, as an Iowa team that almost everybody suspected wasn’t actually as good as their record, advanced to the Big Ten championship game without ever playing Ohio State, Michigan, Michigan State or Penn State. They lost a close game to a weakened Michigan State team in the final, and then got summarily blasted to the moon by Stanford in the Rose Bowl.
 
billybud said:
Delaney was rueful about his conference champ not being in the CFP while another conference team was selected....something he campaigned against in the past. The higher ranked team was selected instead.

INDIANAPOLIS — A Big Ten team will make the College Football Playoff. It probably won’t be the Big Ten champion. Penn State beat Wisconsin 38-31 Saturday night in a game that was thrilling and classic and anointed a nominal league titleist but in reality featured the third- and fourth-best teams in the conference, a scenario that earns them rings and a lifetime of debating semantics with sneering graduates of other schools. Arguments can and will be made that the all-consuming specter of the playoff significantly diminished the proceedings at Lucas Oil Stadium, that the Nittany Lions sifted through the streamers and confetti for a consolation prize. And all this after the commissioner of the league went on television earlier in the day and conceded he had to be O.K. with a non-champion representing his league in the playoff, when he campaigned against that very thing when the playoff was first built.
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The Big Ten would benefit more than any other conference at the CFP going to 8 teams. The top 5 or 6 in the BT, Wisconsin, Michigan, Michigan State, Ohio State, Penn State, even throw in Iowa and Nebraska every few years, are capable of upsetting, on any given day, any team in the conference or the country. They may not have had the best team in the country last season but several were pretty dam close.
 
billybud said:
The ACC wanted the two highest ranked teams to meet rather than division winners from a sometimes unbalanced division.

I think that you are wrong about the motivation.

Swofford and others concede the awkwardness of the present structure -- playing six of the seven teams from the opposite division once every six years. Such infrequency, the antithesis of a conference concept, is underscored by the ACC’s arrangement with Notre Dame, by which the Fighting Irish play every league team, on average, once every three years.
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Swofford knew what the rules were when the ACC expanded to 14 teams and when they added Notre Dame. If this was that big a problem, the conference should have waited until he was able to change the rules. But that didn't happen. Even so, there are still alternatives that have been discussed, such as divisions with pods, or at least adding another conference game. As for Notre Dame, that's too bad. Perhaps the ACC and Notre Dame can mutually agree to scrap the five game agreement that Swofford apparently sees as a problem. Then Notre Dame can be an independent in football again.

As for Delany's (no second "e," by the way) conundrum, too bad for him. I can't believe that he was naive enough to believe that scenario (a conference nonchampion could make the CFP) could not happen. He can try to persuade the other P5 conference to allow only conference champions to be eligible for the CFP. But then the Big Ten may have have no one in the CFP. I can't see how that would have been better for Delany.
 
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HoopsFan21 said:
When was the last time ND won anything in a major sport M/W hoops or football? Not sure how they expect to maintain their lofty rep with the new generation that has never seen them win anything and views them as another small school in the Midwest that never wins anything.
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So in that respect ND is the same as every Big 10 school not located in Columbus, Ohio.
 
Pat125 said:
Swofford knew what the rules were when the ACC expanded to 14 teams and when they added Notre Dame. If this was that big a problem, the conference should have waited until he was able to change the rules. But that didn't happen. Even so, there are still alternatives that have been discussed, such as divisions with pods, or at least adding another conference game. As for Notre Dame, that's too bad. Perhaps the ACC and Notre Dame can mutually agree to scrap the five game agreement that Swofford apparently sees as a problem. Then Notre Dame can be an independent in football again.

As for Delany's (no second "e," by the way) conundrum, too bad for him. I can't believe that he was naive enough to believe that scenario (a conference nonchampion could make the CFP) could not happen. He can try to persuade the other P5 conference to allow only conference champions to be eligible for the CFP. But then the Big Ten may have have no one in the CFP. I can't see how that would have been better for Delany.
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Who knows...Penn State might not have been sent to see Alice Kramer like Ohio State was by Clemson. On paper, the Buckeyes were the better team...head to head? They lost to PSU.
 
You can't have pods with 14-teams, so it's just not workable at the moment, even if people were ok doing some convoluted rotating pods and only a championship game. Pods will come with 16-team leagues and semifinals.
 
Actually...I guess, now that I think about it, one could actually blame the ACC for Penn State's not going to the CFP.

That loss to Pitt gave them the second loss...to Ohio State's one loss.
 
JeepCSC said:
You can't have pods with 14-teams, so it's just not workable at the moment, even if people were ok doing some convoluted rotating pods and only a championship game. Pods will come with 16-team leagues and semifinals.
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In the context I've been using, pods are possible. You can have two pods, A and B, with four teams, and two pods, C and D, with three teams. One year, you have divisions with pods A and C, and pods B and D. The next year, you have divisions with pods A and D, and pods B and C. So, for example, teams in Pod A would play every team in their own pod every year, and teams in Pods C and D. Even with an eight game schedule that would leave two more games to play teams in Pod B, so they would play those teams every other year as well. My guess is this was discussed, and there was no agreement on the composition of the pods. Or there was no attempt, and Swofford chose to whine instead of improving the situation.

If Swofford is looking to have just one division with the goal of teams playing each other at least once every two years, they will have to devise some scheduling which will be similar to the pod scheduling above anyway.
 
Don't be obtuse...Swofford didn't whine at all...he proposed a rule change., that is all.....and said..I don't know that we actually want to do anything...we just think that conferences should be able to decide how they derive their champions.

That is the sum of it.

It is Big Ten fans that constantly harp on pods....
 
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