You skipped Division II; I leave II and III out of it because those are non-scholarship levels, with very minimal fan interest.
Teams in the mid-major conferences have no realistic chance to win anything bigger than a conference championship. Division III, II and 1-AA all have functioning playoff systems. BCS teams have something close-enough to playoff; go undefeated in your conference and you’ll almost certainly get a national championship shot.
The mid majors (WAC, MAC, MWC, CUSA, SB) are the only ones without a shot. Troy, Ball State, Tulsa and Idaho could all go 13-0 and win every game by 20 points; they still would have almost no chance to play for a championship. IMO, that means the 120 team grouping is too big.
I think it was the Appalachian State head coach that said there’s less distance between App State and East Carolina than there is between East Carolina and the BCS. By every meaningful measure, he’s right. They should simply adjust the categories to fit reality.
FWIW, Division I football has a playoff system. A two team playoff system, but a playoff nonetheless. Before the BCS system was created, there was no playoff.
There is a process going on for aTm. This is part of it. The SEC wants aTm officially out of the Big XII before the official-official invitation to the SEC is made, so this is A&M putting the “exit the Big XII” part of the process in motion. Surely the SEC and aTm already have a wink/nod deal in place. Still it is odd that they had that little false start earlier in the month, I’m not quite sure if that had a purpose or if that was just the A&M people getting ahead of themselves.
And it looks like if A&M goes, Oklahoma will too–whether it’s to the SEC or the Pac-1x. I’m taking Bob Stoops’ rhetorical “Do we really need the Red River Rivalry?” question to mean “if you’ve got a deal that doesn’t include Texas and it looks good for us, by all means send it our way.”
I have feeling that if Texas may come out a big loser in this deal. if they hold onto this Longhorn TV thing, independent thing. As good as Texas is, they are not Notre Dame and it is doubtful that they can play a big time schedule while being an independent. With teams playing 8 (or 9) conference games, not many big time teams are going to be willing to schedule an OOC with Texas. And I am sure Texas will want to play 8 home games every year.
Texas probably won’t hang on too hard to the LHN if it costs them a decent conference affiliation. A report came out today that the terms of the deal with ESPN gave UT an out in case they joined a conference with its own TV network.
A&M fans would do ok with being on the bottom tier of the SEC, at least for a few years. It might help their recruiting in Texas, and they’d have tweaked UT a good one. That alone might be enough to keep some fans happy for decades.
The fact that there hasn’t been any action in this thread for 3 weeks makes me think that there must be another thread discussing it, but I couldn’t find it, so I’m doing this here.
Now that TAMU to the SEC is official, and Slive is saying that the SEC isn’t planning on adding a 14th team, I’m pondering the math of this.
It seems that (looking at 'Bama’s schedule) each team plays the other 5 in their division, and 3 in the other division. Alabama actually plays Tennessee every year* and, IIUC, 2 others on a rotating basis.
So, if TAMU is added to the SEC West, each SEC West team would play the other 6 in their division, and then 2 or 3 from the East? If they still played 3 from the East, then that would be 21 inter-conference (intra-conference?) SEC games. That’s 2.5 for each of the SEC East teams. Do the teams in the SEC East rotate each year between playing 8 or 9 conference games?
I can’t see how the math of this works for any amount of time. (Which I guess is why speculation about the 14th team will not die down.)
I’m not sure if all of the other SEC teams have 1 inter-conference (intra-conference?) rival that they play every year. A lot of people who lament traditional rivalries being ended because the B1G Ten and Pac-10 now have different conferences don’t seem to understand that this setup is a viable option.
Every SEC team has one “traditional” rival in the opposite division and that game is played annually. They rotate the other cross-division games, two each year.
There are some cross-division games that will probably always stand, such as Auburn/Georgia, played for 113 years and Tennessee/Alabama, around 107 years.
In spite of all the talk, I cant see the SEC stopping at 13 teams. That doesn’t make any sense and if something doesn’t make any sense, it’s probably not true.
I’d expect another western team to be added to the SEC before the 2012 season starts, Auburn to be moved to the eastern division leaving the SEC with two 7 team divisions, a nine game conference schedule and then will the dust clear.
If Mizzou joins SEC, I don’t see how they can keep geographical divisions and keep the traditional rivals. If Auburn moves East, Alabama will have drop either Tennessee or Auburn. And with all due respect to Ogre, I just don’t see the SEC sacrificing either game. Missouri could move to the “Eastern” division without too much disruption. Ark/Missouri would be a natural game to played every year between the East/West. Arkansas/South Carolina “traditional” could easily be dropped in favor of Ark/Missouri and South Carolina/TAMU.
Did this thread really go three weeks without a comment? #71 and #72. I thought this thread was active all along.
Hearing talk around here the B1G would be the #1 choice, but the SEC is a close 2nd. Missouri’s cultural outlook of itself is weird. If a line was drawn from St. Louis to Kansas City, everyone north of it would identify with the B1G (midwest farm country), to the south people identify themselves as southerners and would prefer the SEC.
Personally at this point I don’t care. I just want out of the Big IX.