79 Days Until Kansas Football: Alternatives to Divisions
On Monday, I made the case for why divisions are the wrong way to go once the Big 12 expands. But that naturally begs the question: what scheduling model SHOULD the conference use?
There have been quite a few options thrown out as possibilities, but I'm going to focus on three potential options: full rotation, pods and protected rivalries.
We'll look at each one in-depth, starting with an explanation of what exactly I mean by the option. We'll take a look at an example for each, and end with just how feasible they all are.
Full Rotation
This option is the simplest. Just rotate through each of the opponents, alternating home and away. With a nine game schedule and a twelve team conference, only two opponents couldn't be played. That means you would play each team 9 out of every 11 years.
Pros:
- Rivalries with all schools can be cultivated, as you aren't playing any particular school more than any other.
- While schedules wouldn't be balanced, it would mitigate any active selections that might help a particular school.
Cons:
- Lack of annual rivalry games.
- Does not to avoid lots of cross-country trips (i.e. UCF-BYU)
Verdict:
It's hard for me to imagine that this one could be likely at all. I can't imagine that Kansas and Kansas State would want to lose their annual game, and I'm sure there are a bunch of other pairings that would be lost too often. Plus, requiring BYU to go to both West Virginia and Florida in most years (and vice versa) is bound to be a problem that everyone would want to avoid.
Pods
If the schools feel like they need to have some sort of divisional structure, then I would prefer they do three pods of four instead of two divisions. Basically, each team would play the other three teams in their pods, and then 3 of the 4 teams in the other 2 pods. The two pod winners with the best records would make an appearance in the championship game.
A theoretical grouping would be like this:
- Pod 1: BYU, Kansas, Kansas State, Oklahoma State
- Pod 2: Texas Tech, TCU, Baylor, Houston
- Pod 3: West Virginia, Cincinnati, UCF, Iowa State
Pros:
- Play all teams at least 3 out of every 4 years.
- Every team gets to play at least three of the Texas schools each season, with at least one game in the state.
- Some rivalries can be protected by putting teams in the same pods.
Cons:
- Still have to pick conference championship teams from the best of the pods.
- Geographic divisions are not very natural. Either way at least one school is dealing with a pod member that is really far away.
Verdict:
This feels like a better solution than divisions, especially if the conference is going to expand further. However, changing to pods also changes the number of schools needed in order to expand the pods equally, so that may be difficult.
Ultimately, picking pod winners to be in the championship game still doesn't avoid the situation where two teams from the same pod are the best teams in the conference in that season. This also feels a bit like adding complications for the sake of making it more complex.
Protected Rivalries
For this model, each school would have a certain number of "rivalry games" protected (whether current rivals or ones that are assigned for the sake of making this model work), and then the rest of their games are pulled from rotating the rest of the conference. The conference championship game will be between the two teams with the best records.
For the Big 12, the likely number is either 2 or 3. Theoretically for Kansas, it might look like this:
Kansas plays Kansas State, Iowa State and BYU every season, and then the other 6 games come from the remaining teams in the conference. This method is very similar to the pod system above, except not every team would have to have the same three protected games.
Pros:
- Play all teams at least 3 out of every 4 years.
- Protect most important rivalries for each school.
- More flexibility to mix and match rivalry games.
Cons:
- Not every school will necessarily get to play in Texas every year.
- Schools with less or more than the number of protected rivalries will either be forced into games they may not care about or miss out on protecting certain important rivalries.
Verdict:
This seems like the best option out of all of them. Each team would be able to keep the most important games on their schedule annually, and then everyone else will get to play everyone else on a semi-regular schedule.
And of course, the most important thing is preserved, being able to take the two best teams to play in the conference championship game.
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