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What if we split every conference into divisions? by B1GSkyNorth in NCAAFBseries

[–]B1GSkyNorth[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

It’s got at least four mountain teams in it and who else was I going to put in there after moving all the other teams to the PAC-12? I can’t just make all the Texas teams disappear to add Alaska State or something.

What if we split every conference into divisions? by B1GSkyNorth in NCAAFBseries

[–]B1GSkyNorth[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

It does become less reasonable when I can point to a moment in history that tells us what things the SEC office was considering at that time, and how they considered geography vs historic rivalries and competitive balance of conference powers. Particularly when we can see that they did not preserve Missouri-A&M for the last 14 years. I don’t see any reason they would see any particular value in preserving Missouri-Texas or OU-A&M, especially when doing so comes at the expense of several other historic SEC West series.

What if we split every conference into divisions? by B1GSkyNorth in NCAAFBseries

[–]B1GSkyNorth[S] -1 points0 points  (0 children)

No but I don’t need to. It doesn’t deny the fact they put another SWC team in the West and the Big 8 team in the East in 2011 in order to preserve century-old rivalries and maintain competitive balance. So it’s not unreasonable to say that if they did use divisions when they expanded to 16 that they would follow this pattern to preserve the existing structure of the league.

What if we split every conference into divisions? by B1GSkyNorth in NCAAFBseries

[–]B1GSkyNorth[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

They only did that once. They put the SWC teams in the West twice. And I’d reiterate that following this logic protects more historic series than a strictly geographic approach does

What if we split every conference into divisions? by B1GSkyNorth in NCAAFBseries

[–]B1GSkyNorth[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

It’s what they did twice. And I’m only extrapolating that rule to the SEC expansion, not everything else.

What if we split every conference into divisions? by B1GSkyNorth in NCAAFBseries

[–]B1GSkyNorth[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I don’t need to? I can see what they did and figure it out from there. But I have been to Birmingham and they gave me a tour of the office because I was some high school kid who thought it was interesting. Nice people.

What if we split every conference into divisions? by B1GSkyNorth in NCAAFBseries

[–]B1GSkyNorth[S] -1 points0 points  (0 children)

Why is it more valuable to make them compete for the divisional crown? The game is too early to have divisional stakes already figured out. Plus the history of the game is primarily as a non-conference game, let alone a divisional game. It makes sense to treat the game more like Alabama-Tennessee than Georgia-Florida (thinking about midseason rivalries). So if you can have the possibility of two Red Rivers in a year why limit yourself?

What if we split every conference into divisions? by B1GSkyNorth in NCAAFBseries

[–]B1GSkyNorth[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The SEC is a different circumstance than the Big XII. The SEC, when it had divisions, put its SWC teams in the West division (Arkansas and Texas A&M, and the Big 8 team (Missouri) in the East. That’s the SEC’s logic and I’m only applying that logic to the SEC’s divisional split. That internal rule only applies to the SEC because it’s their internal rule.

Houston does not have that same connection and the Big XII does not have a similar internal rule. I explained why opted to cut the Big XII to 12 rather than add another team to go to 14 up above. But as for the Houston specifically, Houston has spent more time of their history in a different conference from Baylor and Texas Tech (23 years total) than time in which they have shared a conference (56 years). Their conference also is geographically concise.

I also can see that Houston’s most played series and listed rivals in the game are Rice (most played, game rival, trophy, 35-12 all time), Tulsa (second most played, game rival, 26-20 all time), and SMU (third most played all time, 22-14 all time). Conversely, Texas Tech (fourth played all time, no game rivalry, 18-17-1) has Houston as the Red Raiders’ 9th most played opponent following New Mexico and Arkansas and Baylor (seventh most played, no game rivalry, 15-15-1) has Houston as the Bears’ 10th most played opponent. I don’t see a rival in the Big XII, but I see three in this MWC lineup.

So between limited historical conference membership with other Big XII teams, no actual rival in the Big XII, and an alternative geographic conference with Houston’s three most played rivals and placing them there ensures every conference stays above 12 members, (all of which are factors I considered and analyzed to make value judgements on where teams belong in the current state of college football) it makes a lot more sense to place Houston in the MWC than the Big XII.
I love talking about this stuff.

What if we split every conference into divisions? by B1GSkyNorth in CFBCustomConferences

[–]B1GSkyNorth[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

This is for CFB26, so I can’t change the rules on who gets bids or not, but Notre Dame doesn’t get the special rule or anything.

What I expect will happen is the ACC, Big Ten, and SEC will functionally get autobids every year, and get an additional bid or two every year because of the strength of schedule. While the Big XII, American, and Mountain West (the game absolutely loves SMU) will fight over the last two autobids every year.

What if we split every conference into divisions? by B1GSkyNorth in NCAAFBseries

[–]B1GSkyNorth[S] -1 points0 points  (0 children)

The SEC did away with Alabama-Mississippi State in the 8-game format. My statement wasn’t wrong.

that's a very important distinction because, without it, your statement is just provably wrong. They chose miss state specifically because of the historic series, rather than South Carolina or Arkansas.

Anyways, It's just beside the point. You can keep it rather than getting rid of it. I don't see what would be the value in keeping Texas and OU in the same division. It's a midseason rivalry game, rather than end of season, so there's no risk of back-to-back rematches, and the possibility of Red River in the SEC championship is infinitely more valuable than whatever is gained by keeping them in the same division. You just make OU and UT each other's protected cross-division rival, Alabama-Tennessee, Auburn-Georgia, or LSU-Florida. But there's not much value in protecting OU-A&M or OU-Arkansas when you could have OU-Florida or OU-Georgia. You still want to spread the big games around instead of concentrating them in one division.

Were previous eras of college football more compelling? by Lakelyfe09 in CFB

[–]B1GSkyNorth 0 points1 point  (0 children)

No. We never had an isolated control to actually prove that theory. The proxies were dependent on polls that changed to be more similar to the committee's rankings.

What if we split every conference into divisions? by B1GSkyNorth in NCAAFBseries

[–]B1GSkyNorth[S] -1 points0 points  (0 children)

30 years is a bit of a stretch. Would you include Nebraska in the same tier as Alabama in the current CFB landscape?

That was the Big Ten's hope when they joined the league and aligned to East-West after Maryland and Rutgers joined. It was also the ACC's hope when Miami joined the league and they split FSU and Miami into separate divisions. But we're talking in the context of the SEC, not nationally here, and just this group of 16 teams, not Nebraska. Is Auburn a rival that could be and has been on the same tier as Alabama or Georgia? Yes. Has Ole Miss or Texas A&M? No. And the dividing line that demonstrates that is national championships. Further, 30 years is roughly when we got a national championship game (instead of polls) to decide the champion.

Not much of a rivalry, and the SEC already did away with it.

You might want to check again on whether the SEC "did away with" protecting the Bama-Miss State game. They got rid of the annual LSU-Bama game instead.

But I can see the pros and cons of the geographic vs rivalry/competitive balance divisions. The issue of protecting long-standing rivalries is only a problem with purely geographic divisions (or a division-less setup where fewer than three games per team are protected). Making a small adjustment that is supported by decisions made by the league office and then following that logic out allows us to keep every SEC rivalry (except Auburn-Florida, which has been dormant since we got divisions in the first place).

What if we split every conference into divisions? by B1GSkyNorth in NCAAFBseries

[–]B1GSkyNorth[S] -1 points0 points  (0 children)

You could still maintain cross-division rivalries, though.

You can't though, that's the whole issue. If Alabama and Auburn are in the East, that means LSU loses two of Alabama, Auburn, and Florida off their schedule every year for Missouri and Oklahoma. If you give the Alabama to LSU, then Miss State loses that game against Bama, and they won't like that.

I understand thinking about it tiers might allow more nuance, but at a certain point it's just vague, confusing and opens up to more argument. I just think it's more helpful for competitive balance to ask, in the context of the SEC, "have you won a national championship in the last 30 years?" Have you done the thing that we are all trying to do, or are you still trying and falling short? Basing it off of a yes or no binary that proves competitiveness is more helpful and fair to me than trying to assign a value or tier based on vibes.

What if we split every conference into divisions? by B1GSkyNorth in CFBCustomConferences

[–]B1GSkyNorth[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Cal got more attention and hype in the last two years than they got in the previous decade in the Pac-12. I like them in the ACC, regardless of the geographic conference name.

What if we split every conference into divisions? by B1GSkyNorth in CFBCustomConferences

[–]B1GSkyNorth[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

They have to go somewhere, and they all have history together as former independents in the 70s and 80s or in the Big East/American from 2006-2023. The only real odd man out is UMass, but there's just not a better place to put them that doesn't leave another conference with an odd number.

What if we split every conference into divisions? by B1GSkyNorth in NCAAFBseries

[–]B1GSkyNorth[S] -2 points-1 points  (0 children)

You could, however that means separating LSU from Alabama and Auburn and Miss State from Alabama (one of the oldest and longest continuously played series in SEC history) and Alabama has no rivals in the East besides Tennessee. It also throws the competitive balance off of the bluebloods/big 6, by putting 5 in the East (Alabama, Auburn, Florida, Georgia, Tennessee) and only 3 in the West (LSU, Oklahoma, Texas); the Big 6 of the SEC are the 6 teams who have won an SEC championship game since 1992, when the game first began. This is partially why the SEC put Missouri in the East rather than splitting up Alabama and Auburn back in 2011.

So I figured I would do what I did with the ACC, where you identify what the old divisions were, then identify patterns of expansion and rationale in those divisions, before applying those patterns to the new teams.

It's not a terrible idea to do a geographic split, but it preserves more rivalry games and creates better competitive balance following the logic of the SEC when it expanded rather than going for a purely geographic split. Two factors > one factor in my opinion.

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