Scheduling Problems For Super Conferences: The Case Of The Big Ten

For some reason, I am still shocked when I realize that people who demand radical  change often have no idea that the radical change necessitates that much of what they have now, including much that they like most, must be sacrificed. You cannot have your cake and eat it too. Change means you cannot keep things; change usually has unintended consequences that are not wanted.

Continuing talk about Big Ten expansion is the reason I come back to this issue now. I keep reading pieces by Big Ten fans, and even sports journalists who ought to know better, that suggest they assume that the Big Ten can expand to 16 with hardly a ripple coming between any old rivalries.

An ACC example might help drive home my point. The first football game played between ACC schools was North Carolina versus Wake Forest in 1888. That more than a century old, in-state rivalry is no longer an annual game, due to ACC expansion to 12 members. In basketball, WFU and UNC no longer play one another twice every year in regular season because expansion forced major scheduling changes.

Any conference that expands by more than one school will face major issues about which rivalries will take hits. Some rivalries will be ruined: see Oklahoma versus Nebraska for Exhibit A.

The Pac is the only conference in the country in which expanding to 16—providing it got the schools it wanted and needed  to become as wealthy as the ACC, which is not as wealthy as the SEC and Big Ten—made sense. The reason is that a 16 team conference is actually two eight team conferences. That would mean the old Pac-8 members once again would play each other annually, with the newer eight league members doing the same. 

As much sense as that would have made for the Pac, it must be emphasized that it would have meant most teams would not have faced teams in the other division more than twice per decade. If a 16 member conference were to play nine league games annually, that would mean seven games against division foes. Each year then, each school would play only two of the eight members in the other division. If each school were to have a permanent annual cross-divisional rival (both the ACC and SEC do), it would take 14 years for each school to play all league members home-away.

Ten league games would mean three foes from the other division annually, which would mean it would take barely more than a half decade to play all league members home-away, but it also would mean only two non-conference games per year.

Is there anyone who sincerely believes it would be good for college football if members of major conferences play only two non-conference games per year? 

That, of course, is not my main point. My main point is that if the Big Ten expands to 14, and even more so if it grows to 16, it will see many old rivalries gutted. That is so because unlike the Pac, in which the eight old members all would have been in one division, the Big Ten will see its remaining nine charter members and Michigan State, its tenth member, split with no more than six in a division. 

Unless the conference in question must expand in order to remain fiscally within reach of the two wealthiest conferences, expansion, certainly beyond 12, probably will cause more problems than it is worth.

Why then would the Big Ten, the wealthiest conference, want to risk any of its historic rivalries by expanding even to 14?

I have said that I believe the Big Ten and the Pac were acting in accord, each planning to expand to 16, thereby creating a Rose Bowl Axis to attempt to control all of college sports, with the financial backing of Rupert Murdoch: http://bleacherreport.com/articles/404583-why-did-the-pac-move-first-in-forging-super-conferences  Now that it is rather clear that Texas A&M will never agree to go Left Coast, the odds of a Pac-16 are slim to none (Texas as part of a Pac-14 remains a possibility). 

But will the Big Ten keep pushing to have 16 members? If Notre Dame is not on board, will Big Ten fans accept losing a number of historic rivalries as annual games? Would the Big Ten agree to play ten conference games?

Does anybody think that if the Big Ten plays ten league games that more than three or four of its 16 members would schedule tougher than two obvious non-conference cupcakes per year? If a 16-member Big Ten were to play ten league games, would the rest of the country see it as far too isolated and inbred and thus tune out?

Unlike the average Big Ten fan online, Jim Delany knows that any additional movement by the Big Ten is to some degree piloting between Scylla and Charybdis.