No Good Answer, But How Dumb is This?

[IdaGriz01]

An article about the stupidities of the unbalanced scheduling in the bigger conferences. [My emphasis added here and there.]
http://www.fcs.football/cfb/story.asp?i=20151014135343085585804

Unbalanced schedules tilt the playing field
…
In the larger FCS conferences - and the 13-team Big Sky is the biggest - unbalanced scheduling has an impact because not all of the teams play each other. Southern Utah (3-2) has beaten Northern Colorado and Weber State - teams with a combined 8-30 conference record since 2013 - and hosts the Big Sky's only team without a conference win Saturday when it plays 1-5 Sacramento State.
In an eight-game conference schedule, the Thunderbirds won't be playing four Big Sky teams that have been nationally ranked this season - three-time defending champion Eastern Washington, Montana, North Dakota and Idaho State.
…
The extreme example of unbalanced scheduling occurred in the 10-team Missouri Valley Football Conference last season. Co-champs North Dakota State and Illinois State didn't face each other in the regular season yet wound up meeting in the FCS championship game. …

Those two national powers - NDSU is ranked No. 2 and Illinois State No. 4 - aren't playing each other in the regular season again this year. In addition, two other nationally ranked teams in the Valley - Northern Iowa and Youngstown State - aren't meeting.

Last year's Southland Conference co-champs, Sam Houston State and Southeastern Louisiana, get to side-step each other despite the 11-team league shifting to a nine-game conference schedule this season.
…

It goes on and on … read the whole article if you have time. The situation has just gotten totally ridiculous

 

[putter]

I would love to see the Big Sky get broken up back into two, common sense conferences. More OOC West games would help scheduling and, if you grouped the schools more by geography, probably be a little better for travel.

 

[MrTitleist]

There's actually an easy answer for this..

Since we've decided to expand the playoffs (dumb) and added an extra weekend and moved the chipper to January this gives us the opportunity for conference championship games. Skip the first weekend of playoffs, make it championship weekend for conferences like the CAA, Southland, Big Sky, Missouri Valley, whomever else needs one. Get your true conference champion, everyone in your division plays each other, no more sidestepping. Then we get back to the 16 team format and everyone wins.

See, that was easy.

 

[toyota1]

i like it how it is now. all the best teams in the land get a chance at the championship. the second place team in a top confrence should get a chance when they are better than all the other conference champions. illinois state would have been the champion in every conference in the land last year and not got a chance to play for a championship. that would be bs. the system is just fine and way better than the fbs system.

 

[get'em_griz]

i like it how it is now. all the best teams in the land get a chance at the championship. the second place team in a top confrence should get a chance when they are better than all the other conference champions. illinois state would have been the champion in every conference in the land last year and not got a chance to play for a championship. that would be bs. the system is just fine and way better than the fbs system.

The current format is horrible. More than likely if there were a conference championship game, the runner up in those conference games would still get an at-large bid in the 16-team playoff. The conference champs would probably be seeded and awarded home field advantage for winning the conference.

 

[grizfan95]

There's actually an easy answer for this..

Since we've decided to expand the playoffs (dumb) and added an extra weekend and moved the chipper to January this gives us the opportunity for conference championship games. Skip the first weekend of playoffs, make it championship weekend for conferences like the CAA, Southland, Big Sky, Missouri Valley, whomever else needs one. Get your true conference champion, everyone in your division plays each other, no more sidestepping. Then we get back to the 16 team format and everyone wins.

See, that was easy.

I'm in for that.

 

[WaGriz4life]

There's actually an easy answer for this..

Since we've decided to expand the playoffs (dumb) and added an extra weekend and moved the chipper to January this gives us the opportunity for conference championship games. Skip the first weekend of playoffs, make it championship weekend for conferences like the CAA, Southland, Big Sky, Missouri Valley, whomever else needs one. Get your true conference champion, everyone in your division plays each other, no more sidestepping. Then we get back to the 16 team format and everyone wins.

See, that was easy.

:clap: :clap: :clap:

 

[toyota1]

if all the conferences had equel competition that would be ok. however that is far from the case. if the ncaa placed the 1 thru 4 teams out of tough conferences in opposite brackets there might be 4 of them in the final eight like might have happened had south dakota state been in another bracket and uni in another bracket. if it was only 16 teams to many deserving teams wouldnt get a chance. this system may not be perfect , but its better than fbs. splitting up the conferences would make for more weak conferences. the thing i hate about the fbs format is there isnt enough of a sample pool of deserving teams who should have a chance to compete. tcu and baylor were robbed last year. wait until montana is left out just when they are getting some injured players back and have a chance to do something in the playoffs. i like it. i love watching it. the more games the better.

 

[PlayerRep]

My view is: interesting, good to know, but who cares? In larger conferences, everyone doesn't play each other. Just can't. FBS. FCS. That's life. In selecting playoff teams, the committee must look mainly at who they played and their records. They don't look much at conference rankings, to my knowledge. Some teams have hard non-conference schedules; some don't. Again, who cares. I assume the conference schedulers aren't giving some teams all the tough teams, and some the non-tough teams. If that were true, then we'd have scandal. But, even then, I wouldn't care.

 

[MrTitleist]

My view is: interesting, good to know, but who cares? In larger conferences, everyone doesn't play each other. Just can't. FBS. FCS. That's life. In selecting playoff teams, the committee must look mainly at who they played and their records. They don't look much at conference rankings, to my knowledge. Some teams have hard non-conference schedules; some don't. Again, who cares. I assume the conference schedulers aren't giving some teams all the tough teams, and some the non-tough teams. If that were true, then we'd have scandal. But, even then, I wouldn't care.

You can bet if you win your conference (which FBS does determine conference champions via championship games) that your odds of getting into a playoff are much higher than a 2nd place conference finisher.

 

[IdaGriz01]

My view is: interesting, good to know, but who cares? In larger conferences, everyone doesn't play each other. Just can't. FBS. FCS. That's life. In selecting playoff teams, the committee must look mainly at who they played and their records. They don't look much at conference rankings, to my knowledge. Some teams have hard non-conference schedules; some don't. Again, who cares. I assume the conference schedulers aren't giving some teams all the tough teams, and some the non-tough teams. If that were true, then we'd have scandal. But, even then, I wouldn't care.

"It is what it is."

And you're right ... Who cares unless someone could come up with a "good answer"? If there were a good answer, then we might care that it's not being used. The notion of two divisions, with a championship playoff between divisions, has it's own problems. There have been a number of cases in recent years where the "experts" postulated that the champion of one division would have probably finished third or worse in the other division. "It is wh...", oh wait, I said that. :lol:

 

[tnt]

My view is: interesting, good to know, but who cares? In larger conferences, everyone doesn't play each other. Just can't. FBS. FCS. That's life. In selecting playoff teams, the committee must look mainly at who they played and their records. They don't look much at conference rankings, to my knowledge. Some teams have hard non-conference schedules; some don't. Again, who cares. I assume the conference schedulers aren't giving some teams all the tough teams, and some the non-tough teams. If that were true, then we'd have scandal. But, even then, I wouldn't care.

"It is what it is."

And you're right ... Who cares unless someone could come up with a "good answer"? If there were a good answer, then we might care that it's not being used. The notion of two divisions, with a championship playoff between divisions, has it's own problems. There have been a number of cases in recent years where the "experts" postulated that the champion of one division would have probably finished third or worse in the other division. "It is wh...", oh wait, I said that. :lol:

So the risk is a weaker team in the conference gets to the first round of the playoffs and is once an done while the stronger team who couldn't win their own conference gets left behind? Does it matter which team that can't advance makes it? We certainly have seen plenty of that the last few years.

 

[Grisly Fan]

I think with 24 slots that ANY team that has even a remote chance of winning will get their chance. I think the lowest ranked team to win an NC was Richmond @ #7 in 2008 (when they beat our Griz). Sure some pretty dumb stuff seems to happen as the result of unbalanced schedules but I see no evidence that it really matters in determining the NC -- which is the ultimate goal of it all.

 

[Fahque]

My view is: interesting, good to know, but who cares? In larger conferences, everyone doesn't play each other. Just can't. FBS. FCS. That's life. In selecting playoff teams, the committee must look mainly at who they played and their records. They don't look much at conference rankings, to my knowledge. Some teams have hard non-conference schedules; some don't. Again, who cares. I assume the conference schedulers aren't giving some teams all the tough teams, and some the non-tough teams. If that were true, then we'd have scandal. But, even then, I wouldn't care.

You can bet if you win your conference (which FBS does determine conference champions via championship games) that your odds of getting into a playoff are much higher than a 2nd place conference finisher.

Only because conference champions get an autobid into the playoffs. Conference championships, however, don't determine seeding in the playoffs...those are determined by overall national rankings, which take a team's overall record into account. The only thing conference championships count for are the autobid. Even if a team doesn't win their conference but their overall record is good enough, they'll still make the playoffs and even have a chance to be seeded higher than the team who won their conference.

 

[MrTitleist]

My view is: interesting, good to know, but who cares? In larger conferences, everyone doesn't play each other. Just can't. FBS. FCS. That's life. In selecting playoff teams, the committee must look mainly at who they played and their records. They don't look much at conference rankings, to my knowledge. Some teams have hard non-conference schedules; some don't. Again, who cares. I assume the conference schedulers aren't giving some teams all the tough teams, and some the non-tough teams. If that were true, then we'd have scandal. But, even then, I wouldn't care.

You can bet if you win your conference (which FBS does determine conference champions via championship games) that your odds of getting into a playoff are much higher than a 2nd place conference finisher.

Only because conference champions get an autobid into the playoffs. Conference championships, however, don't determine seeding in the playoffs...those are determined by overall national rankings, which take a team's overall record into account. The only thing conference championships count for are the autobid. Even if a team doesn't win their conference but their overall record is good enough, they'll still make the playoffs and even have a chance to be seeded higher than the team who won their conference.

I was referring to FBS in the post you quoted. What you said is true of FCS.

 

[Fahque]

My view is: interesting, good to know, but who cares? In larger conferences, everyone doesn't play each other. Just can't. FBS. FCS. That's life. In selecting playoff teams, the committee must look mainly at who they played and their records. They don't look much at conference rankings, to my knowledge. Some teams have hard non-conference schedules; some don't. Again, who cares. I assume the conference schedulers aren't giving some teams all the tough teams, and some the non-tough teams. If that were true, then we'd have scandal. But, even then, I wouldn't care.

You can bet if you win your conference (which FBS does determine conference champions via championship games) that your odds of getting into a playoff are much higher than a 2nd place conference finisher.

Only because conference champions get an autobid into the playoffs. Conference championships, however, don't determine seeding in the playoffs...those are determined by overall national rankings, which take a team's overall record into account. The only thing conference championships count for are the autobid. Even if a team doesn't win their conference but their overall record is good enough, they'll still make the playoffs and even have a chance to be seeded higher than the team who won their conference.

I was referring to FBS in the post you quoted. What you said is true of FCS.

Don't rain on my parade

Sorry I thought you were talking about FCS