[NU Sports] 2009 schedule

Thu Oct 2 09:28:58 CDT 2008

I also would favor the Big Ten to play a full round-robin schedule with 10
conference games (although I believe you are correct that you can't have 5
home/5 away for everyone - but the Pac-10 currently has a 9 game conference
schedule and some teams can deal with 4 home/5 away any given year).

BUT, of course, the issue there is money.  With 4 non-conference games a
year, teams can schedule 3-4 additional home dates to boost revenue, because
ticket sales still drive a lot of athletic dept. revenues.  I am sure the
conference schools are a lot happier with the current method than being
forced into fewer home games.

So, unless a miracle happens and the conference gets a 12th team and splits
into 2 divisions with a championship game, the current schedule methodology
will probably remain in place.  It took a lot of bickering and some high
profile bowl losses for the conference to extend the season by one week, so
any further changes will be very difficult.  Also note that many teams have
nonconference matchups set all the way until 2014 and beyond, so getting out
of those contracts will also be an obstacle.

Jonathan

On Thu, Oct 2, 2008 at 8:54 AM, Joe Thiegs <thiegs at umn.edu> wrote:

> Right.  It seems to be a byproduct of the two-year rotation and happens
> every once in a while.  For example, Minnesota played at Michigan in both
> 2004 and 2005, and I remember the question coming up then.  Like Dennis, I
> favor playing 10 conference games against everyone in the Big Ten and then
> cutting the nonconference games to two.  I heard once, though,
> that--besides
> some resistance to playing what would then be a tougher schedule than teams
> in other conferences play--another issue is that with an odd number of Big
> Ten teams, the conference couldn't schedule an equal number of home and
> away
> Big Ten games for everyone.  Intuitively, you'd think with ten conference
> games you could do five home and five away, but I haven't done the math and
> whoever raised that concern may very well be correct.  Perhaps that was
> just
> the problem with playing a round-robin schedule before Penn State joined.
> -Joe
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: nwu-sports-bounces at tssi.com [mailto:nwu-sports-bounces at tssi.com] On
> Behalf Of Michael Vance
> Sent: Wednesday, October 01, 2008 9:20 PM
> To: nwu-sports at tssi.com
> Subject: Re: [NU Sports] 2009 schedule
>
> I've never thought it through completely, but it would make sense to me
> that you probably can't always alternate home/away for every common
> opponent when the schedule rotates.  If you look at the last 20 years:
>
> 1988-89: Michigan State (Away)
> 1990-91: Purdue (Home)
> 1992-93: Indiana (Home), Ohio State (Away), Illinois (Away)
> 1994-95: Wisconsin (Home), Minnesota (Away)
> 1996-97: None
> 1998-99: None
> 2000-01: None
> 2002-03: None
> 2004-05: None
> 2006-07: None
>
> It looks like before Penn State started in football in 1993, it happened
> quite a bit, and continued into the first rotation after they started.
> Since then, they've managed to work the rotation without any
> year-to-year repeats (for us). But I still think that with an odd number
> of teams and the three groupings of "protected rivals" that it has to
> happen every once in a while.
>
> -Michael
>
> Jim Bendat wrote:
> > Agree that it seems weird. It's a new two-year cycle of scheduling, where
> we drop Ohio State and Michigan, and we add Penn State and Wisconsin.
> Because our home schedule in 2009 has both the Nittany Lions and Badgers on
> it, the schedule makers sent us packing to Iowa City again so that we would
> still have four home conference games and four away games.
> >
> > -----Original Message-----
> >
> >> From: WildElk2 at aol.com
> >> Sent: Oct 1, 2008 5:01 PM
> >> To: nwu-sports at tssi.com
> >> Subject: [NU Sports] 2009 schedule
> >>
> >> OK schedulholics, why are we playing at Iowa again next  year?   (good
> bye
> >> week fodder)
> >>
> >>     GO CATS!!    Eric
> >>
> >>
> >>
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Jonathan W. Hodges
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