[NU Sports] 2009 schedule

[Michael Vance]

Mike Nolan wrote:
> I saw a post the other day speculating about the Big 10 moving towards 
> adding a 9th in-conference game to the schedule now that the 12 game
> schedule is permanent.  Maybe this is a step towards that?
>   
As has been discussed before, a 9-game schedule in an 11-team league is 
a mathematical impossibility.  (To summarize, the teams that don't play 
each other must occur in pairs, e.g. NU and dOSU don't play each other, 
which requires an even number of teams.)

If every team in the conference played at least one of the current four 
non-conference games on the road, then a full round-robin ten-game 
schedule wouldn't hurt the gate receipts anywhere, and would help places 
like NU a lot.  But since Michigan, dOSU, and PSU are playing all four 
of their non-conference games at home most of the time, they would lose 
a game of ticket sales.  And it would kill the series between Notre Doh! 
and Michigan, MSU, and Purdue because they wouldn't want to sacrifice 
yet another home game every other year.

-M