[NU Sports] 2011 & Divisions

[Sportsbiz]

I've always considered championship games much like conference basketball
tournaments - just another large money grab and an opportunity for your best
team not to advance to the next stage.  It your regular season champion is
forced to play a championship game against a weak divisional championship
(i.e. the Big XII North) then there your true champion, the one who earned
it all season long, faces the prospect of losing out due to any myriad of
factors that could affect a single game.  Think back to Kansas State in
2003.  KSU went into the championship game with a relatively weak record,
knocked off a  consensus number one Oklahoma and not only crushed the
Sooners national title hopes but if I remember correctly knocked them out of
a BCS bowl altogether.  Now, maybe the Sooners had been overrated but the
issue remains.  Why penalize your regular season champion - for money of
course, same reason every decision in college football is being made these
days.
Mark

Mark S. Ament
sportsbiz at gmail.com
SportsBiz - The Business of Sports
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When it comes to sports, you know it's all about the money
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On Sat, Jun 12, 2010 at 12:49 AM, <hakirsch at aol.com> wrote:

> I assume if  the Big 12 liquidates or even winds up with 10 teams  there
> won't be a championship game because of the 12 team minimum. To me that
> would be a shame. It always was an enjoyable game in december with many
> upsets and memorable games over the years.
>
> The BT "championship" game so many years was simply the michigan/osu game.
>  It will be tough getting used to
>
> Harry
> Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Jonathan Hodges <jonathanwhodges at gmail.com>
> Date: Fri, 11 Jun 2010 22:05:02
> To: Jim Leonard<jleonard518 at yahoo.com>
> Cc: <nwu-sports at romaine.tssi.com>
> Subject: Re: [NU Sports] 2011 & Divisions
>
> I watched the expansion special on the BTN this evening (which was well
> done
> despite the short notice) and the issue came up there.  Delany seemed
> pretty
> clear that there would be a conference championship game (even though,
> based
> on previous comments he has made, he doesn't necessarily like it).  And in
> terms of scheduling, the following three factors are key (in order of
> importance):
>
> 1. Competitive balance
> 2. Rivalries (noting some are more important than others)
> 3. Geography
>
> I think we'll hear more about how the conference is divided (they may not
> even go to permanant divisions) sometime over the next 6 months.
>
> I think Delany also made it clear that they will continue to study
> expansion
> over the next year or so and will leave the door open to future moves, but
> right now a lot of the effort will be put into integrating Nebraska into
> the
> conference before a very aggressive deadline of July 1, 2011.  Remember
> that
> it took Penn State over 3 years to fully integrate into the conference
> starting in 1990.
>
> BUT, Delany and the Big Ten are smart and will move when necessary, as they
> did in moving their timeline to get Nebraska on board, so if things get
> crazy over the next few weeks I would imagine they would be open to further
> moves IF the schools meet all of their criteria.
>
>
> Jonathan
>
>
> On Jun 11, 2010 9:47 PM, "Jim Leonard" <jleonard518 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> I just read the announcement on bigten.org. There is no mention of two
> 6-team divisions. I would think this would all be ironed out if the
> conference management team knew we were stopping at twelve teams.
>
> My guess is that we get two more teams before the dust settles.  My gut
> tells me we lose out on Texas (fine by me) but add Missouri and Notre Dame.
>
> Has there been any talk of divisions if Nebraska were the only new team?
>
> Go U UN :-)
> Jim
>
>
>
>
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