[NU Sports] Big Ten/Pac-12 annual tieup

[Peter C. Warner]

IMHO, this is fantastic.  

A football "challenge" early in the season will create greater interest from
the western states in The Big Ten throughout the regular season (and greater
interest from the rust-belt states in the Pac-12) leading up to the Rose
Bowl.  It will also be one less lousy cupcake opponent that the Cats (and
other Big Ten and Pac-12 schools) can put on their schedule that I have no
interest in going to or watching.  

I think that it also signals that the demise of the BCS is coming.  The Big
Ten and Pac-12 wouldn't be doing this if they had a big concern about
qualifying one or more of their respective schools for BCS games with
cupcake games.  The Rose Bowl will likely contract with The Big Ten and
Pac-12 to lock in the champions for that bowl.  (If a champion is called-off
to some sort of national championship game, the runner-up (loser of
championship game or by formula) can go to the Rose Bowl instead.  (Big Ten
runner-ups went sometimes went in the 40s-early 70s when there was the rule
that a team couldn't go two years in a row to the Rose Bowl.  I think that's
how the Cats got into their first Rose Bowl.)  The Rose will still sell-out.

In fact, I'd like it if The Big Ten and Pac-12 lined-up their bowl games to
play each other at the end of the season, starting with the 6th place
match-up (by formula) leading up to the Rose.  Those bowl games could be
played predominantly in the Pac-10 states, while the "challenge" games at
the beginning of the season could be played in Big Ten venues - economically
benefitting The Big Ten and Pac-12 states.

I could care less about playing SEC or Big 12 schools.  I don't watch them
during the regular season and pay little attention to them during the bowl
season.

Peter Warner

-----Original Message-----
From: nwu-sports-bounces at tssi.com [mailto:nwu-sports-bounces at tssi.com] On
Behalf Of Mike Nolan
Sent: Wednesday, December 28, 2011 12:31 PM
To: nwu-sports at tssi.com
Subject: [NU Sports] Big Ten/Pac-12 annual tieup

The Big Ten and Pac-12 have announced plans to have annual games between
schools in the two conferences, starting in around 2017.

Details are still to be worked out, such as how they choose who plays whom,
but I'm not excited by the prospect, as it further ties the scheduling hands
of the individual schools, and might actually lead to FEWER games between
Big Ten and Pac-12 schools.  

With a 9 game conference schedule in the works (2015?) plus an annual game
for each Big Ten school with a Pac-12 school, SEC and Big Twelve schools (at
least the good ones) are likely to disappear from Big Ten school schedules
except during bowl season.

Unless they set it up so that the strong schools in the conferences never
play each other (which would be a bigger mistake IMHO), this also increases
the possibility that the Rose Bowl could be a rematch. 
--
Mike Nolan

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