Many thanks to those who gave freely of their thoughts in the thread titled: “Is ‘Flexible Symmetry’ the Answer to Big-10 Scheduling?” This rainy Sunday morning in Eugene I asked Charles to lock that thread. As requested, you have given me a load to sort through and I will consider some of that below. As anticipated, you provided information I ...

How the BIG-10 Football Schedule Can Become Fair

Thank you Mike, as you came up with a very reasonable way to solve this. I realize that the teams are swapped every two years, but I do feel that the East is a bit more top-heavy than the West. I would propose moving Wisconsin to the East, and placing Indiana in the West...not because I want to play them, but because we cannot break up Ohio-State Michigan, and Indiana is closer than Penn State. (I believe the 'Lions will be back as a power immediately)

Washington has gone from the ashes of only two returning starters to nine wins in just two years under that bastard Fisch, thus once they get to the final stage and are winning 10 games consistently--that can also help balance the power between the two divisions.

Great ponder points--thank you.

Thanks, Mike.

Your format, including flex scheduling, could work and would be an improvement on the current throw of the scheduling dice from 2024 through 2028.

The difficulty would be in selling the idea to Tony P and the folks at Fox, CBS, and NBC. But as you noted before, discussing the issue is a start.

As iuphound pointed out, and as Charles commented on above, the Legends and Leaders split, followed by the more aptly named East-West, did not work out, due to Michigan, Ohio State, Penn State, and, on one occasion, Michigan State's dominance.

Two years in, OBD has won a conference championship, with the other won by Indiana. Not what the folks in B1G HQ imagined when putting the schedules together.

I do believe Petitti's 24-team playoff without automatic qualifiers format will be adopted, including no conference champ games being played. I also believe that, in addition to Oregon, SC, UCLA, and UW are spending the money required to be successful in football. Wisconsin has stepped up, and one day, Nebraska may see a decent return on its football investment.

So, would East-West Divisions be better balanced today? I think OBD, USC, UCLA, UW, Iowa, Nebraska, Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Illinois could be competitive versus the East.

Perhaps a flex-scheduled East-West crossover conference opening slate of games using the prior season's standings, and a final week of crossover games using the standings after the penultimate week of the regular season.

Play ten conference games, eight division, and two crossover games. Have half of the B1G teams idle in Week Six, the other half in Week Seven. Could the ACC, B12, and SEC be convinced to play ten conference games and follow the same format?

I do think travel matters. Your Division structure would help with travel. Asking OBD to play two games in four weeks in the Eastern time zone in November is handing Oregon the short end of the scheduling stick.

Trying to balance the in-conference SOS is certainly worthy of consideration. Can the folks in Chicago be convinced?

Great follow-up article, Mike, thank you.

Mike, spot on, citing Penn State's schedule. And Notre Dame? The Domers have a Golden path to the playoffs.

On3

Notre Dame, Georgia and, yes, North Dakota State among 6...

Entering the 2026 college football season, there are six schools currently favored in all 12 of their regular-season games.

There are many things we can say about the NFL, but there are many things the college game can take from it as well.

As Mike wrote in the article, giving higher performing teams tougher schedules is a great step. Of course you can't always have Purdue missing out on playing Michigan, Ohio State, Penn State, or Oregon. They need to play at least one them in addition to Indiana (as their protected rivalry).

But since the CCG may go the way of the dinosaur if Petiti gets his play-in weekend passed. You could do four pods, and a two team relegation where those teams have to play their way into a pod to get a shot at play-in weekend, or just add two more teams to get to a five team pod.

You could have a heavyweight in each conference, and then do the rest by strength and geography.

• The relegation model is a bit tricky, but you could base it off a two year stint. I think the five team pod is just simpler, and no I'm not for the B1G kicking out programs, as relegation usually means doing just that. I simply think programs should be forced to at least use their resources, and not just be comfortable being a B1G member.

• The five heavyweights would be the best five programs over a five year period. For example, USC would've been one in the late 2000s, but Indiana would take their place as of today.

Maybe my idea is too convoluted, I'm just trying think outside the box.

Tough to make it fair when you don’t play half the conference every year. Conferences/leagues of a certain size need to have divisions to at least try to make things “balanced”.

This isn’t some new radical concept…there is a reason the NFL has 2 conferences and 8 divisions for only 32 teams.

We have a nationwide conference with 18 teams and no divisions. Probably not a good model for fairness.

Edited 1 hour ago1 hr by JabbaNoBargain

25 minutes ago, JabbaNoBargain said:

Tough to make it fair when you don’t play half the conference every year. Conferences/leagues of a certain size need to have divisions to at least try to make things “balanced”.

This isn’t some new radical concept…there is a reason the NFL has 2 conferences and 8 divisions for only 32 teams.

We have a nationwide conference with 18 teams and no divisions. Probably not a good model for fairness.

Agree on the obvious dilemma created by a conference with too many teams, but divisions could make matters worse by locking in the schedule imbalance year after year. At least the current situation allows the imbalance to rotate around.

I have no sympathy for this topic. Each school is raking in cash no matter the schedule or the results.

Unbalanced schedules is a 100% predictable result of having too many teams in one conference.

GatOrlando I'm having a problem wrapping my brain around four five-team pods, assuming the B1G expands to 20 teams. I expect that expansion to happen.

I have this old-fashioned idea that to have a fair regular season every team in a division or pod, if you will, should play the same teams in a round-robin format. How do your pods address that standard?

1 hour ago, mikethehiker said:

Agree on the obvious dilemma created by a conference with too many teams, but divisions could make matters worse by locking in the schedule imbalance year after year. At least the current situation allows the imbalance to rotate around.

I have no sympathy for this topic. Each school is raking in cash no matter the schedule or the results.

Unbalanced schedules is a 100% predictable result of having too many teams in one conference.

💯 agree.

I advocate a super conference once the current grant of rights deals expire, until then we deal with it.