(01-12-2014 01:17 PM)ken d Wrote:  I have been trying, since this thread was posted, to think of a single compelling institutional reason the NCAA might have in dictating how conferences organize, schedule, or select their champion.

The problem you have is trying to make sense out of an NCAA regulation. We are talking about the organization that limits the number of pages you can have in a media guide and considers toppings for bagels or a second dessert on a recruiting visit a violation.

I would imagine that the current regulation came about because one conference somewhere wanted to play a championship game and a rival conference came up with something to make it as hard as possible for them. The NCAA, not known for thinking through rules and their effects, passed it.

The way the conference championship games went about for football was something like this:

A) The number of games for the season had been capped outside a few except games (bowls at the I-A level, playoff at I-AA).
B) At the 1-AA level, there was a playoff and a limited number of teams. One big conference though for awhile to fit in some teams and playing everyone with limit on scheduling difficult so the NCAA approved a rule for a CCG that would not count against the 12 team limit. It was never meant to apply to I-A
C) Major expansion of TV dollars at the I-A level. The SEC found the rule in the rule book and took advantage of it going to 12 and adding it in even though the NCAA wasn't happy with it.

Personally, I wish the rule had never been implemented. It would have limited conferences to 11/12 members max and kept the traditional championship format which I vastly prefer.

(01-13-2014 10:15 AM)ohio1317 Wrote:  The way the conference championship games went about for football was something like this:

A) The number of games for the season had been capped outside a few except games (bowls at the I-A level, playoff at I-AA).
B) At the 1-AA level, there was a playoff and a limited number of teams. One big conference though for awhile to fit in some teams and playing everyone with limit on scheduling difficult so the NCAA approved a rule for a CCG that would not count against the 12 team limit. It was never meant to apply to I-A
C) Major expansion of TV dollars at the I-A level. The SEC found the rule in the rule book and took advantage of it going to 12 and adding it in even though the NCAA wasn't happy with it.

Personally, I wish the rule had never been implemented. It would have limited conferences to 11/12 members max and kept the traditional championship format which I vastly prefer.

If you were going to limit conference size, you needed to start a long time ago before the horse was out of the barn. If I could turn back the clock, I would like to have seen a rule that limited conference size by requiring that all conferences play a full round robin schedule. If that had happened, Penn State probably would not have been invited into the B1G, and South Carolina and Arkansas would have been left out of the SEC.

If that had happened, I suspect that a Big East anchored by Penn State might have held together.

(01-13-2014 12:09 PM)ken d Wrote:  

(01-13-2014 10:15 AM)ohio1317 Wrote:  The way the conference championship games went about for football was something like this:

A) The number of games for the season had been capped outside a few except games (bowls at the I-A level, playoff at I-AA).
B) At the 1-AA level, there was a playoff and a limited number of teams. One big conference though for awhile to fit in some teams and playing everyone with limit on scheduling difficult so the NCAA approved a rule for a CCG that would not count against the 12 team limit. It was never meant to apply to I-A
C) Major expansion of TV dollars at the I-A level. The SEC found the rule in the rule book and took advantage of it going to 12 and adding it in even though the NCAA wasn't happy with it.

Personally, I wish the rule had never been implemented. It would have limited conferences to 11/12 members max and kept the traditional championship format which I vastly prefer.

If you were going to limit conference size, you needed to start a long time ago before the horse was out of the barn. If I could turn back the clock, I would like to have seen a rule that limited conference size by requiring that all conferences play a full round robin schedule. If that had happened, Penn State probably would not have been invited into the B1G, and South Carolina and Arkansas would have been left out of the SEC.

If that had happened, I suspect that a Big East anchored by Penn State might have held together.

Just for fun, I tried to support my last statement by imagining a parallel universe where the NCAA in 1989 - when it still had vestigial testicles - declared that all conferences must play a full round robin football schedule limited to 9 games.

At the time, the PAC 10, Big Ten and Big 8 were all aptly named. The SEC had ten members, and the ACC had 8. The Big East did not yet exist. The Big 8 made the first bold move, poaching Texas and Texas A&M from the Southwest Conference, which had begun to fray at the edges. Soon, the ACC followed up by taking Florida State from the Metro Conference and inviting independent Miami to join them.

The eastern independent schools finally took Joe Paterno's advice, and formed a new all-sports conference - let's call it the Big East. Initially, it consisted of Penn State, Pitt, West Virginia, Boston College, Syracuse, Rutgers and Temple. But soon the lure of the talent rich areas in Virginia, North Carolina and South Carolina enticed this new league to expand by taking Virginia Tech and South Carolina from the Metro Conference, and filled in the geographical gap by inviting East Carolina to join them. Eventually, it became clear that Temple wasn't ready for prime time, and the league replaced them with UConn, who was ready to make the move to big-time athletics.

Now there were six conferences, all with 10 teams each, that were clearly a cut above the rest. The traditional New Year's bowls saw this and decided to lock in teams that could travel and spend lots of dollars. The Rose Bowl already had locked up the Big 10 and PAC 10. The SEC hosted the Sugar Bowl, and the Big 8 hosted the Orange bowl.

But in a clever move, the Orange Bowl cornered the east coast market by emulating the Rose Bowl, and locked in both the the ACC and Big East champions, since they dominated the travel market most suitable for a Miami winter vacation. Not to be outdone, the Big 8 signed on to host the Cotton Bowl that was newly within its geographical footprint. They also agreed to send their second best team to the Sugar Bowl, in exchange for the SEC sending theirs to the Cotton Bowl.

Eventually, at the suggestion of ESPN, the winners of those four bowls would petition the now fully emasculated NCAA to allow the winners of those four bowls to play a season ending tournament. And everybody lived happily ever after (well, almost everybody).