There are many fans, and a lot of them post here, who think that the Big 12 ought to be required to add two teams to get equal consideration for a spot in the CFP. Personally, I'm not one of them. If the committee claims that it is choosing the four strongest teams, without regard to conference affiliation, it shouldn't matter. Unfortunately, it appears that they did not do what they said they would do, and penalized the Big 12 for only having 10 members.

Why should the Big 12 have to change its membership and nobody else? Since this board is all about purely hypothetical rearranging of conferences, what if the rule were changed in a different way? What if all football conferences were required to play a full round robin schedule every year? If we are OK with forcing a conference (the Big 12) to add members it doesn't want, why wouldn't we be OK with requiring other conferences to shed some members they do want? What's good for the goose is good for the gander.

With that as the premise, and realizing it would never happen, and that this is a purely hypothetical exercise, let's assume that no conference is allowed to have more than 11 members or fewer than 9. For each of the P5 conferences, which teams do you think would be cut loose to comply with such a rule?

For example, the PAC 12 could drop Colorado and get to 11, or it might also drop Utah and go back to its 2010 membership.

What would the new P5 conferences look like, and what would happen to the teams that are dropped?

Not so easy, is it?

Because the round-robin format in the Big 12 produced such a clearly delineated champion this year...

...everyone else should use their formula.

Man, it's going to be a long off-season... :)

The Big 12 wasn't directly punished because it only had 10 teams. It was punished because it's champion(s) only played 12 games while the 4 other P5 champions had played 13.

They could have survived this if there had been just 1 upset in the 4 title games.

It is also possible that they could have survived this if a team with more national cache (Texas or Oklahoma) had been their champion, and probable that they could have survived this if Texas or Oklahoma had won the B12 while a team with less national cache had won one of the other 4 P5 titles.

Things worked perfectly against the B12 this year, which is why I don't expect them to expand even if they are not permitted to have a championship game with 10 members unless it becomes a pattern.

It is important not to extrapolate the results of one year. This year was fairly unique in that there were no upsets in the championship game. Plus the Big 12 didn't have an undefeated team or an undisputed champion. Plus the team with the best argument for being its champ didn't play or beat anyone in nonconference. Plus the champ from another league that ended up in the fourth spot had one of the most impressive wins of the year.

This year was a perfect storm, IMO. If any of those factors go a different way, the league has one, maybe two teams in, IMO. Since everything went chalk, this is one of those years where a champ game might have helped (but even then, you have that 59-0 OSU win that might have still kept a Big 12 team out).

(01-10-2015 11:49 AM)ken d Wrote:  Why should the Big 12 have to change its membership and nobody else?

Did I really just read this? Why should he big 12 have to change their membership? Because EVERYONE else had to in order to get a CCG. The question, if any, should be why did everyone else have to change to get a CCG and the Big 12 shouldn't have to? If you were to ask that question anyway.

(01-10-2015 04:35 PM)adcorbett Wrote:  

(01-10-2015 11:49 AM)ken d Wrote:  Why should the Big 12 have to change its membership and nobody else?

Did I really just read this? Why should he big 12 have to change their membership? Because EVERYONE else had to to get a CCG. The question shoudl be why didd everyone else have to change and the Big 12 didn't? If you were to ask that question anyway.

These were my exact thoughts when I read that.

(01-10-2015 11:49 AM)ken d Wrote:  There are many fans, and a lot of them post here, who think that the Big 12 ought to be required to add two teams to get equal consideration for a spot in the CFP. Personally, I'm not one of them. If the committee claims that it is choosing the four strongest teams, without regard to conference affiliation, it shouldn't matter. Unfortunately, it appears that they did not do what they said they would do, and penalized the Big 12 for only having 10 members.

Why should the Big 12 have to change its membership and nobody else? Since this board is all about purely hypothetical rearranging of conferences, what if the rule were changed in a different way? What if all football conferences were required to play a full round robin schedule every year? If we are OK with forcing a conference (the Big 12) to add members it doesn't want, why wouldn't we be OK with requiring other conferences to shed some members they do want? What's good for the goose is good for the gander.

With that as the premise, and realizing it would never happen, and that this is a purely hypothetical exercise, let's assume that no conference is allowed to have more than 11 members or fewer than 9. For each of the P5 conferences, which teams do you think would be cut loose to comply with such a rule?

For example, the PAC 12 could drop Colorado and get to 11, or it might also drop Utah and go back to its 2010 membership.

What would the new P5 conferences look like, and what would happen to the teams that are dropped?

(01-10-2015 04:42 PM)NestaKnight1 Wrote:  

(01-10-2015 04:35 PM)adcorbett Wrote:  

(01-10-2015 11:49 AM)ken d Wrote:  Why should the Big 12 have to change its membership and nobody else?

Did I really just read this? Why should he big 12 have to change their membership? Because EVERYONE else had to to get a CCG. The question shoudl be why didd everyone else have to change and the Big 12 didn't? If you were to ask that question anyway.

These were my exact thoughts when I read that.

But nobody else had to change to be given equal consideration for a playoff that didn't exist until after those conferences had raided the Big 12 and taken four of their members.

But that wasn't the question I posed. What I asked was, if your conference were forced to limit itself to no more than 11 members, which ones wouldn't be included?

You aren't making any sense. It's not that they aren't being given "equal consideration." It's that by having a CCG, the other conference champions have an advantage over those who don't. That is not the same thing. Further the big -2 was all about a CCG back when they had one and the big ten, PAC 12, and ACC didn't, and their champion then had an advantage getting into the Bcs championship over those who didn't.

Plus the big 12 DID try to expand back to 12 after nebraska and Colorado left.

(01-10-2015 05:17 PM)adcorbett Wrote:  You aren't making any sense. It's not that they aren't being given "equal consideration." It's that by having a CCG, the other conference champions have an advantage over those who don't. That is not the same thing. Further the big -2 was all about a CCG back when they had one and the big ten, PAC 12, and ACC didn't, and their champion then had an advantage getting into the Bcs championship over those who didn't.

Plus the big 12 DID try to expand back to 12 after nebraska and Colorado left.

Those two sentences contradict one another. With no charge to do so, the CFP selection committee took it on itself to decide that one team's nine conference games mattered more than another team's nine conference games. But again, my purpose isn't to debate whether belonging to a conference with 12 members makes a team better than if that exact same team were in a conference with 10 members. My purpose is to solicit opinions about which schools a conference might be willing to drop if they were forced to do so.

There was a playoff it was only two teams and it was generally thought a title game provided an advantage in selection.

If Baylor doesn't rally against TCU and everything else stays the same, TCU is almost assuredly in and if they weren't the "must have" discussion would have far more merit.

Of the ten FBS leagues, eight have chosen to reduce the amount of equity of their members in order to hold a championship game. Now arguably all of those appear to have resulted in the value of the remaining equity increasing but those schools reduced their voting power and reduced the percentage of league assets they own.

The B12 position is that doesn't work for us so change it. The burden is on the B12 to convince the other leagues to embrace that. Maybe SEC says not having a competing P5 sitting at the intersection of three of their fan bases warrants a positive vote. Maybe B1G doesn't want B12 sitting in another B1G state. Maybe the consensus is a yes vote brings much desired stability. Maybe B1G, SEC, P12 consider it good business to mitigate the impact of their raids of B12, maybe they don't want two more schools in the club with enhanced budget and profile.

The conferences will have to weigh that but they aren't going to approach it as a fairness issue when the Big XII elects to not choose the same path.

(01-10-2015 05:44 PM)ken d Wrote:  

(01-10-2015 05:17 PM)adcorbett Wrote:  You aren't making any sense. It's not that they aren't being given "equal consideration." It's that by having a CCG, the other conference champions have an advantage over those who don't. That is not the same thing. Further the big -2 was all about a CCG back when they had one and the big ten, PAC 12, and ACC didn't, and their champion then had an advantage getting into the Bcs championship over those who didn't.

Plus the big 12 DID try to expand back to 12 after nebraska and Colorado left.

Those two sentences contradict one another. With no charge to do so, the CFP selection committee took it on itself to decide that one team's nine conference games mattered more than another team's nine conference games. But again, my purpose isn't to debate whether belonging to a conference with 12 members makes a team better than if that exact same team were in a conference with 10 members. My purpose is to solicit opinions about which schools a conference might be willing to drop if they were forced to do so.

No it's not. The others are being rewarded for something they did to help themselves. The big 12 is not being punished, they just are not dealing the rewards. The net result may be similar, but they are not the same thing. For example say you are in college and the teacher grades on a curve. She offers everyone a chance to earn extra credit by answering two bonus questions. If 29 of the students take the bonus questions and get them right, the 3 who didn't bother to answer the bonus questions werent "punished" for not answering the questions, and they didn't lose any points. But the other students were goven an extra chance to earn points and took it. Same end results, as you say, but much different process.

The big 12, as literally the only conference hat does not have 12 teams going forward (as of now) has chosen this path, as they "could" go to 12 teams as there are teams who are interested in joining. They chose not to. That's fine. But they don't enjoy the advantages that those who did choose to go that route get, among those the benefits of their champion having won an extra game.

As I said, this thread has been taken in a direction that has already been rehashed to death, and that I have no interest in debating. Unless somebody is interested in the question in the OP, I'll take the hint and delete the thread (assuming I'm allowed to do that).

It appears I can't delete my own thread. I'd appreciate it if a mod with authority put this puppy out of its misery.

Once you have responses you can't delete it.

Thing is, even if it was t your intention, uou phrased it in a way that made it seem like a pity party for the big 12 because drugs were being "forced" to expand and hold a CCG or they would be held at a disadvantage. To that point, I didn't even read past that. Just as an example.

Best thing you can do is either repost here and try again, or do a new thread and only out what you want people to read and debate.

You frame it as how unfair it is for the Big12 to be "forced" to do make the same choice everyone else had to make, either expand and have divisions and a CCG or not expand ... and then ask what it would be if everyone was "forced" to make a different choice. Which is certain to generate responses disputing the frame rather than playing the hypothetical game.

So with respect to how about resolving the "CCG or no CCG" by forcing a rule to strip the CCG from everybody who presently gets to have one, my suggestion for the Big Ten is ... kicking out Maryland, Rutgers, and either Penn State or Nebraska in order to lose our CCG is a lose-lose, because I like our CCG, and I like having my Dad's Huskers in the conference, and I even overall like having Penn State in the conference. And for this hypothetical, Rutgers and Maryland are neither here nor there, since they would not be a sufficient sacrifice to force us to give up our CCG.

(01-10-2015 08:41 PM)ken d Wrote:  It appears I can't delete my own thread. I'd appreciate it if a mod with authority put this puppy out of its misery.

Adcorbett astutely refutes a question in your original post, so you actually asked a Mod to close this thread. Why? You started it....

Other conferences owe nothing to the Big 12 just as competing companies do not owe anything to a competitor that has had a misperception of the future and the correct path to take into that future.

The Big 12 is caught in a catch 22 situation and no one else owes them anything in regards to a solution for it.