Bonus Reusse: Big Ten should go to two divisions in basketball

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GopherJake said:
Not to mention that having so many games would dilute fan interest in the tournament and burn out teams a week prior to the NCAA tournament at the same time.
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Well....it's the same number of games (overall) regardless of how you set it up unless you keep some teams out of the tournament completely. You need to "eliminate" 13 teams in one way or another and can only eliminate one team per game. Thus, the tournament will have 13 games in any format. If anything, the format that SS/Ope3 propose skews more games to the lesser teams and keeps the top teams fresher.
 

Ope3 said:
My guess as to how they will seed the 14 team Tourney-

#1 - 4 seeds get double byes. #5 - 10 get single bye. Teams 11-14 play on day one to get the field to 12 remaining. Teams 5 and up play on day 2 to get to 8 remaining and so on.
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As a matter of fact, we talked about double-bye formats, too. I'm not sure I'm up for a five-day tournament, even if other conferences do it. I'm sympathetic to those who feel it waters it down as well as those who would struggle to take another day off to attend in person (which might be the people I travel with).
 

Bad Gopher said:
As a matter of fact, we talked about double-bye formats, too. I'm not sure I'm up for a five-day tournament, even if other conferences do it. I'm sympathetic to those who feel it waters it down as well as those who would struggle to take another day off to attend in person (which might be the people I travel with).
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Our group has decided we're going to give it a whirl when the BTT goes to 5 days in 2015 (the B1G will invite all 14), but I suspect that will be the only year we commit to the 5 days. Thursday through Sunday already is enough of a grind. I sure hope the Gophers don't become regulars on seeds #11-14 day (Wednesday).
 

golfing18now said:
Well....it's the same number of games (overall) regardless of how you set it up unless you keep some teams out of the tournament completely. You need to "eliminate" 13 teams in one way or another and can only eliminate one team per game. Thus, the tournament will have 13 games in any format. If anything, the format that SS/Ope3 propose skews more games to the lesser teams and keeps the top teams fresher.
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Yes, I worded my post poorly. I was thinking of the NCAA-bound teams in particular. Watching Michigan State hammer Penn State is not that compelling and spends energy Michigan State needs for the "real" tournament they are in the following weekend. Not to mention brings more opportunity for injury.
 

Since this is all about TV anyway, here is my crazed idea.

Divisions - home and home guarantee regular season + one game each against opposite conference = 12 + 7 = 19 games season

Top team in each conference get bye to B1G Ten tournament.

Remaining teams - ordered 3 through 14 based on total conference records. 3 plays 14, 4 played 13, etc. Those games - Monday/Tuesday/Wednesday - at the site of the higher seed. 6 PM and 8:15 PM start times (Gives B1G Network 3 nights of double headers)

Friday/Saturday/Sunday - Standard 8 team tournament.

Crazy I know.
 


Divisions is definitely a dumb idea for basketball. It's better to set the schedules on an annual basis and have the flexibility to shift the 1-plays around so they're somewhat even in quality among all teams. When you box yourself in like that you're not going to be able to do much to even out the schedule strength across divisions, and the conference regular season championship might not be decided particularly fairly. Divisions were also bad for the SEC tournament, as they had an imbalance in division strength that resulted in advantages (byes) being given to weaker teams on a regular basis simply because those weaker teams played in the weaker division.
 



It would be nice to play every conference foe once a year in football and twice a year in basketball.

That would be 9 football games and 18 basketball games if we went with 10 teams. Ooops too late.
 



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