Doogie on expectations for Gophers season: "Big Ten West or bust in my mind"

[mnvballdad]

What is the schedule advantage?
Wisconsin isn’t the team to beat in the division either?

If Minnesota loses to Ohio state and wins out, they win the division. Never in the history of the big ten east and west has a team won the division due to crossovers.

Ohio State, Maryland and away to Indiana is harder than Penn State, Michigan and Rutgers, especially since Penn State and Michigan have to travel to Madison.

 

[Some guy]

Ohio State, Maryland and away to Indiana is harder than Penn State, Michigan and Rutgers, especially since Penn State and Michigan have to travel to Madison.

Disagree since Michigan is better than Indiana next year and rutgers is competitive again. It’s pretty close

Any game against Ohio state trumps all I suppose

 

[noamfromm]

Murray Warmath, Bernie Bierman...I'd take Fleck being the second coming of either one!

I'd even be content with the second coming of Henry L. Williams. Coach here for 21 years and win one national title (albeit retroactively) and 8 "Big Ten" (2 outright)

 

[MplsGopher]

Disagree since Michigan is better than Indiana next year and rutgers is competitive again. It’s pretty close

Agree that Schiano will have Rutgers pointed in the right direction. Disagree that Michigan being better than IU next year is a foregone conclusion.


Regardless, the idea that the crossover games "don't matter" in the division championship, is ludicrous.

 

[short ornery norwegian]

If you want to eliminate the impact of the cross-over games, then only games in the division should count for purposes of determining a division champion.

the issue with that is how you break ties. If, as in the example above, MN, IA and WI all finish 5-1, who wins the division? do you go by total points scored; point differential; or just flip a coin?

it still gets back to this - the only "true" way to determine a conference champion is for all teams to play a full round-robin schedule. But, in a larger conference, there is no way to do that.

In fact, as far as I know, the B1G has never played a full round-robin schedule. Back when there were 10 teams, they used to play 7 conference games, meaning there were two conference teams they did not face.

 

[MplsGopher]

it still gets back to this - the only "true" way to determine a conference champion is for all teams to play a full round-robin schedule. But, in a larger conference, there is no way to do that.

It's just going to be almost impossible for there to be a legitimate 3-way tie at the top, among the 14 teams in the Big Ten. And so, just picking the top 2 for the championship game, is almost never going to be a problem.

 

[builtbadgers]

Schedules can never be equal. Win them all, no argument.