BleedGopher
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per the WSJ:
The question of who plays whom in college football is a lot trickier than it sounds. It drove the last wave of conference realignment, and it may come roaring back next month, with the NCAA leadership deciding whether to offer its five power conferences more autonomy, since conference commissioners have threatened to break away from the NCAA if the new governance structure is voted down.
What a "Division IV" in college sports would look like is still anyone's guess. But two Ohio State sports researchers have an idea: What if schools were sorted into conferences based on their football strength?
To do that, Jonathan Jensen and Brian Turner chose to ignore geography and tradition, the typical forces in conference realignment. Instead, they focused solely on football and its financial implications, coming up with a formula that factored in every team's football revenue, winning percentage, computer ranking and attendance between 2003 and 2013. Then they sorted teams into clusters to figure out which schools were most alike—and should be playing each other.
http://online.wsj.com/articles/a-radical-realignment-plan-for-college-football-1406069526
Go Gophers!!
The question of who plays whom in college football is a lot trickier than it sounds. It drove the last wave of conference realignment, and it may come roaring back next month, with the NCAA leadership deciding whether to offer its five power conferences more autonomy, since conference commissioners have threatened to break away from the NCAA if the new governance structure is voted down.
What a "Division IV" in college sports would look like is still anyone's guess. But two Ohio State sports researchers have an idea: What if schools were sorted into conferences based on their football strength?
To do that, Jonathan Jensen and Brian Turner chose to ignore geography and tradition, the typical forces in conference realignment. Instead, they focused solely on football and its financial implications, coming up with a formula that factored in every team's football revenue, winning percentage, computer ranking and attendance between 2003 and 2013. Then they sorted teams into clusters to figure out which schools were most alike—and should be playing each other.
http://online.wsj.com/articles/a-radical-realignment-plan-for-college-football-1406069526
Go Gophers!!