The Big Ten Conference has announced changes to their football scheduling standards set to begin in the 2016 season.
-
Expanding the conference schedule from eight games to nine games with a conference championship game.
The Big Ten Conference isn’t the only conference to do this. The PAC-12 and Big-12 also have nine game regular season schedules. Since the schools are only allowed to schedule 12 regular season games, this will eliminate one non-conference game.
-
Mandating at least one non-conference game be against an opponent from the Big-12 Conference, Pacific-12 Conference, South Eastern Conference, or Atlantic Coast Conference. (The Power Five)
As a fan or season ticket holder, you have to love this. Instead of having to pay for a home ticket against a tiny school that you’ve never heard of, you now will get to see better competition roll into your home stadium. The Big Ten might not be victorious in every match-up, but at least you’ll have a better game to watch instead of watching your school pound one of the bottom-20 teams in America.
-
Elimination of opponents from the Football Championship Subdivision (FCS) from the schedule.
This rule won’t be on the books, but rather an “Athletic Directors agreement” as Commissioner Jim Delany explained. Some schools are locked into contracts with FCS opponents for the future and will be allowed to honor those contracts. After those contracts expire, no further scheduling of FCS opponents will be allowed.
The two reasons the Big Ten Conference has implemented these changes was to make their teams resume’s more impressive to the College Football’s Playoff Selection Committee and to increase revenue.
When you can only select four teams to play for the National Championship, strength of schedule is likely the biggest factor for the committee when comparing teams with equal records. Eliminating a game against a FCS school and replacing it with another conference game increases the perceived strength of schedule. Also, mandating a Power Five opponent doesn’t allow the likes of Ohio State to not play a non-conference game outside their own state and only face tough competition during the Conference schedule.
This will also allow the Big Ten Network to broadcast more premium games. Instead of having to feature the likes of Ohio State and Akron or Michigan and Appalachian State at the beginning of the year, they could get a match-up of Ohio State and Georgia Tech or Michigan and Arizona, which will draw more viewers, which equals more money.
As far as I’m concerned this is a win-win for the Big Ten. It not only makes the fans happier, which the conference management could care less about, but it increases the likeliness that a damn good Big Ten team will be selected for the College Football Playoff, but also increases the conference’s revenue.
