At the beginning of this season, I took an early sneak peak at Target Field. On the way over there, I was informed about the idea of a baseball realignment plan that would make teams more competitve and group them by market sizes rather than geographical regions.
So why would baseball want to realign their divisions and destroy many of their rivalries that helped obtain its popularity? Because the Yankees and the Red Sox make the playoffs every year.
That's right, because nobody can beat those two teams, the rest of baseball has to adjust for two teams. Whatever happened to getting better so that those two teams can be beaten. The Rays have done it, why can't anyone else knock either team out of the playoffs?
Well, baseball hasn't done anything yet, but the Big Ten adopted that philosophy on Wednesday when they announced the division alignments in football for when Nebraska joins the conference prior to the 2011 season. The final divisions are...
- Minnesota, Michigan, Iowa, Nebraska, Northwestern, Michigan State
- Wisconsin, Ohio State, Penn State, Illinois, Purdue, Indiana
Um...what? So what the Big Ten did was weigh the importance of rivalries over competitiveness. Or they say competitiveness, which translate into KA-CHING for the Big Ten.
The Big Ten is owned by two teams in football: Ohio State and Michigan. That seems to be the banner game every year for the conference because none of the other teams in the conference are good enough to overtake them. So it would make sense to have your two best teams in the conference championship game...because it would make the most money and give the conference the most attention.
By weighing the importance of that rivalry, the Big Ten has ignored almost every other rivalry in the conference. Yes, the teams will still get to play each other in "rivalry-protected matchups" but if they're truly a rivalry, why not put them in the same division where they can play each other and have the games mean more towards who goes to the conference championship?
Take the Gophers as an example. If you ask the person on the street which are the two most important matchups the Gophers have in football, they would probably answer Wisconsin (Paul Bunyan's Ax) and Iowa (The Floyd of Rosedale). So wouldn't it make sense to guarantee that Minnesota and Wisconsin would play each other? What if they're battling for the berth in the championship game, wouldn't that make it more exciting instead of...let's see if Wisconsin can catch Ohio State. Yay...
The Big Ten may have also neutralized the Ohio State/Michigan rivalry in the process as well. The Big Ten has said that they will make sure that the two teams will play their game on the final week of the regular season. Cool, that's tradition. But under this format, what if the two team steamroll their divisions and clinch their berth in the conference championship game? The result might be a NFL preseason game where neither coach wants to show anything because there is a more crucial game coming up with the same team in two weeks.
None of this is going to change sadly because we all know what college sports are all about. Look at BYU, who suddenly thinks they can become Notre Dame West by going independent. Look at Texas canceling a home-and-home series with Minnesota because the Gophers aren't a big draw for the TV network the Longhorns are looking to launch in the near future. And look at all the other conferences adding teams to get to the magic number of 12 to have a conference championship game. Nebraska should just change their name to the Dollars and Sense and replace the N on their helmet with a $ cause the Big Ten is laughing all the way to the bank on this one.
Don't get me wrong, I'm going to love seeing a Big Ten Championship game. How many times have we seen two really good teams have undefeated conference records, but they never played each other during the regular season so insane tiebreakers have to be used to determine a champion? I just think it would be better served if two random teams were involved instead of seeing a team play each other twice on back-to back weeks to end the season. The Big Ten dropped the ball on this one, and hopefully they don't turn out like the last conference to decide that expanding to 12 teams was a good idea. Nebraska knows all about what happened to that conference.
No comments:
Post a Comment