Academic

A tale of two football conferences

By Tung Yin

Hmm . . . three Pac-10 teams are playing non-conference games today:

Stanford (#16)  at Notre Dame

UCLA at Texas (#7)

Oregon State (#24) at Boise State (#3)

Two top-10 opponents and a historically dominant team (though one that's been mediocre recently), all on the road.  Meanwhile, here's the Big-10's non-conference schedule:

Wisconsin (#11) vs. Austin Peay (who???)

Purdue vs. Toledo

Northwestern vs. Central Michigan

Michigan State (#25) vs. Northern Colorado

Michigan vs. Bowling Green

Iowa (#18) vs. Ball State

Penn State (#23) vs. Temple

Ohio State (#2) vs. Eastern Michigan

Indiana vs. Akron

Minnesota vs. Northern Illinois

Zero ranked opponents, all games at home, and all against weak opponents. . . .

You might notice that there are only three Pac-10 non-conference games.  What's the rest of the conference doing?  Well, Washington has a bye week, but the rest of the teams are playing conference games.  You see, the Pac-10 plays a full round robin conference schedule.  No dodging any conference team.  With 10 teams in the conference, that means 9 conference games, not 8.  Oddly, the Big-10, which has 11 teams, plays only 8 conference games.  For some reason, the Big-10 would prefer to schedule a week like today rather than play an extra round of conference games.

I submit this as another example of why the Pac-10 is better than the Big-10.

Full post as published by The Yin Blog on September 25, 2010 (boomark / email).