After almost two months of lies, dissembling, incompetence, and PR so bad that Genghis Khan has decided he can take a breather, the Big 10 has now signaled that it wants to parachute into the 2020 College Football season.
The proposal isn’t an equitable one for the other three conferences. Not even close.
The Big 10 will start at least a month after everyone else, and then will play just an 8-game all-conference schedule. Then the teams will be seeded from each division and matched 1 vs. 1, 7 vs. 7, and so on. The No. 1 teams will play in the B1G Championship, while the other twelve teams get to beat each other up in a meaningless revenue quest.
The ACC will be playing an 11-game schedule + a title game, while the Big 12 and the SEC have a 10-game schedule + championship.
If you went to law school, and thus math isn’t your strong suit, that means the Big 10 champion will have played 18%-25% fewer games than the winners of the other conferences. That means a team like Ohio State will see 18%-25% fewer snaps, 18%-25% fewer opportunities for injuries, 18-25% fewer chances for a bad loss, 18-25% for a fluke injury, and will have had the benefit of scouting opponents for 4-8 weeks before they even take the first kickoff.
So, yeah, the Big 10 wants to get to botch this from Day One and then be rewarded with a college football playoff berth. That, my friends, is the most uniquely-Big 10 combination of sanctimony and self-serving hypocrisy you’ll see today. We will certainly have more to say about this later.
Almost as bad, like that weird guy at work that you invite to happy hour out of social grace, their tagalong pets on the West Coast have now decided that they too may wish to join in the party. But, honestly, besides some additional wagering opportunities on bad football and zany #PAC12AfterDark, there’s not a single team in that conference that is anything other than a two-loss disappointment waiting to happen. The true hilarity lies in how the PAC12 are the lap dogs of the dolts in Indianapolis.
Here’s what one anonymous PAC 12 athletic director said:
From @BruceFeldmanCFB, some blunt perspectives from Pac-12 coaches on just how far their teams are from being physically ready to play football.
— Stewart Mandel (@slmandel) September 17, 2020
"Our nose is so f-----g far up the Big Ten’s ass. Let’s just do what’s best for the Pac-12."https://t.co/9reuq47k6d
The wizards at SEC Shorts could not let this go. Josh and Co. again register the pulse of this sport and its fans better than just about anyone.
All this is just preliminary, of course. We haven’t seen a finalized Northron schedule, nor do we even know whether an 8-game schedule is going to be copacetic with CFB...much less if a two-week delay to begin the playoffs is feasible, but what do we think?
Poll
What do we do with a 9-0 Big 10 team that started 4-8 weeks late?
This poll is closed
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16%
Rank ‘em, put ‘em in the playoffs if qualified.
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10%
They’re going to have to add at least one game out of fairness.
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69%
Who cares? Let ‘em watch Alabama and Clemson in the CFP Finals as they paste an overrated 8-2 Oregon team in an empty Rose Bowl.
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3%
I have other thoughts, below.