Schedule Analysis for new Big Ten opponents
Comments
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They had to do it but boy is this Big 10 shit weird. It would have been so much funner to just have a non-conference home and home with Penn State .
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Playing in Sept would be a lot better, no doubt.
On the PSU side, with their long-time rivals being neighboring teams, they now have a third of their conference games against west coast teams, and they haven't played Minnesota, Wisconsin, or Purdue as much as many of the other B1G schools due to the B1G scheduling over the years (30 years in the B1G and only played the Gophers 16 times), but those are all on the schedule in 2024. It's a very weird schedule, but they do have WVU as a GOOD non-con game. And of course the annual loss to Ohio State.
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Flying to Denver to play Colorado was also a joke though.
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Colorado and Utah and pretty much any expansion was always stupid. Even the Arizona schools could be debated.
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It was only worth it to go to Pac-16 with the Texas schools so we could make very clear Pac-8 and Big-8 divisions like it was supposed to be. Alas, Larry Scott.
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That was the ideal path though it's possible they would have just blown that up the next time a TV contract came up and with the SEC courting the Texas schools and Oklahoma.
It hit me more lately the college football trying to make it a minor league thing will be hurt long term by squeezing out more and more teams. I'm in a group text with a bunch of Cougs and they're a lot less interested in college football now. Probably gonna watch a lot less across the board, including the CFP. Part of the buy in with college football was the illusion that you at least had a shot nationally. If UW falls off a cliff because they aren't one of 5 1/2 teams that can just endlessly overpay for shit I'm gonna be way less interested. These fans won't be replaced with the casuals they think they will. If anything, college football is bringing in way less casual fans it seems and it seems more and more like a niche thing (even if it's the second most popular sport in my opinion). The average NFL fan dunce 12 type isn't suddenly getting interested because there's a bigger playoff and more name schools playing against each other.
Also the mystique of the stadiums and bowls and pageantry is being replaced with a stale corporate atmosphere like the natty game.
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This. Great post.
The powers that be in college football HAVE to strike a balance between the free market and prioritizing the product itself. There’s a reason pro leagues have fixed term contracts, salary caps, etc. Without it, the product itself just isn’t very interesting.
Of course, they won’t.
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I have experienced the worst of it when it comes to the Pac 2 where alums who are business owners and have donated to the schools for ~15 years want to take their ball and go home. Jonathon Smith isn't even making that much more than what OSU was going to pay him, Martinez leaving etc.
The issue here is that they are the only two schools who are getting screwed. Not them + Iowa State, Iowa, Vanderbilt etc etc.
WSU fans don't want to admit it because they are a vastly superior school to Boise, and the 2nd major brand in a much more legit state than Idaho, but they need to leverage their beer shit and other collective stuff into being most 2000's Boise at this point.
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