Collapse of the PAC-12: Oregon State & Washington State left in the dust

[GindyDraws]

How many teams is that?

So, Washington State and Oregon State are two schools. The Mountain West is 11 plus Hawaii as a football member, and the WCC is 9, with only San Diego being non scholarship in football.

 

[Big Z Man 1990]

Gonzaga and Saint Mary's need to be with other strong basketball-focused schools. That's where my proposed geographic split of the Big East comes in.

 

[KevFu]

Gonzaga and Saint Mary's need to be with other strong basketball-focused schools. That's where my proposed geographic split of the Big East comes in.

The Big East doesn't need Gonzaga or Saint Mary's (they need a bottom of the league, but would never do that; they built the league wrong because they're dumb and I said so for 10 years and it was obvious how that cost them this season).

 

[CHRDANHUTCH]

The Big East doesn't need Gonzaga or Saint Mary's (they need a bottom of the league, but would never do that; they built the league wrong because they're dumb and I said so for 10 years and it was obvious how that cost them this season).

you do realize the Big East is predominately catholic schools and not the original Big East conference..... it's why BC is in the ACC

 

[KevFu]

you do realize the Big East is predominately catholic schools and not the original Big East conference..... it's why BC is in the ACC

Uh... yes. The Big East got three teams into the NCAA Tournament, all as 1-2-3 seeds, and got no one else into the tournament because teams 4-9 in the conference are pretty much exactly the same in terms of how good their program is.

But they played each other -- just that group of six teams -- 10 times each. Because they have 20 conference games, only 10 out of conference games, and play 16 games against teams good enough to be NCAA Tournament teams (with bad records vs teams 1-3), they just mathematically can't all win at the same time.

They built the conference wrong. The ratio of teams in it aren't conducive to maximizing NCAA bids. DePaul made the NCAA Tournament in old C-USA, when they "thirds" of the conference be prestigious programs, good programs and.... guys who were there for market or football.
6-0 vs the bottom, 4-2 vs the middle, and 2-4 vs the top and you're 12-6 in conference, 21-9 overall and in the NCAA tournament.

Doing that in the new Big East makes you 10-10 in conference and 18-13 overall and in the NIT like Seton Hall.

They built the new Big East on the premise that you WANT to be the strongest, top-to-bottom, so you can say you're the best conference in the country. But that gets you nothing.

They don't need Gonzaga and Saint Mary's, because they'd just have 11 teams beating the crap out of each other. You need tiers within your conference, and the top half of the middle tier gets in just by getting those wins over the rest of that tier.

 

[Big Z Man 1990]

Uh... yes. The Big East got three teams into the NCAA Tournament, all as 1-2-3 seeds, and got no one else into the tournament because teams 4-9 in the conference are pretty much exactly the same in terms of how good their program is.

But they played each other -- just that group of six teams -- 10 times each. Because they have 20 conference games, only 10 out of conference games, and play 16 games against teams good enough to be NCAA Tournament teams (with bad records vs teams 1-3), they just mathematically can't all win at the same time.

They built the conference wrong. The ratio of teams in it aren't conducive to maximizing NCAA bids. DePaul made the NCAA Tournament in old C-USA, when they "thirds" of the conference be prestigious programs, good programs and.... guys who were there for market or football.
6-0 vs the bottom, 4-2 vs the middle, and 2-4 vs the top and you're 12-6 in conference, 21-9 overall and in the NCAA tournament.

Doing that in the new Big East makes you 10-10 in conference and 18-13 overall and in the NIT like Seton Hall.

They built the new Big East on the premise that you WANT to be the strongest, top-to-bottom, so you can say you're the best conference in the country. But that gets you nothing.

They don't need Gonzaga and Saint Mary's, because they'd just have 11 teams beating the crap out of each other. You need tiers within your conference, and the top half of the middle tier gets in just by getting those wins over the rest of that tier.

The Zags and SMC wouldn't be in the Big East, they'd be in the new conference I am proposing that also includes the Midwest schools in the Big East and A-10, plus Valpo and Detroit Mercy.

The new-look Big East would add the A-10's PA schools and Iona.

The goal is to weaken the A-10 and WCC, currently two of the top mid-major conferences.

 

[Big Z Man 1990]

The ACC and SEC should also adopt rivalry pods for basketball.

In the ACC, the 18 teams would be divided into pods as follows:

Deep South: Clemson, Florida State, Georgia Tech, Miami
Northeast: Boston College, Pittsburgh, Syracuse, Virginia, Virginia Tech
Tobacco Road: Duke, North Carolina, NC State, Wake Forest
West: California, Louisville, Notre Dame, SMU, Stanford

Teams in the five-team pods always play each other twice a year, plus the 13 other schools once for 21 conference games.

Teams in the four-team pods will play at least twice a year, with Clemson-Georgia Tech and Florida State-Miami always playing thrice a year, and the Tobacco Road pod will rotate which match-ups get a third playing each year. Teams in these pods would play the other 14 ACC schools once a year to make up their 21-game conference schedule, the second-most conference games in D1 behind only the Big Ten with 22.

The SEC's pods would be these:

Atlantic: Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, South Carolina
East Central: Alabama, Auburn, Tennessee, Vanderbilt
Plains: Missouri, Oklahoma, Texas, Texas A&M
West Central: Arkansas, LSU, Mississippi State, Ole Miss

As with what I am proposing for Big 12 basketball, each team plays their in-pod rivals twice (once hosted by each team) and everyone else once (6 at home, 6 on the road, alternating locations every year).

The conditions that caused the WAC's pod format (of which the ACC's SMU and the Big 12's BYU, TCU and Utah were all part) to fail 25 years ago no longer exist. So I think the pod format (used by the Big 12 in both football and basketball and by the ACC and SEC only in basketball) can succeed today.

 

[Big Z Man 1990]

The Big 12 will have four full members that have wrestling starting next year - Arizona State, Iowa State, Oklahoma State, and West Virginia. Former full member Missouri is an affiliate, and Oklahoma is expected to be a wrestling affiliate going forward.

As such, I can see the Big 12 dispensing with their wrestling affiliates that are currently not full members of a Power league. I have proposed destinations for all of them.

I've proposed Air Force and Sacred Heart join the Patriot League as full members, with Air Force remaining in the MW for football only and Sacred Heart bringing football into the league (in the process SHU would reverse its acceptance of an invite to join the MAAC). Sacred Heart would be one of six Patriot League schools currently competing in the EIWA, which is already losing its Ivy League representatives - the others are American, Army, Bucknell, Lehigh and Navy. This would allow the Patriot League to sponsor wrestling themselves, as Ivy and Patriot League universities often schedule each other in non-conference play.

The EIWA would rebuild by adding current MAC wrestling associates Bloomsburg, Clarion, Edinboro, Lock Haven and Rider and current wrestling independent Morgan State which very recently launched its program.

The Big 12 wrestling affiliates in the West outside of Air Force - California Baptist, Northern Colorado, Utah Valley, and Wyoming - could team with Pac-12 full member Oregon State and wrestling affiliates Bakersfield and Cal Poly in forming a wrestling league under the MPSF banner.

The Big 12 wrestling affiliates in the Midwest other than Missouri - North Dakota State, Northern Iowa, and South Dakota State - could team with current Pac-12 affiliate Little Rock, MAC affiliate SIU Edwardsville, SoCon full member Chattanooga (which I am proposing become a full member of the OVC) and SoCon affiliate Bellarmine to form a new wrestling-only conference centered in the Central US.

George Mason wrestling joins the SoCon, whose wrestling league is taken over by the CCSA.

The last remaining MAC wrestling affiliate, Cleveland State, I have proposed to upgrade to full MAC membership.