With the future of college football changing as the days go forward, many conferences are making significant changes to their conference scheduling practices in the future. Many FBS conference, more specifically BCS conferences are changing to the 9 Game Conference scheduling format. However, there are no cross divisional scheduling practices or formats in place. Allowing the athletic directors to schedule who ever they want and how they want in the other division within the same conference. It would be more logical to design and implement a standardized, cross divisional, within conference scheduling grid. This standardized scheduling grid would significantly decrease the responsibilities of ALL athletic directors with the lobbying to within conference athletic directors, to schedule within cross divisional games. How would a large member BCS conference cross divisional schedule look, if there was a standardized scheduling grid?
I have examined scheduling practices for the past 5 years and it seems that certain BCS programs within high profile split division BCS conferences “DON’T” want to play specific programs within their own membership conference. You should not get the right to choose who you “DON’T” want to play in your respective member conference. It’s come to knowledge and expressed in various media outlets, more specifically the Southeastern Conference FBS football programs, do not want to play members in other divisions or not this year. Their hedonistic thoughts are to say “lets wait until they have a down year and then we will play them”. The idea that I have thought from an athletic directors point of view, that should be implemented, for a standardized scheduling grid for all split division FBS conferences. This type of system is simplistic, takes less thought and energy, plus it significantly decreases lobbying by athletic directors during athletic director meetings during scheduling time.
The standardized scheduling grid would still allow for competitive conference play, possibly maintain or create conference rivalries and increase the importance of each conference game. The rules for the standardized scheduling grid would be implemented as follows:
1. Once the 12 game regular season is complete for the competitive season and all regular conference games are complete, each division are already ranked in order by win-loss records within the division of that member conference. Start There.
2. The next season’s conference scheduling can be created by the final placement of each team within their division vs. the other division same placements. Divisional tie breakers can be determined by head to head games played against each divisional members.
3. Each team within the division plays each other, then the remaining number of conference games that need to be scheduled will be determined by final placement of Division A placements vs. remaining number of (X) games needed from Division B teams placements.
4. If you play the same cross divisional program in successive seasons, alternate the home and away scheduling format. The team that plays more HOME conference games in season A will play less HOME games in the next conference cross divisional scheduling season. This will place balance within the home field advantage topic and no one team will have a home field scheduling advantage like their are currently with the Non-Conference FBS scheduling practices.
For example, lets see the how the implementation of scheduling the cross divisional games, that should be required by rules, ethics, fairness, morals and not by lobbying.
Division A Team placement 1st schedules Division B teams placements of 1,2& 3
Division A Team placement 2nd schedules Division B teams placements of 1,2& 4
Division A Team placement 3rd schedules Division B teams placements of 1,3& 4
Division A Team placement 4th schedules Division B teams placements of 2,3& 4
Division A Team placement 5th, 6th & 7th schedules Division B teams placement 5,6& 7
Lets look at the Southeastern Conference and how their future 9-team conference schedule would look if this was implemented for the 2013 season.
GA: 6 games within division 3H/3A and then (H) ALA, (A) LSU and (H) TXAM
FLA: 6 games within the division 3H/3A and then (A) ALA, (H) LSU and (A) MSST
SC: 6 games within division 3H/3A and then (H) ALA, (A) MSST and (A) TXAM
VANDY: 6 games within division 3H/3A and then (H) TXAM, (H) MSST and (A) LSU
MZ: 6 games within division 3H/3A and then (A) MS, (H) ARK and (H) AU
TN: 6 games within division 3H/3a and then (H) MS, (A) ARK and (H) AU
KY: 6 games within division 3H/3A and then (A) MS, (H) ARK and (A) AU
I just significantly decreased scheduling issues and the time needed for athletic directors for the within conference, cross divisional scheduling practices. By implementing this format, this will allow athletic directors to focus on other issues within the athletic environment vs. email tag, lobbying, phone calls, talking with head coaches, phone tag, and saying “I DON’T WANT TO PLAY THEM THIS YEAR”. Schedule the games, play the members in your conference in which you voted in, in addition to stop running away and hiding with fear of losing.
Problem Solved…… And Yes…. I have a standardized scheduling format for a 9 game, 12 member and 2 division FBS conferences and a standardized scheduling format for a standardized cross conference scheduling format. You can find these formats like these in my book “College Football in the BCS Era, The Untold Truth: An Analysis of Factors that Supports the 16-Team Playoff Model” available at www.lulu.com. Click on the home page and then click on the front cover of the book. Purchase and read it before the 2013 FBS season starts.