Is CFB ready for conference vs. conference challenges?

[December05]

Watching college basketball and how popular the SEC vs. ACC and SEC vs. Big 12 Challenges, etc. have become, it’s a fair question. Given the power four are basically mandating at least one other power four OOC game per season, this would be an excellent game to judge one conference versus another top-to-bottom, and if it were held on the same weekend (maybe the second week of each year when most teams are near full strength) it would make the logistics much more simple.

That’s possibly the best way to gauge where each conference is and give a committee all the precedent it needs to compare later in the year. Of course, some of our brothers (B1G) may balk at the idea and fear becoming exposed by 80% of its league, or it could be eager to prove the “SEC bias” to be real.

Either way, the current method is going to quickly lose steam (and trust) if it becomes glaringly obvious the isolated Powderpuff schedules of the north are all that is needed to judge “greatness”.

 

[DzynKingRTR]

Indiana will not play a P4 team out of conference at all for the foreseeable future. They do have notre dame on the schedule for 2030 and 2031. Other than that it will be just like thus year. Why are we scheduling any tough games going forward?

 

[denver]

Those CBB challenges dont matter because a loss does not put you out of anything...a win helps for a Quad 1 win that's all. CFB only plays 12 games or so and a loss has way more impact on the chances to go to the playoffs...that wont change unless the CFP gets expanded exponentially OR we find 12 logical people to put on a committee...

 

[DzynKingRTR]

Those CBB challenges dont matter because a loss does not put you out of anything...a win helps for a Quad 1 win that's all. CFB only plays 12 games or so and a loss has way more impact on the chances to go to the playoffs...that wont change unless the CFP gets expanded exponentially OR we find 12 logical people to put on a committee...

12 logical people ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha

 

[December05]

Indiana will not play a P4 team out of conference at all for the foreseeable future. They do have notre dame on the schedule for 2030 and 2031. Other than that it will be just like thus year. Why are we scheduling any tough games going forward?

That’s part of why we’re beginning to back out of what we can such a nixing the Wes Virginia series (not sure that’s a great example right now, but could be nice Rich Rod gets them back up) and pushing off the third USF game in favor of Chattanooga next year. We’re doing what we can, but big picture, this would be what is needed to force team’s like Indiana’s hand.

Plus, these challenges generally do a good job of putting like-for-like (for example Duke vs. Florida rather than Duke vs. South Carolina). The “big boys” of the B1G are gingerly okay with scheduling one game against us, Texas, Oklahoma, etc if they know they can return to the soft stuff after that, but we need a series that can force our leagues’ sixth vs. sixth and 12th vs. 12th teams to face off when something is actually on the line, not some meaningless bowl full of opt outs.

It’s something I’d really like to see given that we already have some of these home-and-homes on the slate anyway. It would be a “put up or shut up” in a way that wouldn’t allow conferences to “disguise their success”.