Wolverine247 Board

Sounds good, but they would never agree to do that and it would make the middle of big ten season really hard.

Stanford
Tennessee
Virginia Tech
Auburn
TCU
Clemson
South Carolina ****
Oklahoma
UCLA
Mizzou
The U

The ND approach I see..

doesn't even have to be UT. A&M now has the SEC connection. I can't wait until we play UT in a few years..

Sorry guys, a southern team won't play an OOC game in the north after September. They won't ever agree to that unless it's played in a dome and the scheduling works out that they'd have a buy week afterwards.

I'm not sure but doesn't the B1G have an agreement of sorts that all the conference games happen within a certain time frame? October thru November? Each team has 1 off week in that time. Having the conference scheduled played in that time is really one of the only "traditions" left that can be controlled solely by the conference. The OSU game was moved, there's a championship game now, the bowls are/will lose their status with the playoff and other things. I don't see, but maybe they eventually will, see the conference starting to give 2 off weeks in a row to be able to schedule other teams from the south to come north. For that to happen they'd have to start conference games in September and then be "staggered" through the rest of the season to get all the games in. It'd almost create a nightmare for the ADs to schedule, and I'm sure they won't want to work that hard and they'd be able to convince the Presidents to keep things the way they are currently.

Someone said they don't remember the last time someone played out of conference so late in the season... didn't Wisconsin or Illinois or Northwestern recently play Hawaii at the end of the season? That's the only time teams have played OOC that late, and they get a 14th game because of it.

Back to the topic though, I'd like to see any mid to upper level BCS team replace ND, Tennessee, Florida, FSU, N/S Carolina, Texas, A&M, the Oklahomas, Mizzou, UCLA, Washington, USC, Oregon, the Arizonas, or Nearly any ACC team.

And then I'd like to see one of the MAC games replaced with "one off" games with BCS cellar dwellers like Washington State, Colorado, Duke, Kansas, Maryland, Kentucky or even some of the better Mountain West schools or Big East schools. Either of those 2 conferences would improve SoS. Then the other 2 OOC games could be MAC schools.

Great post all around here. I agree that a southern team would likely never agree to that, but was just saying what my preference would be. Doubt it'll ever happen though.

As for the B1G having an agreement that all conference games are played in a certain time frame, I'm honestly not sure. That's how it's currently administered, so it's possible that there is, but I haven't heard either way whether that's a hard and fast rule. In general, I like that set up, and would like to see it preserved. But if it meant playing OOC games against southern teams later in the season, then I'd be fine tinkering with the current set up.

I'm sure the B1G AD's would complain, but SEC and ACC schools have figured out how to make that staggered set up work. It may mean that Michigan plays a conference opponent in the first or second game of the season, but I'm fine with that.

Great point about Hawaii - I do believe Wisconsin played them late in the season sometime in the past 5-7 years.

Can you elaborate on how realignment has affected the ability of B1G teams to schedule OOC games? I'm not disagreeing with you - just want to understand what you're saying.

ACC teams currently play 4 OOC games each season. With realignment that includes Pitt and Syracuse, ACC teams can only play 3 OOC games starting next season. That's a total of 14 less OOC games per season in the ACC.

SEC teams currently play 4 OOC games each season, now that Texas A&M and Mizzou join. Starting next season each SEC team plays 3 OOC games per season.

This means each ACC or SEC team would have fewer OOC games to schedule. If Michigan or any B1G team wants to play ACC or SEC teams, then scheduling conflicts will make it more difficult for them to play the B1G.

The same argument with the Pac 12.

However, the number of OOC games that the Big East or Big 12 can play remains the same, so there are opportunities there. Same with C-USA and Sun Belt.

Give me a home and home with vt. 45 min drive is better then 10 hrs for me

Would love Texas or Oklahoma, but with the B12 now playing 9 conference games a year they only have 3 OOC games to play with. UT is full all three years 2015-2017 and Oklahoma is full in 2015. Oklahoma also already plays OSU in 2016 & 2017, so it's unlikely they will want to play us those years.

I gotcha, and that makes sense - thanks for clarifying. Especially in the BCS conferences that can only play three OOC games, many of those schools will only be willing to play one "hard" OOC game. You make a great point that it'll definitely be more difficult for schools like Michigan to find a quality OOC opponent now.