BCPanther wrote:Purple35 wrote:The difference between 3 and 8 in the Valley is usually only a couple of games. I think a lot of tiebreakers are going to matter and it will not be wise to overlook any of them. That being the case, the theory that there won't be a 22-game schedule makes me go .... hmmmmmmmmmm.
22 is too many. We've got to have enough out of league games to play the metrics game. We've already got 120 guaranteed losses, we don't need to make that 132.
Once the Big Ten and SEC split off and we get everybody closer to on the same level, I wouldn't be shocked if we went back to 18 because it's going to get a lot easier to schedule at that point.
You gonna seed tiebreakers if the teams don't play a balanced schedule? You need to do database math if you have 4 teams with 10-10 records. I'd wager that happens more often than not. But to the point, going to 12 teams should have introduced that question in the beginning. Obviously it didn't and I am sure some geography-addled nerd mentioned "east and west" -- which would be clearly even dumber. The only other thing is to play each team once for the conference and let them choose which ones they want to play the second time -- just for the rivalry of it.
The deal is, the mid-majors will eventually need to go to a longer schedule, probably starting in early November with real games instead of the Mount Hollyhock exhibition.
If you seriously keep wondering how the Valley will get to be a "2-bid league," the NCAA has effectively already said they are taking the top 5 or 6 quality middies, even to the point of shoving them out of the NiT altogether in favor of the 11th best team in the P-5.
Stop pretending a 24-win season interests the NCAA. You won't get to even play those top teams, because they don't need to give you a chance. Metrics, schmetrics.