Pods - all teams in the pod have the same rivals.
Rivalries - teams are not locked into the same groupings.
1 Like
Right. Protected rivals/opponents doesnāt mean youāre going to play everyoneās you have a rivalry right this moment.
Utah will get 3 permanent opponents they will play annually. One will obviously be BYU. The other maybe one of their former PAC brethren. And the third probably a Texas school.
While BYUās permanent opponents would be Utah. Maybe Baylor and Oklahoma State.
I promise you if we play OSU and WV every year, were gonna hate their gutsā¦ if we play them every now and then, it aint gonna sting the same
Interesting split, but you would have problems with OSU and TCU at a minimum. TCU has strong western ties and OSU with the old Big 8 schools.
So I would say lets amend my prior scenario slightly. As looking at it now it does screw Colorado out of any rivalry. I would say move OSU to the east pod for 2 reasons, they were never in the same division with the Kansas schools and Iowa anyway. And it gives a pretty fair trade off of having them get to play in really fertile recruiting grounds and ensures they get to play one of their Texas rivals in Texas every year. Plus they would get to play for sure one of the Old Big 8 schools every year anyway.
Canāt maximize tv revenues if you potentially lock the conference out of marquee matchups from occurring in the regular season more frequently than once every 4 or 6 years.
1 Like
I agree that OSU is a better fit east than Colorado. I still do not know why it has to be locked into a pod of 4.
Give OSU two old Big 8 teams and 1 eastern team. Give Kansas two old Big 8 teams and one eastern team, etcā¦ That gives everyone some great matches and a good match up, but all 16 teams get treated equally.
But why kidā¦ the East division would be STACKED!
Its tomato toomaato at this point. You say rivalries I say pods. The problem is EVERY school wants to play in Texas EVERY year, so thatās what makes it complicated. And your scenario only works if you donāt have OSU playing in Texas every year.
You cant have your cake and eat it too, tell them to deal with it. The run with who they brung. Without a doubt Colorado-UCF will mean a little more when its in the conference champ with host site privilageā¦
Rivalries are formed on facing that mother effer year after year knowing they stand in they way of your success
Edit* im just trying to make sure we get in the stacked division
You do know that UH is not the run with who brung you eitherā¦ That could be bad for UH scheduling too.
UCF-Cinci mi amigo and our favorite non-conference fo Tech
My guyā¦ if OKSt has 2 Big8 schools and an eastern school as their permanents that leaves 4 Texas schools they would play over a 2 year span. They would play 2 Texas schools each year, one home and one away. Theyād come to Texas each year.
We arenāt having divisions. Let it go. lol
Bookmarked (PS I agree with you)
So what about the other 9 teams? They would have 5 locked games. That means they wouldnāt play certain schools once but every 5 years.
Edit: Wait nevermind we literally just agreed without realizing it. I need to rethink my scenario real quickly.
Sure, go ahead. We have 14 teams this year. No divisions. The SEC AND B1G will have 16+ teams next year. No divisions. But we the forward thinking conference with an innovative commissioner will go from having no divisions to having them? lol okā¦
This is what I think it becomes
Again incorrect. In my scenario OSU would have 6 rotating games like everyone else and there are 4 texas schools. Likely they would have a texas matchup every year too. Exact same as if they were in a pod of old Big 8 teams or eastern teams.
The different in pods and rivalries is subtle, but impactful. Most of the teams in the pods would be similar to the rivalries, but slight shifts to provide some good teams for everyone. Having that group of 5 western or 5 old Big 8 makes the pods a little harder to navigate. If there were 4 distinct groups of 4, then it would be less difficult. We have one distinct group of 4 - Texas, and even that would be in question.
Iāve seen pods in the past. They failed because of those slight differences. Which is why I keep looking for a reason or benefit to them. It is easy to sit in Texas and say pods are great because there are 4 Texas teams.
The problem is you canāt break up the Texas schools because the money for them playing each other every year is too much. So they have to be together under every scenario.