![]() ![]() In the new setup with the new playoff format, the downside is that the Big Ten’s more likely to not see its best regular season team get a bye because the league’s made it harder for that team to win the league’s championship. In the current setup but with the new playoff format, the doomsday scenario in which the West champion won that game would indeed be doomsday, with all Big Ten playoff teams playing one extra playoff game compared to the top four. This will probably still net out positively for the Big Ten. The risk is a 2021 scenario in which an overachieving Group of Five school (Cincinnati, in 2021’s case) drives a wedge in ahead of the second-highest-ranked Big Ten school, and with an upset likelier in this new format, that this wedge comes back to bite the Big Ten. The bet the Big Ten is taking is that both of its top two teams will be good enough to be among the four highest-ranked conference champions should they win, and that the Big Ten will therefore lock itself into one top-four seed. This will make for a great game, especially if they do the cynical thing and make the first tiebreaker CFP ranking, but it may hurt the Big Ten’s national title chances. The top two teams in the conference will play in the Big Ten Championship. In the new setup, there will be no divisions. The West champion is generally a massive underdog, and that can be good for the East champion, whose die is usually cast by the time the championship rolls around. Purdue wasn’t even ranked in the incoming CFP rankings this year. The way it’s designed, especially these last four years, the Big Ten Championship is close to a formality, with the winner playoff-bound and the loser not in the playoff conversation anyway. Northwestern), and the East champion spoiling it for the West champion once (2017’s Ohio State vs. Iowa in 2015), two playoff also-rans twice (2016’s Penn State vs. ![]() In the other four years, the league had two effective playoff quarterfinalists once (Michigan State vs. ![]() This exact formula has played out in five of the nine East/West years, including each of the last four. Most years, the East Division champion enters the Big Ten Championship as the only team with a playoff chance and the West Division champion tries and fails to play spoiler. In the current setup, which will persist for one more year, the Big Ten Championship has usually been an exercise in playing with a lit firework. But they’re doing one other thing with this, and its national title impact is more harder to divinate. It’s a format the league’s advertising as playoff-friendly, by which I mean they’re saying the flexibility of changing opponents every two years can help them respond to how the College Football Playoff committee is selecting teams in the 12-team system, and that while they’re not saying the flexibility of changing opponents every two years can help them respond to which of their teams are good, they mean that too. For as long as the structure lasts, Iowa’s three repeated opponents will always be Minnesota, Nebraska, and Wisconsin. In 20, those three teams will be different. In 20, Penn State will play Michigan State, Rutgers, and USC in respective home-and-home series, with their other six opponents flipping between the remaining twelve schools. Logistically, the way the Big Ten will handle this is through what they’re calling “two-plays,” a set of teams each school will play in 20 before those matchups are changed for 20. Schools have different cultural needs and wants, and the Big Ten handled that deftly, avoiding the industry standard in which a conference hamstrings itself through overdoing the number of matchups that must be annual. Iowa has three rivals-Minnesota, Nebraska, Wisconsin-it will play annually. Only eleven games are promised to be annually protected, and there isn’t a certain number of protected games per team. The Big Ten announced its new scheduling model today, and the name-Flex Protect Plus-is hilariously terrible, but the structure is good. ![]()
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