Week 15 Games
Now the fun begins to see 1) Buckeye fans reacting to this, and 2) how the Big Ten still gets Ohio State into the Big Ten championship game.
big championship. NW vs OSU. No one else has a case. NW beat Iowa, OSU beat Indy. Will just say modified due to covid.
for championship week games it’s supposed to be easy vs west, but would be more interesting for some games to switch within division due to covid. I think Minn vs Wisc would be better than any crossover. For those fan bases. I’m sure there are other matchups that I cannot remember.
Surprisingly? ILL played all of their west foes.
for championship week games it’s supposed to be easy vs west, but would be more interesting for some games to switch within division due to covid. I think Minn vs Wisc would be better than any crossover. For those fan bases. I’m sure there are other matchups that I cannot remember.
Surprisingly? ILL played all of their west foes.
I’m not a fan of changing the rules for the rich. Why even have rules if they only pertain to the have-nots? Would they do this for another school if that school wasn’t a playoff contender?
Having said all that, why did they set a six game minimum? Was it arbitrary? And let’s say they upheld the 6 game minimum, tOSU would still play in the 9th week right? Just not the Championship game. So they’d still have a chance for the 6th win to boost their resumé.
From a playoff standpoint, I’d say keep the rule as is and just have tOSU beat down Iowa and then go to the playoffs. (Unless there is a new rule that says a conference champ automatically gets in? I don’t think so...but maybe)
If this is about getting a chance to hang a B1G banner then it’s a littler murkier. tOSU is definitely the better team in the East and beat the only other good team. MSU, Ped State, UM, Maryland, Rutgers aren’t worthy of the championship game so it doesn’t matter that tOSU wasn’t able to play 2 of them.
Which takes us back to the 6 game minimum. Was it just a shot in the dark that shouldn’t matter? Or does IU deserve the Championship game more because they played more times? Maybe tOSU could have faltered against Maryland or UM...it’s happened before. But they’d still get the nod for the head to head win against IU.
So much to unravel here.
Having said all that, why did they set a six game minimum? Was it arbitrary? And let’s say they upheld the 6 game minimum, tOSU would still play in the 9th week right? Just not the Championship game. So they’d still have a chance for the 6th win to boost their resumé.
From a playoff standpoint, I’d say keep the rule as is and just have tOSU beat down Iowa and then go to the playoffs. (Unless there is a new rule that says a conference champ automatically gets in? I don’t think so...but maybe)
If this is about getting a chance to hang a B1G banner then it’s a littler murkier. tOSU is definitely the better team in the East and beat the only other good team. MSU, Ped State, UM, Maryland, Rutgers aren’t worthy of the championship game so it doesn’t matter that tOSU wasn’t able to play 2 of them.
Which takes us back to the 6 game minimum. Was it just a shot in the dark that shouldn’t matter? Or does IU deserve the Championship game more because they played more times? Maybe tOSU could have faltered against Maryland or UM...it’s happened before. But they’d still get the nod for the head to head win against IU.
So much to unravel here.
As annoying as it might seem from our standpoint, it still makes the most sense for the conference itself.
OSU has a better (how much? Beats me, but its greater than 0) chance of making the CFP if they play a conference championship game/the best team in the West. If they make it, the whole conference benefits. Yes, this obviously helps OSU more than us, but its overall a net positive for Illinois.
I have zero doubts that if [insert literally any other B1G team] was swapped with the record and team OSU has and was ranked 4th in the CFP ranking, the conference would have done the same thing. OSU does have a choke hold on the conference, but only because the rest of us suck in comparison.
OSU has a better (how much? Beats me, but its greater than 0) chance of making the CFP if they play a conference championship game/the best team in the West. If they make it, the whole conference benefits. Yes, this obviously helps OSU more than us, but its overall a net positive for Illinois.
I have zero doubts that if [insert literally any other B1G team] was swapped with the record and team OSU has and was ranked 4th in the CFP ranking, the conference would have done the same thing. OSU does have a choke hold on the conference, but only because the rest of us suck in comparison.
Another great lesson on how the world really works on full display.
Ethics really only matters if it’s convenient or a life/death/liberty situation.
Money trumps all other situations. It’s just reality.
Ethics really only matters if it’s convenient or a life/death/liberty situation.
Money trumps all other situations. It’s just reality.
I'm not sure the ethics are as clear cut as you are implying. Is it really ethical to deny a team who would have won the division, even if they lost to Michigan, a chance for the Big Ten championship just because the game was canceled through no fault of their own? It's been kind of a crapshoot who has games canceled each week. If each Covid cancellation was deemed a forfeit, Ohio State would still be the champions of the East.
My problem is that they pressed a rule on Nebby and now they are catering to OSU. If Indiana beat OSU and they were 5-0, you would bet they would have been told that the rule is in place and OSU would have leap frogged them to play in the Championship game against the Nerds.
Nebraska wanted to play a non-conference game. If they let OSU do that, I'll agree with you.
I'm not so sure about what would happen if Indiana was 5-0. Presumably they would be ranked higher than OSU, too, and there might be an interest in having the higher ranked team in the championship. I remember that the last time Illinois went to the Rose Bowl, rules were changed in Illinois' favor, which also benefitted the Big Ten, so not an exact apples to apples comparison, but you don't have to be a blue blood to get a rule bent.
illini80
- Forgottonia
They already did. OSU won.
And Pennix out for year.
Just guessing here, but I think the intent of 6, was to prevent a team not named OSU from playing only 4-5 games, and being an accidental winner of a division and taking a spot in the championship game. Made sense, back in early October, to establish something like this.
The irony is that the script was flipped and it was OSU who was staring down the rules.
The irony is that the script was flipped and it was OSU who was staring down the rules.
The conference obviously felt a 7-1 team was more worthy of competing for the conference championship than a 5-0 team. But, by that logic, an 8-1 Texas A&M would be more worthy of competing for a national championship than a 6-0 Ohio State, so that logic had to be dispelled. In the end, I think that is what this is all about.
Deleted member 747671
D
Guest
They really should've never had an official rule about minimum games, as the cancellations are really out of the team's hands, unless 1 program deliberately disregarded the Covid protocols.
The weird/funny thing to me is wondering if a win over Northwestern is actually better for OSU than a win over Iowa. I personally don't see either one of those teams giving much of a fight to OSU and nobody nationally is really going to care. If OSU doesn't absolutely dominate, I think they'll be on the outside looking in of the CFP.
The weird/funny thing to me is wondering if a win over Northwestern is actually better for OSU than a win over Iowa. I personally don't see either one of those teams giving much of a fight to OSU and nobody nationally is really going to care. If OSU doesn't absolutely dominate, I think they'll be on the outside looking in of the CFP.
Deleted member 4333
D
Guest
If you look at this logically, allowing tOSU a chance to play for the B1G title makes sense.
They are head and shoulders above the rest of the league save Indiana, and they beat Indiana head to head. If IU was 7-0 and tOSU 5-0 but they had never played each other, maybe THAT is where you use the 6 game minimum requirement.
But as it stands now, it wouldn’t make sense to deny tOSU considering they probably would have beaten at LEAST 2 of their 3 canceled opponents and thus still made the title game with all other things being the same.
What the B1G should have done is said they would use the 6 game minimum as a starting point to make their evaluation and would assess after that if the decision became ambiguous.
Basically, incentive the teams to not try and go 3-0 and then cancel their way to a championship while letting them know they don’t have to risk player safety or spreading the virus just to get that 6th game.
An ultimate escape hatch that doesn’t give off the “rules don’t matter to the rich” vibe.
Hindsight is 20/20.
They are head and shoulders above the rest of the league save Indiana, and they beat Indiana head to head. If IU was 7-0 and tOSU 5-0 but they had never played each other, maybe THAT is where you use the 6 game minimum requirement.
But as it stands now, it wouldn’t make sense to deny tOSU considering they probably would have beaten at LEAST 2 of their 3 canceled opponents and thus still made the title game with all other things being the same.
What the B1G should have done is said they would use the 6 game minimum as a starting point to make their evaluation and would assess after that if the decision became ambiguous.
Basically, incentive the teams to not try and go 3-0 and then cancel their way to a championship while letting them know they don’t have to risk player safety or spreading the virus just to get that 6th game.
An ultimate escape hatch that doesn’t give off the “rules don’t matter to the rich” vibe.
Hindsight is 20/20.
Illinivek23
- Gurnee
Arizona about to go 0-5 under Sumlin. Getting waxed by ASU.