FanPost

Conference USA's Innovative Conference Schedule: Could It Work For The Big Ten?

For those not up on Conference USA basketball, they've implemented quite the creative twist for their conference schedule this season:

"With the goals to improve seeding and increase the number of teams that advance to the postseason, we viewed this as a great opportunity to enhance our top teams’ resumes by providing them additional quality games within their conference schedule," C-USA Commissioner Judy MacLeod said. "Nonconference scheduling will continue to be a priority but this will provide a real-time analysis to create competitive matchups for teams and their fans."

Within the format, the 14 programs will play each other once and their travel partner twice in the first seven weeks of the conference season. At the conclusion of the seven weeks, teams will be placed in one of three groups based on conference standings through the first 14 games of league action. The teams will be divided into two groups of five (1-5 and 6-10) and a group of four (11-14). During the final three weeks, teams will play within their respective grouping for the last four games of conference play. Home and away games within the groups will be determined by a preset formula.

Once all 18 games have been completed, the top 12 teams based on final league standings will be seeded in the conference tournament. Teams will be guaranteed seeding within their respective group. For example, if a program lands in the second group (6-10), it will seed no higher than six and no lower than 10 in the tournament field.

This makes a lot of sense for a middle of the pack league like Conference USA; as the conference commissioner said, the goal is to improve the strength of schedule for the teams at the top and increase the chances of the league getting multiple NCAA bids.

But it got me to thinking: how would this work for the Big Ten, and would it improve the conference schedule?

The first and most obvious benefit here would be the welcome return to a travel partner system. For those who don't know and/or don't remember the old days when the Big Ten used to do this, each school would partner with another nearby school, probably like so:

Nebraska-Iowa
Minnesota-Wisconsin
Illinois-Northwestern
Michigan-Michigan State
Purdue-Indiana
Ohio State-Penn State
Rutgers-Maryland

Then for each road trip, you would play two road games in a row, one each against another pair of travel partners. So Northwestern might play at Michigan on Thursday and then at Michigan State on Sunday, while Illinois would play at Michigan State on Thursday and at Michigan on Sunday. This has the major advantage of reducing travel time; so when Rutgers has to go halfway across the country to play Nebraska, they can make a short trip over to Iowa for their next game instead of having to go back to New Jersey and then back to Iowa.

Another advantage is the guaranteed two games against your travel partner, most of whom are natural rivals. Too often in recent years, schools have only gotten one crack at their biggest rival.

Now we get to the fun part: the final four (or six if the Big Ten wants to stick with 20 overall) games of the conference schedule. Either way, it would be really entertaining. You'd see the top teams battle it out with each other for the conference title, and wouldn't have to worry about one team getting a much easier league schedule than another. The teams in the middle, who in most years figure to be around the bubble, could fight each other to see who gets to go to the tournament, and would avoid a potential resume killing loss to the last place team. And as for the bottom four, well, now you're quarantined off where your stink won't wash off on anyone else. Plus, it will help the win/loss records of the coaches at the bottom who might find their seat warming up because they're in 11th place or worse.

The downside here is that some teams could get screwed if the standings were closely bunched together. For example, if at the fourteen game mark there were three teams at 11-3 and three more at 10-4, whoever loses that tiebreaker among the 10-4 teams would be getting done pretty dirty to have no official chance at the regular season conference championship. Similarly, if there were a four way tie for eighth place at 6-8, the loser of that tiebreaker could be a solid bubble team getting screwed pretty badly.

If you wanted to say that scenario would be horribly unfair, you'd be right. However, this change would add quite a bit of drama to some otherwise dull February games that normally wouldn't get too much attention. And more importantly, it would be hilarious. Picture the whiny press conference Tom Izzo would give if he were on the short end of the aforementioned 10-4 tiebreaker. I'm cackling just thinking about it. Imagine the anger, shame and message board meltdowns Indiana would be feeling this year at ending up in the Eddie Jordan Memorial Bottom Four Loser's Group. Delicious. Just delicious.

Plus, if that 10-4 Michigan State team proceeded to demolish the seventh through tenth place teams and end up with the best regular season conference record of anyone, we'd get a disputed conference championship the way we get disputed national championships in football. Who wouldn't want to bring the weaponized petty of college football disputes to college basketball? A win for anyone who likes comedy and off-court entertainment.

I'm well aware none of this will ever happen, even the completely sensible return to a travel partner system, but with nothing else to sustain us Northwestern fans this season, we can dream.