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Remind me why the Big Ten went to a 9 game schedule.

IIRC the official reason was to get more conference games for the upcoming TV negotiations instead of playing FCS teams. I think they also made some excuses about needing 9 games so that teams don't go more than 3 years without playing each other, but that always sounded like the were just looking for reasons other than TV contract.
 
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Yeah, but how many teams would exercise that option to schedule better opponents?
 
Considering what we've scheduled over the past few weeks, we wouldn't.
Why should anyone? The negative impact of a loss at it relates to the playoffs is too much to risk it. My kudos to the teams that do play the big OOC games. Of course, if they just had the P5 champs auto qualify with three others teams, everyone would be free to play big time OOC games. I am always surprised that there is not money to be made in big time OOC games.
 
Was it just to create more content for the BTN? Why the change?

How's it create "more content"? If we went back to 8 games, there would be 7 more games to televise.

We did it to play each other more often and increase our strength of schedule. We are replacing the likes of a Youngstown State (2009), Eastern Illinois (2010), or Indiana State (2011) with a third Western Division team each year. Even Illinois is more interesting than playing any of those three teams.
 
How's it create "more content"? If we went back to 8 games, there would be 7 more games to televise.

Only if all of the 7 lost conference games were replaced by a home game cupcake by each of the 14 teams. Which probably wouldn't happen.

I believe the reasons for the shift to 9 games was two fold:
1. To keep playing all conference teams regularly, for familiarity. It allowed the conference to set up a schedule that enabled every team to face every other team at least once over 3 years -- so that every player in college would get to play each of the conference teams in their career.* There was concerns, after the conference expanded to 14 teams with teams not playing each other regularly and weakening the conference bonds.
2. To increase higher quality games. Conference games are generally regarded as more valuable TV content than many/most non-conference games. With 14 teams, there is plenty of TV content, so the key to a bigger payday is having "better" games to offer to networks.

*yes, technically, you could get the "play ever team in a college career" thing with 8 conference games, but since Indiana/Purdue had to be locked as a constant cross-division game, one would need 9 total conference games to make it work.
 
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Money is made by playing better teams. Even lowly Illinois is better than Indiana State or Youngstown State. We complained about this crap for years, and now that we get an extra P-5 game, people are still complaining.
 
Only if all of the 7 lost conference games were replaced by a home game cupcake by each of the 14 teams. Which probably wouldn't happen.

I believe the reasons for the shift to 9 games was two fold:
1. To keep playing all conference teams regularly, for familiarity. It allowed the conference to set up a schedule that enabled every team to face every other team at least once over 3 years -- so that every player in college would get to play each of the conference teams in their career.* There was concerns, after the conference expanded to 14 teams with teams not playing each other regularly and weakening the conference bonds.
2. To increase higher quality games. Conference games are generally regarded as more valuable TV content than many/most non-conference games. With 14 teams, there is plenty of TV content, so the key to a bigger payday is having "better" games to offer to networks.

*yes, technically, you could get the "play ever team in a college career" thing with 8 conference games, but since Indiana/Purdue had to be locked as a constant cross-division game, one would need 9 total conference games to make it work.

I think most of what you said is pretty much what I said, just in different words.

There is one area we may differ. More than likely, the games that were lost would have been Big Ten Home games. No way would a Big Ten school play an FCS team at their house. Either way, 7 more games would have been played somewhere.
 
Why did they move to a conference?
Why did they move from a 10-game schedule to a 12-game schedule? See the schedule in the 70’s and early 80’s.
Why do they have an ungodly number if bowl games?

I would predict that there is a stat that shows that in-conference games grows the war chests of the conference, individually and collectively.

Because we love football and are willing to pay $$$ for that pleasure.
 
It guarantees that the conference will have 7 more wins at the end of the season. More teams bowl eligible, more chance for playoffs.
 
I thought we went to 9 conference games to demonstrate to the selection committee our strength of schedule. The BIG's thinking, it would eliminate OOC cupcake match up's that doesn't sit well with the power rankings/playoff committee's. Any how it's always about the CHINGA/money.
 
$$$$$$.

More important than anything for the Big Ten. I mean ANYTHING.

Including the college football playoff, because between the disadvantage of 9 conference games vs 8 for the SEC and others, they also devalued their own conference championship two years ago to screw Penn State, and the result was they were left out last year. Might be left out again this year.
 
I thought we went to 9 conference games to demonstrate to the selection committee our strength of schedule. The BIG's thinking, it would eliminate OOC cupcake match up's that doesn't sit well with the power rankings/playoff committee's. Any how it's always about the CHINGA/money.
How'd that work out last year?
 
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