The End of the Pac10 (schedule)

A person I follow on twitter officially said good bye to the pac-10 schedule. I too loved the set-up the Pac10 had, in both football and basketball. Consider the following:

The Pac10 is set-up in an awesome way in terms of its geography. There are 2 schools in Washington, 2 in Oregon, 2 in Northern California, 2 in Southern California, 2 in Arizona. Perfect. Adding Utah and Colorado gives them 2 "mountain schools," I suppose.

In football, the Pac-10 played a true round robin; 9 conference games. None of this crap like in other conferences wehre Alabama doesnt even play Florida until the championship game, or Michigan State avoids everyone in the Big10. They didn't have a championship game because they didn't need one.

In football, you would always play one team from a certain region at home, and one on the road. If you're USC, you never had to go to Arizona twice in one season. You would play either the Wildcats or the Sun Devils in Arizona, and the other would come to you. This worked for everyone.

Now, they are going to two divisions, guaranteeing certain rivalries stay in tact, and all this bs that I don't even care to elaborate on.

Basketball had it perfect too.

They played a round robin also, playing everyone twice. Once at home, once on the road. If my language sounds like I'm explaining this set-up like I would to a two year old, it's because the set-up is so simple, a two year old can understand it. But thats also what makes it so perfect.

All other conferences have some sort of an unbalanced schedule. The Big East plays everyone once, and three teams twice. The Big10 plays everyone once, and eight teams twice. As is the case for the Big10, it always is important to see which two teams you only play once. This of course can be a huge deal. For example, this year, Penn State only played Indiana and Iowa once, the two worst teams in the league. If they replaced, say, a game with Ohio State and a game with Purdue with a game with Iowa and Indiana, you can reasonably say that Penn State would change their record by two games. Seeing as they are currently 15-13, and 8-9, I think any Nittany Lion fan would take 17-11 and 10-7 right about now, wouldnt you?

The Pac10 had the schedule down to perfection, and now it has joined every other conference. Now, all major conferences will have 12 teams (except Big East in football), 2 divisions, a conference championship game, oddly seeded conference tournaments for basketball, and a schedule you can't figure out; one that is the opposite of Bill O' Reilly, unfair and unbalanced.