Originally Posted by
ChillinDuke
Oh, what the hell. Figured I'd give it a stab in terms of a scheduling idea.
The core of my concept allows each team to have two permanent partners. I'm not savvy enough to know exactly who each team's main foe is, but I figure at least these four pairings would hold true:
Duke - UNC
UVA - Va Tech
Miami - FSU
Syr - Pitt
(Others please help me out here if I'm missing any big-name pairings.)
So what you do is you draw a line between each school. Then you continue the line to that schools other pairing. So UNC - Duke - (say) Maryland. I know, "they aren't our rival." Well for the purposes of this discussion, they are. So, Duke's permanent two are UNC and MD. MD goes to BC (so they are paired with Duke and BC. BC goes to Syr (MD + Syr). Etc... The line must end in a complete circle. There can't be two separate circles.
Once you're done with your own version, you split the 14 teams into two halves with each team being on the opposing side of its two permanent partners. I have:
ACC Yin
Duke
NC State
Clemson
Miami
VA Tech
BC
Pitt
ACC Yang
UNC
Wake
FSU
GA Tech
UVA
Syr
MD
So those are the football divisions above:
You play everyone in your division (Yin or Yang). That's six games. Plus your two permanent partners makes eight games.
For basketball, just make it one whole division:
You play everyone once for 13 games. Plus your two permanent partners again. Plus three more games that rotate every year. 13+2+3=18 conference games.
Disclaimer: It's obviously not balanced. At all. And it doesn't even make for a clean rotation of teams every few years. But it keeps main rivals twice a year.
To me, this saves rivalries in both football and basketball (which is probably one of the main marketing points for a conference TV-wise). It allows for three conference games worth of flexibility in basketball for whatever the ACC deems optimal in terms of scheduling going forward. They can rotate annually in a true rotation (different teams each year). They can schedule to cater to TV matchups. They can even dream up something more exotic. And it allows for only 8 and 18 total conference games in football and basketball, respectively, which gives coaches the ability to customize their schedule appropriately.
That's just my attempt. Feel free tweak it or dump it by the wayside.
If we go to 16, I assume things get simpler, but I don't even want to start thinking about that until those wheels start turning again.
- Chillin
That's pretty sweet with the Yin and Yang, but I think mine with the Swof and Ford is funnier. No offense.
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