Do you mean an actual NCAA rule? I’ve never heard of one. Certainly smaller conferences have championship tournaments in basketball quite nicely, by just giving “bye” slots to the top teams. Obviously football wouldn’t want a tournament anyway, but I’m sure they could find a way to seed the top two teams. There’s no doubt be bitching, just as there is now with the BCS, but it would be doable.
DT1
1902
Once again, fair enough. Smoke and fire, we’ll see what happens.
robsam
1903
[QUOTE=BennyProfane;2086098]Do you mean an actual NCAA rule? QUOTE]
Yes…
Rimbo
1905
Hush, you; you’ll have robsam laughing again. Not that I wouldn’t loooooooooove to be in the Pac-10, for all the stated reasons, plus the recruiting and media coverage boons.
Trouble is, to do it, you’d probably also have to let in our ugly little brother. (Which, by the way, is also a massive research institution with a pretty damn big and dedicated audience, so…) But their Ath. Dept. is in massive debt to the school and nearly bankrupt, and… let’s just face it, does anyone really want a school where this is a sacrosanct tradition??? Those fuckers are weird, man.
Edit:
Incidentally, I wouldn’t be surprised if the Pac-10 deal was sunk more by our governor than by Stanford. Ann Richards (whose approval was required) made sure that any conference we join had to include her alma mater. And that’s why the Large Dozen has this bitch in it. And I’d reckon Stanford’s veto was based on that more than anything.
But she’s dead now. And both our current governor and his likely replacement come from the two universities listed above. The Texas AD is definitely still sore about what happened in 2008, and is still operating under the opinion that UT carries the Big XII in terms of revenue and prestige. Being in the same conference as OU doesn’t really affect our rivalry with 'em; we were fine as rivals before, and we’ll be fine after. So it could happen.
DT1
1906
Mack Brown went on the Jim Rome show right before the BCS championship game this year and when Rome asked him about that, he said, “It was our fault for losing to Tech.” I hope you don’t hold that against him.
Every so often I come back to a post and wonder why I used certain words.
Can you provide a citation? I just went through
NCAA rulebook for football
and I’m not finding it there. In fact it doesn’t seem to address the issue of conferences at all, so I’m guessing it is a separate ruleset, but I don’t find it on their website.
robsam
1910
Heh, I tried to find citation last night and failed. I just remember reading and listening to discussions when the SEC added SC and Arkansas, and more recently when the ACC expanded, that in order to have a Championship game a conference had to have at least 12 members. I don’t know why. It’s out there somewhere, maybe I can find something this evening.
I would have to imagine it is in the NCAA bylaws and organizations of the conferences themselves, not in the football rulebook. I couldn’t find it with a quick search through ncaa.org though so I can’t provide a citation. It’s such an oft-repeated fact in the football world and specifically in columns on football that I have to imagine it’s not an urban legend. Someone has to be fact checking at least some of those columns.
Rimbo
1912
Wikipedia says this (in the article about Division 1 football), and cites a couple of blog articles. :(
f wikipedia
Rimbo
1913
Incidentally, here’s an article on how Baylor and Tech snuck into the Big XII, how Stanford single-handedly sunk Texas’ attempt to join the Pac-10 (and believe me, most alumni would still very much love such a deal), and how Texas’ victory over admissions requirements planted the seeds of the end of Nebraska’s dominance as a program.
Good stuff.
TimJames
1914
Wow that article is funny because it sounds exactly like your posts, Rimbo! I mostly ignored the academic standards jawing in this thread but apparently everyone in the area gets the same indoctrination.
DT1
1915
Ironically, Nebraska is in the AAU. I think the 85 player limit has more to do with it. Nebraska’s teams used to be huge.
Sarkus
1916
The Pac 10 is starting to look at expansion, which should be no surprise. My bet is they will look at Utah/BYU coming in as a pair.
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/huskymensbasketballblog/2011023980_pac-10_consider.html
DT1
1917
Uh, way to read the thread! :)
Sarkus
1918
I have read the thread!
(Just not until now.)
Sorry.
At any rate, the Washington AD did a radio interview earlier where he said that while they are seriously considering expansion, a championship game is not automatic if they do expand. He seemed to say that they are more concerned about becoming an irrelevant “small 10 team conference” if super-conferences develop around the country.
Just as an aside, I really hate the idea of super-conferences. I’d must rather see 8-team conference caps, with perhaps two non-conference games to begin the season (and in a perfect world, those two non-conf games would be randomly chosen from the entire Division One field every year) and then a 16-conference winner tournament to end the season.
But I’m sure I’ve said most of that before here…
Rimbo
1920
It’s worse than that, Tim; the indoctrination has even made its way as far as Yale! There are even rumors that the evil plot to indoctrinate others originated there! It’s devious; a foolish observer might even be misled into believing that there’s more to it than just sports-infested bias. This never would’ve happened at Harvard.
