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2021 Schedule

coolonetoo

Junior
May 12, 2003
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I suppose the non-con will be a start-from-scratch thing but do you think the conference schedule will simply be 2020’s played a year later?
 
I suppose the non-con will be a start-from-scratch thing but do you think the conference schedule will simply be 2020’s played a year later?
I hope not. We were scheduled to not play three of the four geographically closest conference opponents this season: Northwestern was going to be our only opponent in the Central time zone. No Iowa, no Minnesota, and no Illinois on this year's schedule.
 
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Geographically
for fan interest, rivalries, travel, in a perfect world, etc...
Nebraska, Iowa, and Minnesota should always play each other.
Maryland, Rutgers, and Penn St should always play each other.
Michigan, Ohio St, and Mich. St should always play each other.
And then there's the final four....
Illinois/Northwestern and Purdue/Indiana.

So if each of those 4 'groupings' played 2 guaranteed conference series each, would it then be possible (with the math involved with an odd team), to then play 2 teams from each of the other 3 groupings, to make the current 8 regular season conference series?

This way you could always play your rivals while still playing as much of a variety the conference as possible during the regular season.

I have no clue how the current B1G scheduling system works.
And I'm not bored enough yet, to compare the past 5 years of schedules.
So any insight would be appreicated.
 
I have no clue how the current B1G scheduling system works.
And I'm not bored enough yet, to compare the past 5 years of schedules.
So any insight would be appreicated.
Welcome to the club!

I tried a few years ago to track patterns in scheduling going back a long ways (as far as I could find schedules back to the 1990s), and could not find any true rhyme or reason. Obviously once the conference started expanding, the scheduling becomes weirder.

If I find free time at some point, I'll try to dig out the spreadsheet and update for recent years.

I agree, it's ridiculous this season the three teams geographically closest to us (Iowa, Minnesota, Illinois) were not on our schedule. Having Northwestern on our schedule instead of Michigan State was the only thing keeping us from playing only the teams farthest away from Lincoln.
 
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Schools around the country are dropping sports due to Coronavirus-related loss of revenue. Is it possible a Big Ten school might drop baseball?

I think the single candidate is Rutgers because it’s the only program without recent on-field success or major investment in facilities. The Scarlet Knights last made a regional in 2007. Since then, they have had one winning season and qualified for one conference tournament.
 
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:rolleyes:
Well, I never would want to publically call out a fellow conference member to drop a sport. But if someone were to volunteer, I might not argue too much.

But I don't want to beg to Wisconsin to field a team either :p

Too bad there wasn't an independent team or a serious smaller program that could join the B1G just for baseball. Oh... I don't know... I'm sure we could think of a couple examples.
 
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What I've gathered so far...
The B1G's 13 team baseball schedule started in 2015
If this season would have been played, it would have made 6 seasons.
In those 6 seasons, every B1G team would have played...
every other B1G team 4 times (2 Home, 2 Away, 2 Did Not Play).
Now, the exact pattern used to achieve this, I do not have yet.
There are some strange blimps...
like when Iowa played @ Nebraska back to back in 2017, 2018.
So again, I don't have the exact pattern (yet).
But I must give the B1G schedule makers some credit...
they made it possible for every team to play each other as much as possible over a reasonable amount of time.

Still like the 4 'automatic groupings' idea Smokin
 
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What I've gathered so far...
The B1G's 13 team baseball schedule started in 2015
If this season would have been played, it would have made 6 seasons.
In those 6 seasons, every B1G team would have played...
every other B1G team 4 times (2 Home, 2 Away, 2 Did Not Play).
Now, the exact pattern used to achieve this, I do not have yet.
There are some strange blimps...
like when Iowa played @ Nebraska back to back in 2017, 2018.
So again, I don't have the exact pattern (yet).
But I must give the B1G schedule makers some credit...
they made it possible for every team to play each other as much as possible over a reasonable amount of time.

Still like the 4 'automatic groupings' idea Smokin
Hopefully with some stability in the conference roster, we will see more consistency in the schedules. Thanks for diving in!
 
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Just a fun puzzle to pick at.

But thinking about it a little more,
if the conference is on a 6 year rotation,
and 2020 was the final year...
it would be hard to predict the next conference schedule with the rotation starting a new. The schedule makers could rotate the order of the teams for the next rotation.

So whether the B1G uses 2020's unused conference schedule, or starts a new 6 year rotation, we will probably won't know until this Fall.
 
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