A season after sending Oregon to the College Football Playoff national championship game, the Pac-12 is now coming under fire for a nine-game scheduling strategy. In a week that saw the conference’s top playoff contenders -- Stanford and Utah -- take devastating blows in the playoff hunt, the focus has already shifted to how the Pac-12 can avoid such a catastrophe moving forward. The nine-game conference schedule is the first item on the agenda.
The Pac-12 went to a nine-game conference schedule in an attempt to increase overall conference strength of schedule. Of course, adding an extra conference game always opens the door for the possibility of a conference tripping itself up in a national title hunt. The Pac-12’s scheduling strategies have been criticized time and time again from various angles, including coaches, and now with the tension continues to rise. Don’t expect any drastic changes to the Pac-12’s scheduling policies now though. After all, nobody was complaining about the Pac-12’s schedule last season when Oregon went to the College Football Playoff and national championship game. Maybe the Pac-12’s biggest problem this season is there is no legitimate national title contending program in the mix?
The Pac-12 and Big 12 are the only power conferences with nine-game schedules, although the Big Ten will adopt a nine-game schedule next season with a couple of extra parameters for teams including no FCS opponents and one game against a power conference opponent or equivalent moving forward. The ACC and SEC use an eight-game schedule and require one power conference opponent in non-conference play as well. Making schedules more difficult sounds nice for strength of schedule purposes, but it does not matter if you play eight or nine conference games if you can win all of your games, or perhaps lose just once.
Personally, I have always felt nine-game conference scheduling models were silly. The biggest complaint about them is it provides scheduling inequality by default for half of a conference every season. Sure, it balances out over the course of time, but giving half a conference one extra home game than the rest every single season puts half of your conference at a disadvantage before playing a single down in conference play.
