PAC-12 possibly doing away with divisions

[UM4G]

Pac-12 weighing whether to dump the North-South divisional structure in future football seasons, per commissioner George Kliavkoff.

Would result in just the best two teams in the conference playing in title game in Las Vegas each year.

— John Canzano (@johncanzanobft) October 21, 2021

I think I’m in favor of this, not sure if it would have helped Utah in any previous seasons. It would mean no more, ASU for example, having an easier route to winning the South simply because they don’t play Oregon and UW/Stanford and we do. Never did like that losses to the North counted towards deciding the South winner.

[Central Coast Ute]

But it could also mean fewer trips to SoCal while the bay area schools play there every year.

[chinngiskhaan]

Seems like this would hurt the conference’s playoff chances. The CCG is an extra chance for the best team to get a quality win. Without it I feel like the schedules would be far too weak for a one loss team to make the playoff.

[chinngiskhaan]

Never mind… didn’t read the tweet

[Central Coast Ute]

They would still have a CCG. It would be the two best teams that go to the CCG instead of the division winners.

[chinngiskhaan]

I downvoted my own idiotic post

[Hellhound152]

Divisions spawn rivalries.  If the conference also goes to 8 games you could go nearly a decade without USC or Oregon coming to SLC.  It also creates scheduling a chance that a team could miss UW/Stanford/USC/Utah in the same season.  

I think it is bad for SoCal recruiting and only works if you can play a true round robin like the Big12 currently does.

[Charlie]

I am wondering, how many times has the CCG not included the two best teams, or very, very close to the two best?  It is not like Cincinnati or the Y sneaks in every now and then.  It is in our own great interest that we play every year in so cal.  I also think divisions keep more teams in the running late in the season.  It would be aweful to have everything wrapped up with a week or two to go.  Lot’s more important things to spend our time on fixing.

[alUmnUs]

I just looked at standings back to the 2013 season (excluded 2020). This format would have resulted in the same CCG pairings every season except for 2015 & 2018 in which the top 2 north teams were the the top 2 finishers in the league. In 2018, Wazzu finished with a better P12 record than Utah did. They would have played UW in back to back games to end the regular season.

Another observation:

1 loss gets you into the CCG
2 losses likely gets you into the CCG
Big drop-off in final records after top 3 teams.

[CincyUte]

Too many divisions in the world today.  We need to be more united.  The PAC-12 shows us the way.

[Tony (admin)]

That’s insensitive.