Pac-10 Should Stick With Nine Games
The Pac-10 is headed for its fourth straight season without a team in the BCS title game. The SEC is most likely going to have a team playing for the championship for the fourth straight year — and they might have two.
The SEC’s non-conference schedules are laughable. But the solution from the Pac-10’s perspective shouldn’t be to reduce the conference schedule in order to add another game against, say, Eastern Washington. Let’s look at the problems that would create:
— One team would miss Washington State, while others would miss Oregon or Southern Cal. That hardly seems an equitable way to determine a conference champion.
— Once in a while, you might have teams tie for the league title after not playing each other. There’s nothing worse than determining the Rose Bowl berth based on non-conference records or by who hasn’t been to the Rose Bowl in the longest time.
— You might end up with a conference champion that isn’t the best team in the conference, depending upon how the schedule falls. That’s no way for the league to put its best foot forward on a national stage.
— Did I mention that one team would not play Washington State, while somebody else would miss Oregon?
By playing a round-robin schedule, the Pac-10 does everything in its power to determine a fair conference champion. And that should be the primary goal.
