Realignment Megathread (All The Moves)
- Thread starter ISUcyclones11
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to be fair...The new teams will need a couple of years to make a difference.
Next year,
Colorado will probably have some of the best recruiting classes in the country, so they will be good.
Utah will be good.
UCF will probably recruit their way back to the top at some point.
where it looks extremely bad right now is all the newcomers look like garbage, and I don't think the league thought OSU, TCU, Baylor and Tech would have fallen so far. Even Iowa State and KState have slid back to...meh.
The only real team that is above expectations right now is Kansas.
If OU and Texas clean house, finish 1-2, and win the title game it basically confirms what people are already thinking....the league is not great for football at this point.
What I don't want to see is next year the league is dominated by Utah and Colorado. So the rest of us need to get our crap together.
Not the end of the world, but its not a great time to being screwing around with sucking as a league when decisions are being made about playoff spots and Power status, etc.
Next year,
Colorado will probably have some of the best recruiting classes in the country, so they will be good.
Utah will be good.
UCF will probably recruit their way back to the top at some point.
where it looks extremely bad right now is all the newcomers look like garbage, and I don't think the league thought OSU, TCU, Baylor and Tech would have fallen so far. Even Iowa State and KState have slid back to...meh.
The only real team that is above expectations right now is Kansas.
If OU and Texas clean house, finish 1-2, and win the title game it basically confirms what people are already thinking....the league is not great for football at this point.
What I don't want to see is next year the league is dominated by Utah and Colorado. So the rest of us need to get our crap together.
Not the end of the world, but its not a great time to being screwing around with sucking as a league when decisions are being made about playoff spots and Power status, etc.
Yet, here we are again. Looks like the BTW is going to make it its entire existence being a bottom 2 power 5 division every season:
And it really shouldn't be. Face it, the Big 12 sucked in the non-con with a couple exceptions. Probably the worst year it's had as a whole in a decade. To top it off the best two teams are OU and UT and they look to be heads and shoulders above the rest. But then again, UT can collapse at any time.
It's too bad this is the way OU and UT leave. The past three years they have combined to be barely over .500 in league play, and the league has been top 2 or 3 in Sagarin.
Just a bad combo for the league to be down overall behind SEC East, Big 10 East and Pac, while also having OUT be good again.
I never said the B1G West wasn't bad. I said that referring to Wisconsin as a "cream puff", which another poster did, was a stretch.
11 of 18 B1G teams too. Wisconsin is a good team. Luke Fickell got his first experience getting sucked into Ferentz quicksand (unless OSU played Iowa that year?)
Conference **** measuring is so stupid especially when you are trying to brag up B1G West teams.
Well, I think it is safe to say we really don't know if Wisconsin is decent or bad yet. Creampuff is a bit of a stretch. When you can be halfway through the season and be ranked with your best win being 24-13 vs. Rutgers, the jury is still out. The problem with the Big 10 west teams is that the jury is always out, because the competition is largely garbage. It's sort of like when people claim G5s are just as good as teams that play in power conferences because they beat one in non-con or in a bowl. The challenge in a good conference is not the 1-2 great teams you play. It's the fact that when you inevitably have that B or C game, what are they odds you lose. Iowa is a little different, at least in its current form. The highs aren't that high and the lows aren't that low. A few years ago they could rise up and beat an elite team. I don't see that in them anymore.
Hell, the Big 12 is down overall, and look at the how the new additions are faring. They are a hail mary away from being 0-fer against the old Big 12 teams. Hell, Cincy was -5 going into the ISU game, and after about two possessions it was pretty clear ISU was significantly better. Similarly I think while people know the East is much better, the lack of cross-over games by the top teams in each league leads people to underestimate the gap.
Wisconsin is a very good brand. I think there a pretty good program, but it's hard to tell playing in what has been the worst power conference division in football as a whole since it's existed.
I'm not convinced Wisconsin is good. What game are you basing this assessment on?
The only team they played currently ranked is Iowa at 24. And they didn't beat the version of Iowa with functional QB play.
But in two weeks they get Ohio State. They'll get pounded. Then they'll win more games because they play the rest of the hot garbage big 10 west. And people will say "Well, if you go 9-3/8-4 and play in the Big 10, you can't be a bad team." Then whoever plays the east in the CCG gets obliterated. Then the next year everybody falls for the same crap again.
It's for this reason why its so hard to see just how good Rutgers and Maryland are in a given year because they have to play Penn. State, Michigan and OSU every year. Put those teams in the West, and they improve a game or two, just like if you put EIU in the East, they are struggling to find 6 conference wins.
What constitutes good to you? AP top 25? They're averaging 400 yards of offense and 27 points a game while transitioning from what Wisconsin has looked like offensively since Barry Alvarez showed up in 1990 to a power spread. They lost on the road to a good Wazzu team (yes, they dropped out of the top 25 this week), and Iowa in a classic 'opposing team is going to get off schedule against Kirk, watch what happens' game after losing their senior QB. They're top 25-30 in most advanced analytics rankings.
Outside of CU it's probably going to be very hard for any of the Big 12 teams to compete with the top of the 2 top conferences. They are already better and will continue getting more money. Hopefully CU can keep Prime because it benefits the entire conference if CU becomes one of the big boys. Even though basketball is quite a few steps behind football in TV money I think our leadership wants to make this conference the best in the country, so we at least have that. No reason we can't be better at basketball than The Big 10. They don't have any teams with much basketball tradition outside of Michigan State and UCLA and it's been a long time since MSU has done anything and practically the stone age since UCLA has.
Yep, all of this goes away and Iowa will play a much tougher schedule than ISU pretty much every year.
We'll see about WSU. They just got freaking blasted by Arizona. Good win vs. Oregon St. Loss to UCLA. If they get blasted by Oregon this week they aren't going to be even getting votes.
Again, Wisconsin's best win is Rutgers. I guess I'm not going to get too excited about losing to an Iowa team that has a D2 at best QB, or a WSU team that just got thrashed by Arizona.
That's been a popular tweet for a couple weeks, but it's pretty meaningless due to roster turnover in college sports.
I think the most annoying part of this statement is how ISU's schedule has been tougher every year for a decade+, and Hawkeye fans have ignored that fact and gone "tHe BiG 10 iS a GaUnTLeT!" every year.
Suddenly SoS will be the most valid metric out there. Regardless, they won't be able to hide a weak BIG West anymore, and hopefully they whiff on their next coaching hire.
**** Iowa.
Since The Big 12 Championship game was brought back in 2017, this is the breakdown of entries:
Oklahoma - 4
TCU - 2
Baylor - 2
Kansas State - 1
Iowa State - 1
Texas - 1
Oklahoma State - 1
Neither OU nor Texas made it since 2020.
Just sucks they both have a good chance to make it this year to fulfil the hoped narrative by everyone that they're the only winners from this conference. The way this season is playing out is not how it's been lately.
Oklahoma - 4
TCU - 2
Baylor - 2
Kansas State - 1
Iowa State - 1
Texas - 1
Oklahoma State - 1
Neither OU nor Texas made it since 2020.
Just sucks they both have a good chance to make it this year to fulfil the hoped narrative by everyone that they're the only winners from this conference. The way this season is playing out is not how it's been lately.
