Back To The Future Conference Championship Games

Everyone loves talking about conference realignment, it appears, but some really hate the idea of a conference championship game taking away some of the luster of Michigan-Ohio State or, worse, regularly pitting the Michigan-OSU winner against some goofy school in the Western half of the conference that may or may not be worth the bid.

I do agree with them, partially: there's no reason to go to divisions. Divisions will either split Michigan and Ohio State, leading to a lot of Michigan-Ohio State title games the week after Michigan-Ohio State non-title games, or keep them together, leading to a lot of Big 12-style title games that aren't fair fights or compelling matchups. Ideally, an expanded Big Ten will add a ninth conference game and continue with the single table for standings. This would make a title game a dodgy, sometimes unnecessary possibility. But since Penn State joined the conference there have been co-championships galore, sometimes without the co-champions even meeting, seemingly random Rose Bowl decisions, and a general feeling of being zo... unsatysfyed about half the time. Let's survey the years since Penn State joined to see if a championship game would be net benefit or detriment.

1993
Ohio State and Wisconsin are co-champions at 6-1-1 in conference; the two tie 14-14. Wisconsin goes to the Rose Bowl because Ohio State has been more recently.
Verdict: Obviously a championship game to break this deadlock is desirable, but this situation will never come up again with the introduction of overtime. Not relevant.
1994
Undefeated Penn State is the outright champion. Nobody else finishes the regular season with fewer than four losses.
Verdict: A championship game would be unnecessary and, worse, would open up the possibility of a K-State-esque fall from glory from a team that had already proven its worth. No.
1995
Northwestern's miracle year. They beat Notre Dame, then lose to Miami (Ohio) and sweep the rest of their schedule. They miss second place Ohio State, whose only regular season loss is to Michigan in the finale.
Verdict: Ohio State missed out on an opportunity to beat Northwestern head to head and claim the title. Yes, they lost in conference and Northwestern did not but in a hypothetical world where OSU got a ninth conference game against the Wildcats, if they won they would have the same record and a head-to-head tiebreaker. It would have been fairer to have the two play. Yes.
1996
Northwestern's second miracle year; this time they tie for the conference championship with Ohio State, who again blow an undefeated season by losing to Michigan. Both teams are 7-1 this year, and the two don't play each other.
Verdict: Obvious benefit here. This, along with the coming Iowa-OSU shared title, are the platonic ideal when it comes to title games. Yes.
1997
Michigan's national championship season. The Wolverines are undefeated. Penn State and Ohio State tie for second at 6-2. Michigan defeats both of them during the course of the year.
Verdict: Two contenders two games back who have already lost to the champion don't deserve a rematch. No.
1998
A three-way tie between Michigan, Ohio State, and Wisconsin. All are 7-1. Wisconsin and Ohio State do not play. OSU's loss is to Michigan State, Michigan's is to Ohio State, and Wisconsin's is to Michigan. Wisconsin is chosen as the Rose Bowl representative for no apparent reason.
Verdict: This is an unfulfilling result. Wisconsin plays an easier schedule than Michigan, loses to them, and still goes to the Rose Bowl. Meanwhile, Ohio State beats the team that beat Wisconsin and still misses out. But how do you unravel the three-way-tie here? If both teams had beaten the other it's easy to excise the loser, but here we have an incomplete round-robin. If you go by overall record, 11-1 Wisconsin and 11-1 Ohio State win out but that just increases the incentive to fluff your schedule: Wisconsin played SDSU, Ohio, and UNLV out of conference while Michigan played Syracuse, ND, and EMU. Let's just throw up our hands and say maybe.
1999
Wisconsin finally earns a Rose Bowl berth instead of having one handed to them by archaic bylaws by finishing 7-1. Their loss is to 6-2 Michigan, which ties for second with Michigan State. Wisconsin beats Michigan State, Michigan State beats Michigan.
Verdict: We have an outright champion that played the runners-up. Even if it lost to one of them, a championship game here is not necessary. No.
2000
Another three-way-tie, this one between Michigan, Northwestern, and Purdue. All are 6-2. Michigan's losses are to Northwestern and Purdue; Purdue loses to under .500 Penn State and Michigan State; Northwestern loses to Purdue and Iowa.
Verdict: This three-way is easy to untangle: Michigan gets booted because it lost to both other co-champions. Then we're left with Purdue and Northwestern, who tied in the standings but also met on the field with Purdue winning. This one is a matter of taste. Personally, it wouldn't be a tragedy if the two had a rematch. Maybe.
2001
Illinois is the outright champion. Their only loss is to second place Michigan; Michigan drops games against Ohio State and Michigan State.
Verdict: Odd situation, this, with an outright champion who lost to a second place team a game behind. A rematch wouldn't be a terrible thing. Maybe. Do you change your mind if reminded that the 2001 Michigan State game was the infamous "clockgate" game? Note than any State fans wishing to make their weak case that they are not filthy cheaters should consider the horrible vengance Angry Michigan Safety Hating God has wreaked on the Spartans: the next year, of course, was the 49-3 meltdown that got Bobby Williams fired and they hired the only guy they could find who was a bigger laughingstock than Williams, who proceeded to lose four straight to Michigan, two of them in excruciating fashion. Yea, you reap what you sow.
2002
Iowa and Ohio State are both undefeated. They don't play each other.
Verdict: Obviously yes.
2003
Michigan is the outright champion. Their only conference loss is to Iowa, but the Hawkeyes end up 5-3. Michigan defeats second place, 6-2 Ohio State on the final day of the season.
Verdict: An outright champion that beat the second-place team. No.
2004
Iowa and Michigan are co-champs. Michigan's only loss is to Ohio State; Iowa loses to Michigan in the Big Ten opener.
Verdict: A matter of personal preference like a few previous years. Maybe.
2005
Ohio State and Penn State are co-champs. Both are 7-1. Penn State's loss is to Michigan. Ohio State's loss is to Penn State.
Verdict: Repeat of last year. Maybe.
2006
Ohio State burns a swath of destruction through the Big Ten, skipping Wisconsin. Second place is a 7-1 tie between the Badgers and Michigan. Michgan loses to OSU; Wisconsin loses to Michigan.
Verdict: Another sticky wicket. We have an outright champ who missed one of the second place teams but putting Wisconsin in the title game over Michigan seems to stupidly reward an easier schedule and ignore head-to-head. But what's the point of replaying a game you just saw? No.

We have one not applicable, five no, three yes, and a whopping five maybes. Your personal opinion on the maybes will influence your stand considerably. Personally, I don't mind if we get a rematch when two teams are tied in the standings.

I have a suggestion that may be logistically impossible, but here goes: the Big Ten should have an optional title game. Outright champion? No title game. But if two (or more) teams end up tied at the end of the year, put a game on in Chicago or Indianapolis between the co-champs. If three teams are tied, break ties like so:

• If one team has lost to both others, they're out.
• Eliminate the team with the weakest conference schedule.
• If one team has lost to another co-champion and didn't play the second, they're out.
• I dunno, overall record?

The Big Ten will be wasting some money on preparations on years there is no title game but there would obviously be a net profit, and the Big Ten championship would end up more satisfying overall. Year by year, this system would result in the following games:

1994: None.
1995: None.

1996: Northwestern vs. Ohio State.
1997: None.
1998: Michigan vs. Ohio State.
1999: None.
2000: Northwestern vs. Purdue.

2001: None.
2002: Iowa vs Ohio State.
2003: None.
2004: Iowa vs Michigan.
2005: Ohio State vs Penn State.

2006: None.

Six games in 13 years, only one of them a weird "let's play a doubleheader" Michigan-OSU game, and no more stupid co-championships or undeserved Wisconsin Rose Bowls. In this scenario a hypothetical twelfth team has been added; if the number of games does not expand there will be significantly more Iowa-OSU 2002 situations and a title game will happen more often.

Yes, this is all pretty stupid speculation when I really should be previewing Big Ten teams. I'm on it.

Death to Offsides

As we descend into the deep, dark offseason with not even baseball or the Pistons to distract us, things get offtopic...

Offsides needs to die. Hockey offsides, that is. It is sort of required in football and soccer. But it is not in hockey, and every time the rule is invoked a little part of me dies. Entertaining rushes are blown dead because one player strayed a fraction into the attacking zone. Power plays go from excitingly set up to regrouping because a defenseman can't hold the puck in the zone. Defenders can stack the blue line and enforce a dump and chase strategy that's about as interesting as watching the Spurs play basketball. And for what? I can't figure it out. It's true the rule gives a certain structure to the modern game, but what would the consequences be if offsides did not exist?

Cherry-picking is not likely. No team is going to voluntarily put themselves a man down in the defensive zone in the vague hope a long lead pass goes tape-to-tape and puts a player in alone. The continued existence of the two-line pass would make the offensive zone verboten until the defending team had cleared their zone with control of the puck. At that point, players could go where they pleased with incurring the wrath of a whistle and a boring neutral-zone faceoff. No, the framework for a penalty-kill-and-breakaway based offense has been in place since the NHL adopted the collegiate two-line pass rule, but no one has seriously attempted to deploy it save for some Swedes in the Olympics. Breakaway passes remain difficult, low-return things; removing offsides is not going to change that.

So, then, what are the negatives? The ability of a team to remove pressure around its own goal by desperately poking the puck out past the blue line has always seemed a cheap maneuver, and there's nothing I hate more in hockey than the whistle that disrupts an interesting rush for no reason. (Except the delay of game penalty you get when you accidentally fling the puck into the stands in your defensive zone. Worst rule in sports? Other than "Anderson Varejao is allowed to participate in them"?) Those are the ways offsides inflicts itself on the sport. Removing both of these things would improve the game

The benefit is obvious: hockey gets to play to its strengths. It's always been a game of flow up and down the ice, players approaching and retreating. One of my favorite sequences in all of hockey came in Michigan's 3-2 overtime loss to BC in the NCAA tournament a few years ago. Michigan had been dominated the entire game until a gorgeous nine minute-plus stretch of nonstop end-to-end action unsullied by whistles. Michigan started to emerge. You could feel the momentum shift. The Wolverines re-asserted themselves as equals, and you could feel the tenor of the game change. By the time it ended and the freaked out network cut to commercial, the tension drained from the room and real-life reasserted itself after what seemed like a lengthy ten minute vacation. (This being Michigan sports in the past half-decade, Boston College would bat in a rebound off the offensive zone faceoff and go on to win in overtime; yea, Angry Michigan Hockey Hating God was wroth that day.)

Dropping offsides would not turn all games into that ten-minute pressure wave but it might do that for some. It would reduce whistles, kill deadly dull neutral zone faceoffs, and make it harder to stand up offenses at the blue line with impunity. It would make hockey awesomer.

Okay, okay: while I would be happy to see offsides disappear entirely, I do realize most observers of the game would file that under lunacy and move on. But there are less radical alternatives:

• Widen the blue line, which is actually part of the offensive zone when you want it to be -- holding a puck in or gaining the zone -- and a part of the defensive zone when you want it to be -- skittering along the edge of the zone with one skate precariously onside.
• A more extreme version of same: make the "blue line" functionally extend all the way to the red line. Once you have gained the zone the puck must pass the red line for it to be lost. When you are taking the puck up ice, once you pass the red line you are permitted to pass to anyone.

Any of these suggestions would be somewhere between a moderate and a drastic change, but... um... they're embiggening the nets in a desperate attempt to increase scoring. Drastic measures are called for.