Adam Rittenberg blog discusses 9 game BT schedule

[BleedGopher]

# Big Ten officials and athletic directors met in Indianapolis during the Big Ten basketball tournaments and discussed the possibility of going to nine conference games, but no decision has been made. Home games continue to be the main sticking point.

# “Whenever you start nine games, whether it’s 2015 or later, you have to look at who has nonconference road games," Rudner told The Gazette. "If a school has a nonconference road game in consecutive years, then it’s problematic because you can't provide that institution with five conference home games back-to-back. It's just not fair. So I think we’ll probably -- whether it’s this spring or this summer -- we'll probably have a better clue as to how we’re going to do it, if we’re going to do it, and if we are, when we’re going to do it." As Nebraska athletic director Tom Osborne said in August, we're not likely to see a nine-game Big Ten schedule until at least 2015. I'd still be surprised if we don't see the increase, but the discussion isn't over.

http://espn.go.com/blog/bigten/post/_/id/24748/big-ten-schedule-updates

Go Gophers!!

 

[highwayman]

I've always thought an odd-numbered conference schedule is bad news, and now I feel even more anti-9. I agree that conference games are important, but having to play that extra road game is a killer.

The only way I could see it being fair is if every member of a division plays the same number of home and away conference games each season. Otherwise, I think it's almost bush-league.