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Dimitri Dorlis's avatar

I think that's an interesting solution. The SEC does something similar to this idea with the unofficial SEC-SoCon Challenge, where a ton of SEC teams play a team from the Southern Conference late in the year (usually before rivalry week). This helps inflate their records and gives them an extra bye week. The big problem is getting other conferences/schools on board with the idea. Typically, the only non-conference games you see late in the year either involve Notre Dame or a rivalry game outside of the conference (think Georgia/GT and Clemson/South Carolina for examples here).

I think one of the biggest roadblocks will be getting schools to agree to earlier kickoffs. Most schools are against an early kickoff out of principle, with the earliest usually being something like a noon PST kickoff, with most going later in the day. The conference should look at adding a weekly game in that first kickoff window, with the ability to flex a low to mid-tier game into the slot. Then work to have your biggest games kick off in that 5 PM primetime slot, throw a low tier game at 7, and run more games at 2:30/3:00 PM. Doing something like this would involve getting a better deal from a TV network, and perhaps one of the best options is to partner with CBS now that they've lost the SEC.

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Bruin Bro's avatar

Good thinking. Part of this would be having uniformity in schedules, which might not be possible with SEC being the reigning conference and not wanting to change things. In our case, the Pac-12 plays 3 conference games to start the year. What if a select few played their 3rd non-conference game mid-to late in the year. If we are "down" as a conference, we could use that to get non-conference teams to play one of our teams (what are you afraid of).

I like your thinking about CBS, it's at least an option worth exploring. I'm not overly savvy when it comes to broadcasting right, etc. But it seems CBS is still a major network and we could be a solution to both our problems.

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