As the number of home games required to feed the ballooning budgets of the mega-conference schools continues to rise, the quality of games played on those home fields continues to decline. The opponents' graph for 2007 looks slightly worse than last year's as teams continue to have difficulty scheduling non-conference games that don't require a return engagement.
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The reason things are slightly worse is that there are two more games between Bowl Subdivision and Championship Subdivision teams this year. Even if a team doesn't have any 1AA opponents, it's highly likely that more than one overall opponent does. This is why the reduction in connectivity is in the opponents' opponents category.
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Now, there's nothing inherently wrong with scheduling 1AA teams - Division 1 football is an expensive undertaking and those schools receive a large share of their overall athletic funding from this 1A "share the wealth" program. The game would be better served, though, if less than half the field scheduled such games in any given year.
It probably is true that the old rules for counting 1AA opponents were too restrictive for a 12-game schedule, but the current ones are too loose. I'd rather see those count for bowl-eligibility twice in any rolling four-year period.
There are actually four more games between teams from BCS Auto-bid conferences and the other members of the Bowl Subdivision than in the 2006 regular season, so that perceived historical problem still doesn't exist except as an oft-repeated inaccuracy by people who really should know better.
A more subtle contributor to the problem is the generally low-level of inter-regional play. Conference games don't help connect the field by themselves, so we have to look at the non-conference schedules.
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The largest numbers are in the Big TEleveN-Mid American and SEC-CUSA-Sun Belt connections. Many of those games are "wasted" as far as connectivity goes, because of the large duplication in opponents' opponents to which they contribute. It's no surprise that the Independents provide the most help. Again, there are really good reasons for those "knots" in the opponents graph to exist, but we'd really like to see fewer zeroes in the upper-left quadrant of that table.
Postscript:
In the interest of fairness and accuracy, there are some zeroes in that quadrant that almost need to be there. Just as the 64-team basketball tournament improves the connectivity of that field, the bowl season does so for the Bowl Subdivision of football's division 1. Although I generally disapprove of pre-defined bowl matchups, the fact is they exist and there are so many Big TEleveN-SEC commitments it is almost necessary to not schedule regular-season games to avoid rematches.
Since the original article there have been a few schedule changes, and I've taken the opportunity to refine some of the definitions.Specifically, Western Kentucky is in its transitional year to the Football Bowl Subdivision. This means that the Hilltoppers count as a 1-A game for their opponents, but even if they win all six 1-A games on this year's schedule they're not eligible for a bowl. In most years there's a few 1-AA teams who play more than one game at a 1-A location, but six is unprecedented, so I've changed Western Kentucky's designation to 1-A and re-run the reports.
I've also changed the interconference counts to indicate game location:
Road→
↓HomeACC BigE B10 B12 ND P10 SEC CUSA Ind MAC MW SBC WAC 1AA ACC 5 0 2 0 0 3 4 3 3 0 2 0 7 BigE 2 1 0 0 2 1 3 2 6 1 1 0 6 B10 1 2 0 3 2 0 1 0 13 0 1 1 8 B12 2 0 2 0 1 0 3 0 6 2 5 4 8 ND 3 0 1 0 1 0 0 1 0 1 0 0 0 P10 0 0 1 1 2 1 1 0 0 6 0 7 2 SEC 4 2 0 3 0 0 3 1 3 0 12 3 9 CUSA 2 1 0 4 0 0 3 0 0 3 4 0 8 Ind 2 1 0 0 0 0 0 2 1 3 1 1 0 4 MAC 0 2 5 2 0 0 0 0 5 1 0 0 7 MW 1 1 1 1 0 3 0 1 1 0 0 4 5 SBC 2 1 1 1 0 0 0 3 3 1 0 0 2 WAC 0 0 0 1 0 1 0 2 0 1 3 0 10 1AA 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 2 0 0 0 0 There's an article's worth of information to glean from the updated table, but I'll spare you that for now. One tidbit: counting WKU as D-1A means that for the first time in recent memory there are games between a D-1A team and non-division one teams, as to get to the required five home games the Hilltoppers had to schedule home games against D2 opponents West Virginia Tech and North Carolina Central. They'll be in the Sun Belt in 2008.