Jump to content
Head Coach Openings 2024 ×
  • Current Donation Goals

    • Raised $2,716 of $3,600 target

Conference Schedules


Recommended Posts

I was going through checking out schedules for the upcoming season and it made me wonder how often conferences switch up their regular season schedules. I am sure some do it differently than others. I know the MIC has had this schedule between conference teams for 7 years now. How often should conference schedules change? Should they always stay the same? Is there a particular process for doing this?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

51 minutes ago, Indiana Fan said:

I was going through checking out schedules for the upcoming season and it made me wonder how often conferences switch up their regular season schedules. I am sure some do it differently than others. I know the MIC has had this schedule between conference teams for 7 years now. How often should conference schedules change? Should they always stay the same? Is there a particular process for doing this?

League opponents should cone first.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

You see college football change their conference schedules every year. I think it would be a good to see conferences change up when their teams play one another throughout the season.  If there is a set week that rivals always play then that can be locked in and stay. But other matchups should be changed every other year or so.

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

2 minutes ago, Indiana Fan said:

You see college football change their conference schedules every year. I think it would be a good to see conferences change up when their teams play one another throughout the season.  If there is a set week that rivals always play then that can be locked in and stay. But other matchups should be changed every other year or so.

It wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world, but again, people are creatures of habit (schedulers included).  Imagine the Old Oaken Bucket game being played in September...

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I agree with this. The NLC has kept the same conference schedule for as long as I can remember.

Looking at our friend @Rudy Almanacsports.com website, Warsaw has had the same conference schedule rotation since the 1985 season. The only change ups have been when teams left or join the conference:

Plymouth
Bremen (1985-88) / Out of Conference Opponent (1989-2000) / Elkhart Memorial (2001-2019) / Mishawaka (2020-present)
Rochester (1985-86) / Northridge (1987-present)
Goshen
Wawasee
NorthWood
Concord

One reason why I would like to see a possible change up is because it seems every EVEN year, the homecoming opponent is Goshen and on the ODD years is either Northridge or Wawasee. It would also be nice if another school in the confernce had to deal with the traffic and parking nightmare that is related to Plymouth's Blueberry Festival 😆

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

34 minutes ago, NLCTigerFan07 said:

I agree with this. The NLC has kept the same conference schedule for as long as I can remember.

Looking at our friend @Rudy Almanacsports.com website, Warsaw has had the same conference schedule rotation since the 1985 season. The only change ups have been when teams left or join the conference:

Plymouth
Bremen (1985-88) / Out of Conference Opponent (1989-2000) / Elkhart Memorial (2001-2019) / Mishawaka (2020-present)
Rochester (1985-86) / Northridge (1987-present)
Goshen
Wawasee
NorthWood
Concord

One reason why I would like to see a possible change up is because it seems every EVEN year, the homecoming opponent is Goshen and on the ODD years is either Northridge or Wawasee. It would also be nice if another school in the confernce had to deal with the traffic and parking nightmare that is related to Plymouth's Blueberry Festival 😆

I was on staff at Kokomo two seasons ago and the week we played Plymouth was during the Blueberry Festival. That is not fun for parking, or trying to navigate a team to the field when they are loading up those trollys.

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, NLCTigerFan07 said:

I agree with this. The NLC has kept the same conference schedule for as long as I can remember.

Looking at our friend @Rudy Almanacsports.com website, Warsaw has had the same conference schedule rotation since the 1985 season. The only change ups have been when teams left or join the conference:

Plymouth
Bremen (1985-88) / Out of Conference Opponent (1989-2000) / Elkhart Memorial (2001-2019) / Mishawaka (2020-present)
Rochester (1985-86) / Northridge (1987-present)
Goshen
Wawasee
NorthWood
Concord

One reason why I would like to see a possible change up is because it seems every EVEN year, the homecoming opponent is Goshen and on the ODD years is either Northridge or Wawasee. It would also be nice if another school in the confernce had to deal with the traffic and parking nightmare that is related to Plymouth's Blueberry Festival 😆

Teams need to play opponents at different times of the year. It keeps it fair and keeps it fresh.

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

33 minutes ago, Indiana Fan said:

Teams need to play opponents at different times of the year. It keeps it fair and keeps it fresh.

I definitely agree here. Would love to see the NLC switch things up. I think one big reason why the conference couldn't was mostly due to Concord's schedule.

Prior to Elkhart Memorial joining the conference in 2001, Concord and Memorial played every year in week 2 of the season. Concord also played Jimtown (an out of conference opponent) in week 6 of the season. However, when Memorial joined the conference, the schools just kept that game during week 2. So those teams would always start the conference part of the schedule a week earlier than the rest, while also having an OOC game in the middle of the conference season.

With Memorial leaving via consolidation and Mishawaka taking their place this year, Concord and Jimtown thankfully moved their game up to week 2 of the season and Mishawaka slid into Memorial's slot on the schedule for all other teams (and into week 6 for Concord).

Now that the NLC has all teams playing conference games in week 3 through week 9, maybe there is potential for some schedule shifts every 3-4 years. Definitely an advocate of it.

Edited by NLCTigerFan07
  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

50 minutes ago, NLCTigerFan07 said:

Now that the NLC has all teams playing conference games in week 3 through week 9, maybe there is potential for some schedule shifts every 3-4 years. Definitely an advocate of it.

A, 8-team conference doesn't have to have all of its games in Weeks 3-9 to have a shuffle. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 2/17/2021 at 10:36 AM, Indiana Fan said:

I was going through checking out schedules for the upcoming season and it made me wonder how often conferences switch up their regular season schedules. I am sure some do it differently than others. I know the MIC has had this schedule between conference teams for 7 years now. How often should conference schedules change? Should they always stay the same? Is there a particular process for doing this?

The MIC shuffled a few years back because it seemed that the teams would often play in the final weeks and then end up playing in the first round of Sectional. They shuffled so that the teams wouldn't have to play back-to-back or close to back-to-back from reg. season to the tourney. Then Pike/LC joined and that necessitated a bit of shuffling of games again. This was particularly bad for NC/Warren/LN/LC who often end up in the same Sectional.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 2/17/2021 at 3:21 PM, DanteEstonia said:

A, 8-team conference doesn't have to have all of its games in Weeks 3-9 to have a shuffle. 

Correct they do not have to have all of its games in Weeks 3-9, HOWEVER they do need to have all teams playing conference games on the same weeks.

In my example of the NLC, two teams played a conference game week 2, but then had out-of-conference games in week 6. Well if all a sudden the next year you want to switch things up, whoever the team or teams are in that week 2 schedule now are force to find an OOC opponent in week 6 of their schedule, and whoever their normal/typical OOC opponent was might not be available. Perfect example is Elkhart Memorial. They were always scrambling to find/change OOC opponents in week 6. They played Mishawaka Marian, Detroit Country Day (MI), Gary Wirt, Greenwood, Bowman Academy, South Bend Clay, Indianapolis Shortridge, and Culver Military Academy in that week 6 slot in the 19 seasons they were in the NLC. Tough to find an OOC opponent to consistenly play in the middle of the season. Much easier to find them in weeks 1 and 2.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I used to track these changes in conference schedules for the SIAC, Big 8 & PAC but haven't in the last several years as it takes up a lot of time.

In 1992, the SIAC switched to having the rivalry games in the last week of the regular season. The schedules pretty much stayed the same and they used to rotate weeks 3-6 (week 3 would become week 4, 4->5, 5->6, 6->3) for a while. With the addition of Jasper & Vincennes, they pretty much had to blow the schedule up, but did keep the rivalry weeks intact.

Back in the day, the city schools would rotate who played on Thanksgiving. (Here's an article from 2007 I wrote that lists the Turkey Day games and you can see how they rotated).

Putting schedules together is not an easy task, especially with balancing home games, teams dropping out and joining, rivalry games, etc.

Definitely following this conversation. It's always been interesting to me and glad to know there are others too 🙂

  • Like 3
Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 2/18/2021 at 7:22 PM, Rudy said:

I used to track these changes in conference schedules for the SIAC, Big 8 & PAC but haven't in the last several years as it takes up a lot of time.

In 1992, the SIAC switched to having the rivalry games in the last week of the regular season. The schedules pretty much stayed the same and they used to rotate weeks 3-6 (week 3 would become week 4, 4->5, 5->6, 6->3) for a while. With the addition of Jasper & Vincennes, they pretty much had to blow the schedule up, but did keep the rivalry weeks intact.

Back in the day, the city schools would rotate who played on Thanksgiving. (Here's an article from 2007 I wrote that lists the Turkey Day games and you can see how they rotated).

Putting schedules together is not an easy task, especially with balancing home games, teams dropping out and joining, rivalry games, etc.

Definitely following this conversation. It's always been interesting to me and glad to know there are others too 🙂

Thanks for the info, Rudy.  I knew SIAC had week 9 fixed (neighborhood rivalries) but couldn't remember which weeks rotated.  Before weeks 1 & 2 were set as non-conference, weeks 3-6 were the only ones which were conference-only.  I remember North travelling to Detroit Jesuit week 8 and Central/Boonville and Mater Dei/Mt. Vernon were common matchups in Weeks 7/8.

I hope they can figure out a rotation in the future, which should be easier now that the conference is a 9 game schedule. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

×
×
  • Create New...