The Big 10 Schedule Was Released And I'm Going To Freak Out One More Time

Alright, we’re getting closer to college basketball season. Seriously, we’re only like 75 days away from the start of the season. For the few of us that are college basketball fans this is an important number. Yeah, college football is great but I’m a college basketball guy, I don’t know what to tell you.

So with that said the Big 10 released its schedule yesterday and I’m going to lose my mind one more time. Conference play is starting in November. I HATE that so goddamn much that I could go on a KFC-esque rant about it. Conference play in college basketball should not be happening in November, it just shouldn’t. Conference play should start after the calendar year (except the Big East doing the New Year’s Eve slate).

But you can’t do that when you go to a 20-game schedule. This is the first time the Big 10 is going with that many games and it’s going to get mixed reviews. I mean, sure, you get to see more ‘rivalries’ and games you know, but I’d rather them play a decent nonconference game. Call me crazy but I don’t give a shit about Rutgers vs Michigan. I do give a shit about Michigan vs say, someone like Oakland or a good mid-major.

That’s what’s going to happen with conferences going to the 20 game schedule. You’re going to keep a buy game and you’re going to keep playing the top talent. What’s going to happen though is you’re going to lose the game against the mid-major because it’s the easiest to cut out. Just another reason I need to be commissioner to not let this happen.

Now, I will say this. This is a weird and important year for the Big 10. The conference has been down the last couple of years as a whole and this year there are questions about just how good the top of the conference is. You have a handful of top-25 teams, but no one in the top-10. The problem the last few years has been the lack of top recruits coming in and top-NBA talent. This year, yeah, there’s Romeo Langford, but who is the top-NBA talent here? Most mock drafts have just two Big 10 guys in the first round.

At least they are playing the Big 10 Tournament in Chicago and not Madison Square Garden, which is the correct decision. It should only be played in Chicago or Indianapolis.