Protect Your Unit Week 15 Picks Thread

(DISCLAIMER: This game is for entertainment purposes only. No actual money is being wagered.)

As you probably heard, the Big Ten Conference waived its requirement that a team must play six games to qualify for the conference championship. This allowed Ohio State (5-0) to win the East Division at the expense of Indiana (6-1).

Well, we don’t do that around here.

In 2018, this year’s master and overlord BullsOnParade96 actually ended the season with the highest total (a mere 2127.62), but wasn’t declared the official winner because he didn’t meet the weekly bet requirements. jrjs, who ended with 2052.72, was declared the official winner instead. In fact, I cited the latter total in last week’s post that listed the winning scores for each season. 2018 was the only season where fulfilling the weekly requirements played a role.

Yes, I’m piling on the Big Ten a bit unfairly here. Even if Ohio State had lost to Michigan, they would won the division anyway, because of this rule in the Big Ten’s 2020-specific tie-breaker rules:

“In the event of an unbalanced schedule due to cancellation of games: If two (or more) teams have the same number of conference losses but a different number of conference wins, head-to-head results will take precedence over winning percentage, as long as the two (or more) teams meet minimum number of games language noted above.”

If Ohio State had lost to Michigan, they would be 5-1 to Indiana’s 6-1, and Ohio State would win the tie-breaker due to the head-to-head win. The league office waived a game Ohio State didn’t need to win anyway. Other sports leagues have similar rules; the 1990 National League batting title was decided in this fashion. So no great injustice was done here.

What bothers me is the phrase “The decision was based on a competitive analysis.” Is the Big Ten Conference really saying “Ohio State would have won anyway?” I don’t think sports leagues should be making decisions like that. Especially when it wasn’t even necessary, by the logic I gave above. If a vote has to be taken to resolve an ambiguous situation, fine; it’s happened before. But that phrase, with no further explanation, really rubs me the wrong way. Which is why I write so much about rulings in PYU when I have to make them; I want all the logic out in the open.

While we’re on the subject, I appreciate everyone being good sports about the nature of this season. “Oh look, the rules changed again” has been a running gag, and we have had to make rulings at times. And the website didn’t work the first couple weeks. But I think this bizarre season has gone pretty smoothly, and that’s in part due to our group of players, for taking these things in stride. The game is a lot more fun for me to administer, because I do it for such good people. So give yourself a round of applause.

Let’s move on to this week’s picks, as of 9 AM Eastern time:

Next week will be Week 16, and then bowl season starts. It appears that one bowl game, the Frisco Bowl, will be part of both Week 16 and bowl season. We’ll officially address that in the Week 15 wrap-up thread.