6 wins in football... you can schedule 4 cupcakes and get 4 wins, then go 2-6 in league whereas in basketball, you can go 14-0 non-conference, then still have to win 6 league games... 6-10 is tough to do if you're bad
Basketball. Like was mentioned before it's easier to get 3 or 4 really good basketball players and a few decent players to fill the team out. In football, it's more expensive for the school, you need a LOT more players and talent. I don't think that scheduling "4 cupcake teams" like Casey mentioned is likely, because if you ARE scheduling four "cupcakes," then you're probably a cupcake team yourself and beating another cupcake team wouldn't be too easy. In otherwords, if a major football school (LSU for instance) scheduled, let's say: LA Tech, Tulane, ULL and ULM and then beat State and Kentucky to become bowl eligible they would NOT be getting a decent bowl and then it would be a moot point. However, if La Tech scheduled ULL, Rice, Baylor and ULM (I didn't feel like thinking of teams on LA Tech's level) and then won two games in conference, they'd go bowling and that would be significant for their program. Now could they even beat those teams to get to 6 wins, I don't know. Maybe. What I'm trying to say is that it isn't likely to have a bigger school scheduling cupcakes and lose money because of having "sh!t" teams on the schedule. If a cupcake schedules a cupcake--it isn't a cupcake because they're both evenly matched. I still think it should be 7 or 8 games to go bowling. On the otherhand, there is a LOT more competition in basketball at the D-1 level since there is no 1-AA for basketball. It's all relative I guess. But I still think it's a bit easier to get in the NCAAs. Look at the Southland Conference for instance. You put LSU's team this season in that conference and they will win it and go to the NCAA tourney and LSU's team was not very good. BUt, like I said, it's all relative. I don't think that it's easy by any means for either sport, but I'm giving basketball the slight, slight nudge here.
Even though it is a bit harder for me to say as a fan of a football school, I have to go with 20 wins in basketball. The main reason is that losing one starter in basketball to the NBA is losing 20% of your starters automatically (as opposed to 5% in football in the same scenario). Plus a football powerhouse should/will have another young player at each position that is just as good or better, with a fair amount of game expierience waiting in the wing. With basketball you really cannot have this scenario very often because there are less players on a team and beacuse top flight basketball player are at a very high premium. Obviously this is not a shot at football or football players but thats just the way I look at it, and while I may despise Duke, it really makes me respect coach Krzyzewski even more for consistantly putting up very good teams while graduating alot of them.
Teams with 20+ bb wins by conference: ACC........... 10 of 12 teams... 8 bowl teams Big 12......... 6 of 12............. 8 Big East...... 9 of 16............. 5 (of 8 ... add ND 6 of 9) Big Ten....... 7 of 11............. 7 Pac10......... 5 of 10............. 6 SEC............ 8 of 12............. 9
