Minnesota and Michigan Discuss Non-Conference Games

The Michigan Wolverines and the Minnesota Golden Gophers miss playing during the conference scheduling for 2009 and 2010. But according to this report, they were still trying to find a way to play each other.In one of the more interesting scheduling quirks, Michigan athletic director Bill Martin approached fellow Big Ten team Minnesota to play -- get this -- a non-conference game. The rumors of this started on the popular Michigan website mgoblog, and were then confirmed by MVictors.com, who reached out to Minnesota AD Joel Maturi, who confirmed to him that, yes, Michigan talked about playing Minnesota in Ann Arbor in 2010, but that ultimately the Gophers passed on the opportunity. Here was Maturi’s rationale:“When you’re Minnesota and you’re trying to improve your program and to be successful, I’m really thankful to coach Brewster for his willingness to play a tougher schedule. Saying that, we already scheduled Southern Cal for next year. I’m not a brilliant guy, but I’m not so sure it’s in the best interest of Minnesota football to play Southern Cal and Michigan in back-to-back weeks. Non-conference, so-to-speak. If we had not scheduled Southern Cal I would have been very interested.”What has yet to be discussed is that if this game did happen, and the two teams from the same conference played in a unaffiliated conference game, would it have ramifications on the conference standings? Those games could create a nightmarish situation, where one team could have actually beaten another head-to-head, yet not had the game count in conference standings, possibly creating a disconnect between BCS ranking and conference ranking.(I feel like this is turning into Star Trek: Big Ten Edition)