Conference Realignment wish list
Media rights are coming up in a couple years for most conferences and next year for the B1G. There hasn't been much chatter about realignment, not nearly as much as the last time media rights were up for negotiation. I was listening to Gus Malzahn on First Team, and wondered about how UCF could make a title run. Obvious choice would be joining the ACC...or SEC.
So let's say you have the ear of conference commissioners, who would you add/remove while maintaining the same number of teams in a conference. (Except the Big 12, which could add 2 more members)
I would remove Rutgers and Nebraska from the B1G. I do like having regular season games at MSG, and living in the DC area, I am not interested in removing Maryland for selfish reasons, but somehow adding ND to the B1G west and perhaps Cincy to the East (if not realigning the divisions altogether.)
I wouldn't mind seeing UCF in a bigger conference. I think they may be too far away from the Big 12, but I think adding them to the ACC along with WVU to replace Louisville and maybe Pitt would strengthen the conference a bit.
Big 12 could add Louisville to replace WVU and Houston, although I don't know if either improves the footprint much if at all. I also remember last week hearing that ND State could probably go .500 in the Big 12 after a couple years with the talent they have every year since they already beat Power 5 teams regularly.
My bias is about football. I personally don't care who is in the conference. My only wish is to make it division-less, remove all protected games so everyone plays a fair schedule in terms of difficulty, and put the top two teams in the conference championship game. It shouldn't matter if the top two teams are in what is now the east. It would also be nice if all the P5 did this, which would ensure the right teams in the playoff. This will never happen because The Game, but tradition is all but out of CFB so we might as well get parity.
My buddy pitched a good idea to the big ten and they didn’t listen. It was 16 teams. 9 conference game schedule, 3 locked in rivalry games. That leaves 12 other teams in your at large you rotate the 6 every other year and home and way every other year. So a player would play every school at least twice in 4 years , 1 at home and 1 away
Michigan schedule would look something like this
MSU
Minnesota
OSU locked in
year 1
iowa
indiana
purdue
wisonsin
illinois
Team 15
year 2
nebraska
rutgers
maryland
PSU
NW
team 16
I've posted this before so why not one more time...
The goal would be to remove any subjective rankings and purely use standings to determine the best teams in NCAA football.
- 4 super conferences of 16 teams each
- Play the full conference of 15 games (rotate home vs. away each year)
- Standings determine top 2 from each conference
- 8 team playoff - if there's a desire to keep some voting aspect, there could be a poll to seed the 8 teams before the playoffs
- Non-playoff teams can contract to play exhibitions, bowl games, whatever
Not a fan of having no non-conference games though. Feels a bit like baseball back in the day. Realistically 10 of your 16 teams could go an entire decade or more without playing anyone other than their conference.
They could play teams from other conferences every single year in the postseason!
Shatter the ACC’s newer additions, sending Maryland back. I’d also revive the Big East, sending PSU, WVU to it, along with Louisville, Virginia Tech, Pitt, Rutgers, Cincinnati, maybe Marshall and Memphis. I’d also probably tinker with the Big 12, sending Nebraska and Colorado back, maybe Arkansas too, and let’s re-introduce Houston and SMU back into it, maybe Boise State. it might be revamped Southwest and Big 8 conferences. Anyway, I want more regionality in my college football and smaller conferences. I’d also want to play the entire B1G every season, or closer to that than we do now.
Good ideas. Let's annex Missouri and Kentucky to the B1G, then it drops Rutgers and MD, keep Nebraska. Missouri is a border state to ILL & IA, as well as Neb. KY is a border state with OH & IN as well as ILL & Missouri. The SEC cold always add Houston. I haven't thought too much about how the SEC could add the those two teams. I am sure there are some viable teams to replace.
The Mizzou & KY additions to the B1G supports your regional comments.
Funny, I wasn’t going to edit it, but I meant to say the same thing about Mizzou. I think they are one school that could happily fill a spot in the B1G, SEC, or Big12, but if we were going to add a team, they’d be a decent fit. Much better than an east coast team for sure.
Have all conferences go to 10 teams. Play everyone in football, no conference championship game, expand playoff to 16. Play home and home round robin in basketball.
You can guess which 4 teams I'd eject. It's not hard.
I was coming here to post that exact same thing. It will never happen because of the money involved but it would make college football so much more interesting.
Like the 10 team conference. Play a couple of OCC games a year so regular season is 11 games. Then have a 16 team playoff and teams that don’t make playoffs and have a winning record keep bowl games in place for a reward at end of season. Think it would work great
That would be so fun so it'll obviously never happen, but 6-7 10 team leagues with auto-bids plus highest non-power team plus 7-8 at larges would be awesome. All games need to be at home sites until the national championship which is always played in the Rose Bowl right at sunset
How about dumping Rutgers, Nebraska AND Maryland, adding ND, and moving someone from the west to the east to balance the conferences? On the other hand, to hell with Notre Dame.
Selfish here in wanting to keep MD. I live in northern VA and like the drive to Maryland for a game a lot better than traveling to Ann Arbor.
Besides, given all the Michigan Alumni in the DC area, it's almost a home game for us when we play at Maryland.
Edit: About ND, besides "to hell with Notre Dame". They just aren't interested in being part of the B1G, nor are they interested in playing us. When was the last time we had a ND fan troll us here? They just don't care and we should reciprocate that sentiment.
Given all the Michigan alumni in the “insert any area here”
Is like to add BC and Umass to tap into the Boston area alumni base.
Add Wayne State so I don't have to leave Wayne County.
Maryland and Rutgers are also in talent-rich states, which is not a small issue considering that the Midwest is not churning out the talent it once did.
Yeah, Maryland is nice if only to have a close stop for the mountains of Michigan alums on the east coast. Rutgers is nice for that too.
I think it's mostly fine the way it is. I would always advocate for merging Indiana and Purdue into one BIG team. The state's just not big enough to support both of them and Notre Dame, but that's just never going to happen.
So leave it as it is.
I would bet the Big 12 might add a couple schools over the next few years to expand it's TV footprint. The ACC might implode due to cultural differences between the "don't really care about sports" schools and those who do.
I can even see a world where those two got together to make a real competitor to the SEC/BIG. But not likely.
Add Pitt and Syracuse to the B1G.
They are wasting away in the ACC.
Would look at WVU also.
To heck with Notre Dame...
Similar if we are staying with 14 teams...un-ass Penn State and Rutger. Add Pitt and WVU.
I'd consider keeping Rutger and dumping Nebraska.
It is interesting that the state with the most "in-state talent" recruiting wise has only 1 team not only in the B1G but in any Power-5 conference. Yet, the B1G has 2 (3 total) Indiana schools, 2 Illinois schools, and 2 Michigan schools.
That's why Indiana/Purdue have never ever done anything ever in football. They don't even have glory days to reminisce about.
Michigan is our own fault. We have the population, we've just let the high school, prep and JUCO levels completely disappear. I remember when GRCC was a national power in JUCO.
We can support 2 teams. Ideally State should have a Nebraska/Kansas/Iowa model where they get the 4-5 year players who have talent, but need coaching up, and M gets the ready made kids. That's how it was back in the day.
Ohio does have plenty of teams around it's periphery, WVU, Pitt, Cincinnati, Louisville, Kentucky all get their players from Ohio, and they also have about 17 MAC teams. I agree with your salient point however. It's just not going to change unless Cincy gets lucky.
Pennsylvania is the same too. No one cares about college football on the east side of the state, and if Pitt was so great wouldn't they be more than an also ran in the ACC? We only need Penn State.
Northwestern shouldn't count towards Illinois, they are a private school with different admissions standards. Besides, Illinois should have enough talent to field 2 BIG teams. Probably says a lot about how incompetent Illinois has been about evaluating talent in how good their MAC teams have been.
I wouldn’t mind seeing Iowa State and Oklahoma join the B1G. That would bring some more rivalry games to conference play.
Iowa State doesn't bring any more to the conference than Indiana or Purdue does once the other team is in.
It's a nice story what coach what's-his-name has done out there with that squad. The guy before him also had a nice run. But those two guys probably have half the in-conference wins in the last 50 years.
Oklahoma I love the idea of. But they come with Okie State probably due to state politics. I lived in the state. Loved it. I like both teams, but we don't need both of them any more than we need two teams in Iowa or Indiana or Pennsylvania.
I agree with that, having OK State isn't horrible. Would create a stronger, more regional western division. 2 in OK, NE, 2 in Iowa, adding perhaps Mizzou, with Minny/Wisky.
Big Ten wish list would be dumping Rutgers and Maryland. Adding Pittsburgh to the East and Notre Dame to the West. Purdue would slide to the East.
Penn State now has a state rival in their division.
ND/Wisconsin
ND/Nebraska
ND/Iowa would all be fun games each year with lots of tradition. We would also keep the rivalry alive with the crossover.
if they continue to bitch out on the Big Ten I would like Missouri with the same scenario
To hell with Notre Dame. Let them stew on not having beat us in 920 days and the last time we played them, we won.
Never been sure why Pitt gets so much love in these discussions outside of geographic considerations. They are arguably below Rutgers in terms of the state of their football, basketball, women's basketball programs...
Academics
Why would you want to give ND an easy path to the B1G championship game every year? We don't want or need ND in the B1G.
Easy path? I was thinking the Iowa’s and Wisconsin’s and probably even Northwestern would routinely handle ND. Much harder division than either in the cupcake ACC
I was looking back at the 92-93 Michigan basketball schedule. They were 15-3 in B1G play, placing 2nd behind a 17-1 Indiana squad. Everyone in the B1G played everyone else twice. I miss those simpler times without Rutgers and Nebraska on the schedule.
Kick out nebraska, send osu to the sec, Georgia Tech and Virginia can join big ten.
Of course the OSU thing would never happen, but it's not 100% crazy, either. Ohio is partly a hillbilly state and football has SEC-level importance there. (Culturally, Illinois has its Little Egypt region but it's not heavily populated. Pennsylvania has Pennsyltucky but there aren't many people there. Indiana? Definitely a hillbilly state.)
Virginia and Georgia Tech are pretty far away but they'd be good academic fits. (For the same reason, I don't like the OP's Cinci idea.)
BRING BACK THE BIG EAST!!
The conferences should be aligned around geography. Better for rivalries, the fans, travel times, etc.
Add Pitt, ND, West Virginia, Boston College, Cincinnati, UConn, Syracuse.
Release Nebraska to rejoin the Big 12. (They want out anyway.)
Split into two ten team divisions - round robin schedules.
Put the above seven in a division with Penn St., Rutgers and Maryland.
Call that division the Big Other.
The remaining teams' division is called the Big Ten.
Maybe play a championship game the first weekend of December (maybe not).
Other than the obvious shade you threw, I like this minus dropping UConn and trying to get Missouri instead. If not Missouri, gran Louisville. UConn is terrible outside of Women's Bball.
East Division West Division
Rutgers Michigan (Champions of the West)
Maryland ND
PSU Indiana
OSU Purdue
Pitt Missouri/Louisville
W Virg Illinois
BC NW
Cinci Minny
MSU Wisky
Syracuse Iowa
Again with the leg humping trying to get ND to join conference? No thanks.
Right now there are 65 "Power-5" schools. Two ways to deal with that would be 4 16-team conferences (one school would be left out), or which would be my suggestion: 8 10-team conferences and these make up FBS-A. You play a round-robin schedule, and the conference champ makes the playoffs. No gimmicks, none of that. Win your conference (i.e. your region) and you make the playoffs.
Big Ten, SEC, ACC, Pac-12 all consolidate down to 10 teams. There are enough competitive schools in the southwest to form a new Southwest Conference of 10 teams. The schools who get displaced from the ACC and Big Ten plus schools from the AAC can bring back the Big East. From there, you should be able to make another Midwest based conference.
Rather than worry about conferences, I would change the divisions up. Make the Power 5 conferences one division. It’s unfair to programs outside of it that they can go undefeated and still not have a shot at a championship. Functionally, they’re already in a lower division.
Then I would make all non-conference Power 5 games be between teams in that division and they would be scheduled by the NCAA based on the previous year’s performance (like the NFL, successful teams play harder schedules).
The NCAA needs to take parity seriously or they will continue to have a few programs with rabid fanbases and many others with no fanbases other than a few dedicated students/alums.
The problem is that programs like us are opposed to parity because we think if only we can get over that last hump, we can become an Alabama/Clemson/OSU. That may be true, but the sport as a whole suffers because of it. There’s a reason students get so excited for basketball at so many schools and football is steadily declining. The future of college football looks like the MLB if we continue to only care about out “big market” teams and fail to grow a new generation of fans.
I like the dropping of Rutgers and Nebraska. Nebraska just hasn't brought what it was supposed to, and they aren't the type of academic institution the B1G would generally target if not for the athletics.
I like Pitt replacing them to create a flow through to Maryland and PSU. But the caveat is Pitt has to figure out a way to build a football stadium. The lack of support for Pitt football, and the lack of recruiting ability they have, right now wouldn't fit the B1G. I believe them having to bus across town to play in a NFL stadium is detrimental to their appeal to other conferences, and the appeal to the recruits to have to play in a rented stadium isn't helping them.
I'd say skip ND, WVU would be a better appeal. They consistently have at least competent sports programs, and the conference wouldn't have to play the ND game of we will join for some sports but not all of them. Screw that.
Here’s a start: All major conferences should have 11 teams. Do whatever you want in non-con but you’re playing all 10 other teams every single year - 5 away, 5 home. No stupid conference title game at an NFL field. No divisions. Play everyone and see who’s standing when the dust settles. Therefore, you can give the boot to Maryland, Rutgers and Nebraska.
Great minds...
Within the top 30 teams, 3-4 are in the CFP every year and a rotating 4th. Four isn't enough, because it's boring. You can't go all the way to 16 immediately, and even in the FCS PO I think 16 is too many.
I would split the current FBS into 2 tiers (relegation to come later?). The P5/Upper tier would be 6 conferences of 11 teams. Full round-robin and 2-3 non-conference games. Six conference winners and 2 at-large make the CFP. At-large bids will be tough but that's why the non-con games are important. CFP round 1 on campus would be fun, but seeding a potential landmine, so I like using the lower tier bowl sites for round 1 based on geography for the opponents. Then the final 3 games like they are now (though some games should get played in northern indoor sites moving forward). Keep the bowl season for the other 58 teams that are above .500 and some bowl towns will get two games (good for local economies -- provided people go; teams that don't travel consistently don't get rewarded with bowl bids).
The G5/Lower tier would have the exact same structure. In the end, the G5 are cute but can they really win it all? A couple have shown they can at least hang (e.g., Boise St.) so they should get into the top 66.
DROP:
Indiana
Maryland
Minnesota
Northwestern
Purdue
Rutgers
ADD:
Anyone but the above
It would be a lot to type (in terms of which teams go where), but the answer is making all 5 P5 conferences 16 teams and only P5 members are eligible to participate in the national championship. They have the power to do it. Create another championship for non P5 if you must, but unless they flex those muscles you'll always have other institutions trying to find loopholes.
Also, fully remove amateurism while you're add it. Privatize the NCAA and go big. Like all the way big. For football purposes.
It picked up steam a few years back and they did an unofficial poll of G5 AD's/Presidents and many were overwhelmingly not in favor.
I think it would be a great idea though.