Should Group of 5 Create Their Own "Super Conference"?

 With all the realignment talk going on in college athletics football, much of the talk has centered on the power five leagues eventually breaking off from the NCAA and forming their own super league. We all have gotten lost in the glitz of what a league with Alabama, Clemson, USC and Ohio State would look like and how it would create an NFL-like atmosphere.

But what if the lesser leagues decide to do the same thing?  It does make sense. 

Let's start when the current news of the day: Cincinnati, Houston, UCF and BYU will likely receive invitations from the Big 12 to join their league. Soon after, those schools will accept. Now the domino falls to the AAC to replace three of their better programs. The AAC has already said they have schools looking to join, and that domino could cause the other league to start poaching each other. And then we'll have it again at some point.

So why wouldn't the Group of 5 decide to go in together and figure out a way to create a geographically wise "super" league to keep these schools under one umbrella and stop all the senseless poaching? 

I've been of the mind that the conferences and any kind of super league can coexist. The Group of 5 consists of the AAC, Mountain West, Conference USA, Sun Belt and MAC. Those conferences may not exist as leagues within any super league, but if they all offer up their membership in such league they could split several TV rights deals and help create a climate where their top programs face off to send a team or two to this 12-team playoff. 

There is a risk. If a 12-team playoff was last season, two Group of 5 schools (Cincinnati, Coastal Carolina) would've gotten in. Creating a super league of these conferences may only net one school in. Still, over the six previous seasons of the College Football Playoff, only UCF (twice) would've gotten in. So four times in seven years (among 84 slots) would've been a Group of 5 school. Of course, the caveat of six champions and six at-larges would have changed that number.

What would this Group of 5 super league look like? As I said, make it geographically sound to help these schools financially with travel (here's looking at you, Sun Belt and C-USA) but also allow for great inter-sectional matchups that will boost the league as a whole. The BYU-Coastal Carolina game last year -- which was put together at the last minute -- was a fantastic show for people who typically don't watch those schools or those leagues. 

Let's go ahead and take out Cincinnati, UCF and Houston from the AAC and BYU as an independent. The AAC has eight schools, C-USA has 14, MAC has 12, Mountain West 12, the Sun Belt with ten and five independent schools not named Notre Dame.  That's 61 schools. It would be fantastic to add two more schools into the mix from the FCS and have seven nine-team divisions ... but for this purpose, we'll have five nine-team divisions and two eight-team divisions. The nine team divisions play a true round robin (8 total games) as do the eight team divisions (7 games) with those divisions playing one cross division game with each other to add that eighth game. 

The other four games to fill out the schedule will be as follows:

*One game against one of the Power 5 teams 
*One game against an FCS school 
*Two games (home and home) scheduled against a non-division opponent, hopefully keeping true rivalries that may have been broken up

After the regular season, the four highest ranked teams play a playoff style bracket (yes, that will mean two teams will play a 14th game ... so what). Have whatever committee (or ask the CFP committee to assist with this) to determine the top four teams. The winner of that bracket would get invited to the 12-team College Football Playoff. The other teams receive their bowl bids accordingly. 

EAST: Army, Buffalo, Liberty, Marshall, Navy, Old Dominion, Temple, UConn, UMass
SOUTHEAST: Appalachian State, Charlotte, Coastal Carolina, East Carolina, Florida Atlantic, Florida International, Georgia Southern, Georgia State, South Florida
NORTH: Akron, Ball State, Bowling Green, Central Michigan, Eastern Michigan, Kent State, Northern Illinois, Toledo, Western Michigan
CENTRAL: Memphis, Miami-OH, Middle Tennessee, Ohio, Troy State, South Alabama, Southern Miss, UAB, Western Kentucky
SOUTHWEST: Arkansas State, Louisiana, Louisiana-Monroe, Louisiana Tech, North Texas, Rice, SMU, Tulane, Tulsa
MOUNTAIN: Air Force, Colorado State, New Mexico, New Mexico State, Texas State, UTEP, UTSA, Wyoming
PACIFIC: Boise State, Fresno State, Hawaii, Nevada, San Diego State, San Jose State, UNLV, Utah State

Note that the Mountain and Pacific divisions are eight teams only and will have a cross-division game scheduled each year. I attempted to do this as close to geographically as I could. I would've loved to keep the Louisiana, Alabama and Mississippi schools together but then there would be oddities elsewhere. I would've loved to keep the Ohio schools together and Texas schools together, but there would've been tougher cuts somewhere else. Again, there are openings for schools to play against each other via inter-divisional play so this takes care of some of the broken rivalries (it's been hacked up in the Power 5 leagues anyway, so why would Ohio-Kent State be the death of this set up?). 

The other possible set up would be seven seven-team divisions and two six-team divisions. These divisions are really only for scheduling purposes only and would allow for more inter-sectional scheduling. If you think about it, most college football schedules are set up like this with six-team divisions within conferences, so this wouldn't be a stretch. 

EAST: Army, Liberty, Navy, Old Dominion, Temple, UConn, UMass
ATLANTIC: Appalachian State, Charlotte, Coastal Carolina, East Carolina, Florida Atlantic, Florida International, South Florida
OHIO: Akron, Bowling Green, Kent State, Marshall, Miami-OH, Ohio, Toledo
NORTH: Ball State, Buffalo, Central Michigan, Eastern Michigan, Northern Illinois, Western Michigan
CENTRAL: Georgia Southern, Georgia State, Middle Tennessee, South Alabama, Troy State, UAB, Western Kentucky
SOUTHERN: Arkansas State, Louisiana, Louisiana-Monroe, Louisiana Tech, Memphis, Southern Miss
TEXAS: North Texas, Rice, SMU, Texas State, Tulsa, UTEP, UTSA 
MOUNTAIN: Air Force, Boise State, Colorado State, New Mexico, New Mexico State, Utah State, Wyoming
PACIFIC: Fresno State, Hawaii, San Diego State, San Jose State, Nevada, UNLV

Same basic principles. Round robin against the six other teams in your division (five, if you are in the Pacific and North divisions) and opens up the rest of the schedule to fill out. 

Again, the point is not to create division winners for a full blown Group of 5 playoff. If this was the point, the Group of 5 may as well drop to the FCS. This is to have a better schedule, less financial strains due to travel, ability to create better inter-sectional matchups, end senseless member poaching between these conferences and to place a really good team in a 12-team College Football Playoff. 

Right now, these leagues aren't putting a team in that playoff, and the ones that would've been eligible under a 12-team format are now graduating to the Big 12. Now these leagues will begin picking apart each other and it really doesn't help anything. And while it may seem as this would be a demotion of sorts, it isn't. It is more of a consolidation or resources and they'd still have the ability to play Power 5 schools, play in bowl games, and actually schedule better games then the be thrown around the country fulfilling conference requirements. 

This would likely not happen, but since we are seeing an bubbling SEC, an Alliance of three power leagues and rumors of a breakoff ... this isn't too far outside the box. 

Big 12 Will (Likely) Add Four Teams Very Soon

 

So we've had Texas and Oklahoma leave the Big 12 for the SEC ... then the ACC, Big Ten and Pac-12 form an alliance ... and now we've seen the Big 12's response.

Reportedly, the Big 12 will add BYU, Cincinnati, Houston and UCF in the coming weeks. The league will ultimately be back to a 12 team league. 

No word if the league will split back into divisions and what that would look like if they did. Currently, the Big 12 (which is made up of ten schools) play a round robin schedule with the top two teams playing in the conference title game. At 12 schools, the round robin won't happen but it is up in the air how they'll move forward. A division format could look like this:

EAST: Cincinnati, Iowa State, Kansas, Kansas State, UCF, West Virginia
WEST: Baylor, BYU, Houston, Oklahoma State, TCU, Texas Tech

Of course, the East schools would be shut out from having access to the Texas area, but that was how it was in the "old" Big 12 when Colorado and Nebraska were still members. 

THE GOOD

Well, the Big 12 looks a lot better than it has over the last two months. For the eight remaining members, it showed their willingness to look for solutions together and that this isn't a fractured bunch. The schools they're adding have been recently successful football programs who bring in large markets. Houston, Cincinnati, Orlando and Salt Lake City are in the fold, with BYU's national program being the jewel of that bunch. This solidified Texas while introducing the Florida and Ohio markets for the Big 12. 

This is also a huge win over the AAC. For weeks, there were rumblings that the AAC could extract Big 12 schools to come to them which could vault that league into becoming a power conference ... or at least one that matters when the 12-team playoff comes about. With the Big 12 taking away three of the AAC's biggest programs, that all but slams the door on that idea -- at least for now. 

Let's look at basketball. Baylor is the defending national champion, Kansas is a blue blood, West Virginia is solid with Bob Huggins (who used to coach at Cincinnati), Oklahoma State just produced the 2021 top overall draft pick, Texas Tech was in the 2019 national championship game and Iowa State has been a solid program for quite some time. BYU has been really good during their time in the West Coast Conference, Houston was in the last Final Four, Cincinnati has been a decent program with two national championships in their history while UCF challenged the Zion Williamson Duke team in the 2019 tournament. 

Of course, this is all about football and while none of these schools bring with it the brands of Texas and Oklahoma, they can be great additions to the Big 12.                                                 

THE BAD

There are still some concerns, though. For one, the league will stretch geographically from Salt Lake City, Utah to Orlando, Florida -- three time zones. Obviously there could be some issue to the commonality of the member schools, though we've pretty much haven't cared too much about that of late. 

There's also the question of if these four schools can keep playing at their current level one they step up in competition. You could point to Utah and TCU as prime examples of schools taking a dip before finding their footing to push against that theory. There are also schools like Miami, Nebraska and Colorado that get into new leagues and didn't find the same level of success. 

The main issue, though, will be the individual goals of these schools. Right now, everyone is all in on keeping the Big 12 alive and well ... but what happens when one of the other power leagues start sniffing around? Say the Big Ten does try to go after Kansas and Iowa State -- you better believe those two will jump immediately at the chance for a more secure situation. The Alliance has pledged not to poach each other, but the Big 12 isn't part of that group and will be the store these leagues would likely go shopping in if they want to expand. For the last two months, the eight remaining schools have run concurrent plans of protecting the Big 12 as well as looking for a safe landing spot elsewhere. 

Say that does happen where the doomsday scenario of Kansas and Iowa State leave for the Big Ten, West Virginia and Cincinnati for the ACC and Oklahoma State and some Texas schools leave for the Pac-12. The Big 12 won't be able to just pull from the AAC and other sources to field a league anymore, and we could see the AAC as the aggressor. Remember the folly of the Big East about 20 years ago when they lost Miami, Boston College and Virginia Tech, then lost Syracuse, Pittsburgh, Rutgers, West Virginia, etc several years later and then started reaching for schools to add that the entire thing fell apart. That could happen here if the ACC, Big Ten, Pac-12 or SEC decide to expand. 

THE VERDICT

This is a very positive move for the Big 12 and the four schools they are inviting. The things that fall under my "bad" category are things that aren't really exacerbated by expanding and could happen no matter what the Big 12 does.

Hopefully this is the move that saves the Big 12 from extinction. This has been a solid league for 25 years now and it would be a shame to see it broken up (it's already a shame to see Texas and Oklahoma leave). Adding BYU, Cincinnati, Houston and UCF doesn't guarantee greatness but there is potential for any or all of them to step into a bigger spotlight with being in a power conference. After all, they've all done so in smaller leagues. BYU does have a national championship, Cincinnati was in the Big East and Houston in the SWC so they aren't going into this blind.