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.