It's stupid and postponing the inevitable: a breakaway mega-super-duper conference.
That's cool ... for football. But the collateral damage has been swift and killed of many of the great things about college athletics. Rivalries ripped apart and conferences that feel more like Zoom meetings than an actual fraternity of schools.
I wish that the NCAA and the schools just went ahead and separated football from the other sports and went ahead and formed a new subdivision. Doing so might have allowed the conferences to keep their integrity with the other sports (ahem, like our old Big East).
The College Football Playoff Subdivision.
We used to have Division I-A and Division I-AA, which we now refer to as the Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS) and the Football Championship Subdivision (FCS). The FBS are the schools you know and love, the ones who played in bowls at the end of the season. The FCS are those smaller schools that played in a playoff format to determine their champion. Of course the FBS now has a playoff that will expand next year and has developed a tier system of "Power 5" and "Group of 5" in their own subdivision.
So why not just place the current ACC's 17 schools, the Big Ten's 18 schools, the Big 12's 16 schools, the Pac-12's 2 schools, the SEC's 16 schools, and Notre Dame ... plus one more school ... to form a 70-team subdivision.
That gives us 7 "divisions" of 10 teams. Each division will play everyone else in it one time, and then three non-division games against whoever the CFP schedule makers decide. Of course, the schedule makers could consider traditional rivalries as part of that (like Notre Dame-USC), but let them decide. We would have seven division champions and add nine at-large bids for a 16-team College Football Playoff. I've been saying this is how it should end up.
Since I've pitched this a few years ago, there has been rumblings of this kind of format which would include an 8th division made up of those Group of 5 schools who would be part of a relegation format. So schools would have to step it up in order to stick in that division. That would give us eight champions and eight wildcards for a playoff.
The divisions would also consider traditional conferences to a point ... but it is obvious leagues who have to split up. Though this new entity would be separate from the current conference format, I still would like to keep those conference names in some fashion. They all hold brand value and would be a nice way to make the identity of this divisions more familiar. Or we could scrap that and just rename them into typical geographic divisions.
So the name I want is placed for each division with the geographic name in parenthesis if we move away from tradition.
Divisions
BIG EAST (EASTERN): Boston College, Maryland, Notre Dame, Penn State, Pitt, Rutgers, South Carolina, Syracuse, UCF, West Virginia
Kind of a mix of northeastern and mid-Atlantic schools left over from the ACC, Big Ten and Big 12. Obviously the controversial placement is Notre Dame. In doing this, Notre Dame will have to make some tough decisions and will have had to forsake their independence to join this association. Putting them here makes sense when you see the rest of the divisions and the Irish already has relationships with some of the schools in this division -- mainly Boston College. This still allows the Irish to play USC in a non-league rivalry and, if the FBS allows for games against FBS opponents, Navy.
Geographically, this looks ... okay. It leans more northeastern with Notre Dame a bit west and a jump to South Carolina and UCF, but it works. Cohesion comes with BC, Syracuse and Pitt all former Big East (and current ACC) rivals; Maryland, Rutgers and Penn State as Big Ten rivals; and a strong core of Penn State, Pitt, Maryland, Rutgers and West Virginia in the mid-atlantic. Football wise, Notre Dame and Penn State bring the names, but there are some nice historical programs here.
ATLANTIC COAST (ATLANTIC): Clemson, Duke, Florida State, Georgia Tech, Miami, NC State, North Carolina, Virginia, Virginia Tech, Wake Forest
Basically the ACC but with the northern and western schools out. It is strong with Clemson, Florida State and Miami there with plenty of space for others to make their mark. See it as the ACC pre-2000s expansion but adding Miami (who they really wanted) and Virginia Tech and losing Maryland. So this sticks as far as rivalries go and a nice, tight geographic center.
SOUTHEASTERN (SOUTHEAST): Alabama, Auburn, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, LSU, Mississippi State, Ole Miss, Tennessee, Vanderbilt
Like the ACC, this is the same SEC before they expanded back in 1992. Sure, this is a tough schedule and a tough league, but with an expanded playoff format they should find plenty of teams in the postseason. That means South Carolina and Arkansas (who came in 1992), Missouri and Texas A&M, and Texas and Oklahoma go back to their old identities. Obviously this is a great football conference.
BIG TEN (MIDWEST): Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Michigan, Michigan State, Minnesota, Northwestern, Ohio State, Purdue, Wisconsin
The theme continues as these are the ten schools that made up the conference named Big Ten. Penn State, Rutgers and Maryland stay east and Nebraska gets left out. The four Pac-12 schools never came.
SOUTHWEST (SOUTHWEST): Arkansas, Baylor, Houston, Oklahoma, Oklahoma State, SMU, TCU, Texas, Texas Tech, Texas A&M
Now we're back to starting to create new groups, though this one already has history. The seven Texas schools and Arkansas were in the old SWC for decades. Of the old SWC, only Rice doesn't make it back with this new format. When the SWC disbanded in the mid-90s, the Texas schools were in the Big 12 with Oklahoma and Oklahoma State. This holds up nicely. It is a very tight geographic footprint who all have history with each other. This works.
Football wise this should be fun. There's always the Texas-Oklahoma feud, with both their other rivals back together. Bedlam never dies. Arkansas may be able to spread its wings a bit outside of the current SEC West. TCU has had success. This is a really solid conference.
BIG 12 (CENTRAL): BYU, Cincinnati, Colorado, Iowa State, Kansas, Kansas State, Louisville, Missouri, Nebraska, Utah
Similar to the Eastern Division, this is a mixed bag of sorts. Missouri is homeless as we cut it from the SEC, Louisville is left from the ACC, Nebraska from the Big Ten, and Utah from the Big 12. They fit here because the other six schools were set to be Big 12 members together anyway and those other four schools fit the geographic footprint. After all, of the ten schools listed here, only Louisville, Missouri and Nebraska aren't currently in the Big 12 ... though Nebraska and Missouri once were. Louisville is rather homeless at this time and fits better here than trying to shoehorn them in the Eastern Division. This is a nice, if not perfect, collection. You have BYU and Utah together (as they were set to be in the Big 12) with Colorado to form that western front, plus that plains set with the Kansas schools, Iowa State, Missouri and Nebraska. Louisville and Cincinnati link up nicely together. While BYU to Cincinnati is a wide area, they were set to do this in the Big 12 anyway.
That's geography, but what does it look like on the field? Eh. This may be the worst of the seven divisions because there really is no current power. Nebraska has the history, but haven't been that elite of a program in quite some time. Louisville has had some solid moments lately ... which could be said about pretty much everyone else in this league. Utah looks to be the top dog, but this may have a very fluid look to it.
PACIFIC 10 (PACIFIC): Arizona, Arizona State, Cal, Oregon, Oregon State, Stanford, UCLA, USC, Washington, Washington State
And this division looks like the Pac-12 when it was the Pac-10. Remember those times?
So what does this accomplish? Well, we have a College Football Playoff Subdivision of Division I football. The schools comprising the Group of Five would stay as the Football Bowl Subdivision. That would be the AAC, MAC, Sun Belt, Mountain West and Conference USA. Of course, would a bowl system even be needed at that point ... especially for these schools.
RELEGATION: Appalachian State, Boise State, Fresno State, Liberty, Memphis, Miami-OH, Toledo, Troy, Tulane, Western Kentucky
I'm adding App State and Troy from the Sun Belt, Memphis and Tulane from the AAC, Miami-OH and Toledo from the MAC, Liberty and Western Kentucky from Conference USA, and Boise State and Fresno State from the Mountain West. I don't have a great idea on how we relegate these teams, but this is my placeholder of two teams for each Group of 5 conferences.
