College Football Fix : Realignment

If you look at the sport, and the history of college football, it is a regional sport. The Big Ten footprint is the Midwest, the Pacific is the Pac-10, SWC the state of Texas. The ACC and SEC hold their footprints. Rivalries were created, icons, and partnerships In the past 15-20 years though things have got kind of wacky.

Missouri is in the SEC, the Big Ten made questionable moves with Rutgers and Maryland, and Notre Dame still is somewhat independent. Rivalries were destroyed in Texas/Texas A&M and Kansas/Mizzou all for the sake of little arguments and big tv money. In that now teams rarely play due to the size of conferences. In the SEC, Alabama rarely plays Georgia AND Florida. Alabama and Georgia have only played 8 times since 2000. 3 have been either the SEC Title game of CFP. The Tide and Gators only played Florida 9 times, and 4 were in SEC Title games. That type of scheduling does not make a conference.

What I’m doing in my first move as college football czar, is going to be something to spit at in the face of history but also maybe try to recreate some of it.

I’ve tried to create a 4 part super conference with 16 teams before and yet I run into the scenario above I mentioned with Alabama-Florida/Georgia. Why even be a conference if you don’t play. And well even the NFL has the Cleveland Browns and MLB has the smaller market teams.

I have selected 80 teams, and separated them out to eight 10 team regional conferences. These schools are all close where fans can afford to drive to each game. It keeps some rivalries intact and also brings others back together. The Big Ten schools loose some of their trophy games, but to be fair too many have trophy games, and are corporate feed.

There are maybe some arguments that these aren’t the top 80, but they are really close to it.

There are 50 remaining could keep the conference model or split off into something similar to this. Though the MAC is something perfect for a 12 team conference IMO.

I know SEC and B1G homers would holler that they shouldn’t be split up. But some regionalization needs to be brought back to this sport.

Realignment | Scheduling | Post Season | Video Game