I write this opus in part because I thought Pat Forde did a pretty poor job with his conference realignment story. You can read that here if you’d like to see where the idea came from.
First, I think 8 teams and 10 conferences are the best and most interesting way to completely realign. It gives each team nine conference games and three non-conference games. It allows for some flexibility if rivals are ripped apart (keep reading). They can still play each other OOC if they decide to.
Anyways, this is what happens when your kids are in bed, you are a college professor with the summer off, and Pat Forde irritated you with what he wrote.
I reveal to you now the 8x10 conference realignment that consists of 80 teams.
No team except for Oklahoma and UCLA travels more than 1,000 miles for any conference game. Even that game only checks in at 1100 miles. Since those two teams hold that special bond, we will anoint their annual game against one each other ‘The Steinbeck Bowl’.
That’s not too bad when you consider that West Virginia is traveling close to 1,000 miles for just about every conference game in the Big 12.
Here is a link to the Google map I created that lays out the geography for each conference.
This would allow there to be a college playoff of 8 or 16 teams with 8 auto qualifiers if they win their league (no more league championship games).
I like the idea of 8 qualifiers and either 4 or 8 wild cards. 8 might be too many, but there are some conferences in this realignment that would be stacked and would deserve three teams in the playoff.
Anyway, here are the conferences laid out in geographic order from East to West. Let’s start in the Northeast.
The Yankee Conference
1) Syracuse
2) Boston College
3) Pittsburgh
4) Army
5) Temple
6) Rutgers
7) Penn St.
8) Navy
9) Maryland
10) West Virginia
So, West Virginia would probably fit better in a southern conference, but their biggest rival is Pitt and that game should be an annual event. I also had to have dividing lines somewhere and they were geographically the best fit. While not closer to Boston College than UVA, it works historically and the difference in mileage between BC and West Virginia and BC and UVA is only about 150 miles.
Penn State loses some great rivalries with Big 10 teams, but they also make their path to the playoff much, much easier.
As a Syracuse fan, this is the conference I would dream of having.
The Moonshine Bourbon Conference
1) Virginia
2) Virginia Tech
3) Marshall
4) Wake Forest
5) North Carolina
6) NC St.
7) Duke
8) Kentucky
9) Tennessee
10) Clemson
This conference might be more fun for basketball than football. Kentucky, Duke, UNC, and Virginia. Wow. That’s a loaded basketball conference.
It also holds together some old rivalries and would probably create a couple of new ones. Marshall might be a wild card here for football if they were in an auto qualifier football conference who knows what could happen for them.
Tennessee loses its SEC affiliation but honestly, their path to the playoff is potentially easier than it was in the SEC.
The Southern Comfort Conference
1) Miami
2) Central Florida
3) South Florida
4) Florida
5) Florida State
6) South Carolina
7) Georgia
8) Georgia Tech
9) Auburn
10) Alabama
Wow.
This conference will probably be the best one for football. It is loaded. I love it because it also forces the uppity Florida schools to play the directionals on the field every year.
I cannot imagine the football wars that would happen in this conference but it would certainly be fun and lively.
The Medium Ten Conference
1) Northwestern
2) Notre Dame
3) Michigan St.
4) Michigan
5) Illinois
6) Purdue
7) Ohio State
8) Indiana
9) Cincinnati
10) Louisville
Finally, the Big 10 has come back to having ten teams! Lots of fantastic games here that would completely energize these fan bases. Cincy and Louisville get a HUGE boost for being in the new Big 10.
They will automatically be better than Indiana and Illinois, which is a lot more than you can say for Rutgers.
The Bible Belt Conference
1) Vanderbilt
2) Ole Miss
3) Mississippi St.
4) Tulane
5) LSU
6) TCU
7) Baylor
8) Texas A&M
9) Houston
10) Texas
This conference is an amalgam of the SEC and Big 12 with some Tulane and Houston thrown in there. Houston is a solid team, but Tulane would struggle mightily.
I debated about kicking Tulane out of the 8x10 for Rice, but Texas already has enough teams and I hold a soft spot in my heart for New Orleans.
The Fly Over States Conference (AKA the Corn Fed Conference, AKA The Fried Twinkie Conference)
1) Minnesota
2) Wisconsin
3) Iowa
4) Iowa State
5) Nebraska
6) Missouri
7) Kansas
8) Kansas St.
9) Arkansas
10) Oklahoma State
I love this conference because I feel like the populations in these areas are very representative of one another. They would have a lot more in common than their passion for their football. It may not be the most talented football conference top to bottom but there are some sneaky good teams there. Wisconsin would hate being ripped out of the Big 10, but they have a fairly easy path to the playoff each year.
This would also be a pretty fun basketball conference. Although any basketball conference with Nebraska in it shouldn’t really be considered “pretty fun.” I digress.
The Grapes of Wrath Conference
1) Oklahoma
2) Texas Tech
3) Air Force
4) Colorado State
5) Colorado
6) Arizona
7) Arizona State
8) BYU
9) Utah
10) UCLA
This was the most difficult conference to put together. My first and overarching theme was contracting conferences geographically because of the new world we’re living in. This conference is the most geographically disparate, but I think it could be a fun one.
The biggest problem for me here was separating two great college rivalries: Oklahoma-Oklahoma State, and UCLA-USC. As I said above though, all teams will have three OOC games a year and could certainly keep those games on the schedule.
It also allows them to have a game very close to home that would offset the travel that UCLA and Oklahoma would have to make going to each other each year.
Oklahoma should be pleased overall though as they have a veritable cakewalk to the playoff each year.
The Surfer & Logger Conference
1) USC
2) Fresno St.
3) Stanford
4) Cal
5) Nevada
6) Oregon
7) Oregon St.
8) Washington
9) Washington St.
10) Boise St.
One of the fun parts of this exercise was seeing the new kind of rivalries that could pop up. I love that Boise State, Fresno State, and Nevada each have a chance to play teams that would rarely play them at home let alone on the road.
I would 100% stay up until 2 in the morning for Fresno State vs. Cal for instance.
So there you have it, the ultimate conference realignment that will never happen, but probably should. Teams would save money on travel and be more engaged because they are playing almost always against teams in their region. I know personally I would much rather play Penn State each year than Wake Forest. Geography matters, especially in college football.
