I miss college football. I’m sure a lot of you do too. That’s why I’m taking it upon myself to give you some college football content. Conference Realignment!

To be honest with you, I’m getting tired of the same conference landscape. Syracuse is in the same conference as Miami. West Virginia is in the Big 12. The Group of 5 teams won’t ever get to the playoff because of their conferences. Someone, please tell me how that makes any sense. We need a new revamped landscape of college football. I’ve done some brainstorming and broke it up into three different ideas. A 10-team conference, 12-team conference, and 14-team conference. The difference is, all of them are based on geographical location. I tried to keep states together as much as possible.

The pros with the geographical conference are fewer travel expenses for schools and you’re recruiting roughly the same area as other teams in your conference. The con is that some divisions don’t have the best competition.

The first one I’ll be covering is the 10-team conference. That’s right, a Power 13. Don’t worry the CFP will change with it too. The perfect thing about the 10-team conference is that there are 130 college football teams so I didn’t have to do any adding or removing.

There are no divisions. It’s essentially a round-robin. Whether or not you play a conference championship game is up to you, but I think it would add a little extra.

I’m not very creative with the names of the conferences, so I could use all the help in the world with that.

Pacific Southwest Conference

Cal

Stanford

San Jose State

Fresno State

UCLA

San Diego State

USC

Arizona State

Arizona

Hawai’i

This one is pretty self-explanatory. Hawai’i plus California and Arizona teams. I thought about going with the Oregon teams here, but it makes the next conference look weird. The competition is pretty solid and leaves an opening for a team to take the top spot.

Pacific Northwest Conference

BYU

Utah

Utah State

UNLV

Boise State

Nevada

Washington

Washington State

Oregon

Oregon State

This one is also an easy one to explain. Nevada, Utah, Idaho, Oregon, and Washington teams make up this one. Again, pretty good competition. Oregon is likely the favorite, but they’ll definitely get tested. Also adding BYU to a conference should be interesting.

Desert Mountain Conference

Kansas State

Texas Tech

UTEP

New Mexico

New Mexico State

Wyoming

Colorado

Colorado State

Air Force

Kansas

This is the weirdest one, I will admit. With ten team conferences, Kansas and K-state just fit best here. Other than that you have Colorado, New Mexico, West Texas, and Wyoming. Texas Tech and UTEP were the outliers from Texas, but they actually work well here. This is the worst conference in terms of prestige, but it will be interesting seeing what team rises to the top.

South Texas Conference

North Texas

Baylor

TCU

SMU

Texas

Texas A&M

Rice

Houston

Texas State

UTSA

It’s just Texas minus UTEP and Texas Tech. Texas A&M is the obvious favorite and doesn’t have much competition. Maybe now the Texas kids stay in Texas.

Gulf Coast Conference

Memphis

Ole Miss

Mississippi State

Southern Miss

Alabama

Auburn

UAB

Troy

South Alabama

Florida State

This is another weird makeup, but it’s what worked best. Alabama has five teams so I needed to find five others. Mississippi was easy with three and Memphis made some sense because of how close it is to Mississippi. Florida State fits better here than any other team, so it’s where they were put. Alabama is obviously the favorite in this conference too.

Gulf Plains Conference

Oklahoma

Oklahoma State

Tulsa

Arkansas

Arkansas State

Louisiana

UL Monroe

LSU

Tulane

Louisiana Tech

Louisiana + Arkansas + Oklahoma. Really not much else to explain. It’s also a decent conference in terms of competition. I still think Oklahoma wins it, but LSU will give them a run.

Sunshine Conference

Georgia

Georgia Tech

Florida

Georgia State

Georgia Southern

UCF

USF

Miami

Florida Atlantic

Florida International

Is this the hardest conference? It’s definitely got a case for it. Georgia teams plus the rest of the six Florida teams. Georgia and Florida will vie for the top spot with some push from teams on the bottom.

Carolinas Confererence

Appalachian State

Charlotte

Wake Forest

Duke

Clemson

North Carolina

NC State

East Carolina

South Carolina

Coastal Carolina

The two Carolinas make up this conference and it might very well be the best. Two of the best group of five teams in App State and Coastal Carolina make this conference a little tougher than others. North Carolina and Clemson are the two best teams, but nothing is for certain.

Great Midwest Conference

Nebraska

Missouri

Illinois

Purdue

Northern Illinois

Northwestern

Iowa

Iowa State

Minnesota

Wisconsin

This conference is the most prestige heavy. Wisconsin and both Iowa teams will keep this conference interesting. Then you add in Northwestern and Minnesota who have had some good recent success and you get yourself the most even conference. It’s up for grabs and anyone can take it.

Central IMO Conference

Notre Dame

Western Michigan

Eastern Michigan

Central Michigan

Michigan State

Michigan

Ohio State

Bowling Green

Toledo

Miami OH

I couldn’t come up with a name for this conference so I called it the Central Indiana, Michigan, Ohio Conference. Riveting, I know. Notre Dame and Ohio State are the big boys in this conference with Michigan and Michigan State in the second tier. The rest of the schools are from the current MAC.

Bible Belt Conference

Indiana

Ball State

Western Kentucky

Kentucky

Louisville

Vanderbilt

Middle Tennessee State

Tennessee

Marshall

Cincinnati

In this conference set up, Cincinnati has a great shot at the playoff. Tenessee, Kentucky, Southern Indiana, Marshall, and Cincy make up the Bible Belt. The top two teams are Indiana and the Bearcats. There are some solid teams at the bottom, but I don’t think they can compete.

Conference Appalachia

Virginia Tech

Liberty

Old Dominion

Virginia

West Virginia

Ohio

Akron

Kent State

Pitt

Maryland

These teams are all mostly within the Appalachian mountains, so I just went with it. It consists of the Virginia teams, the rest of the Ohio teams, West Virginia, and Pitt. This is yet another open conference. I would guess that Liberty is the best team in this conference, but anyone can take it over.

Northeast Conference

Penn State

Navy

Temple

Rutgers

Buffalo

Syracuse

Army

UConn

UMass

Boston College

This is the northeast of the US, hence the name Northeast. I give the slight edge to Penn State, but watch out for Buffalo.

CFP

It’s no secret we need a new formula for the CFP, so you get a new one with the realignment. Each conference winner gets in. It’s like March Madness where if you win the conference you get in. Each conference winner is then seeded by the record. For the same record, SOS will be taken into account. I debated on how many wildcards teams should get in. I ultimately decided on 6. That means there are 19 teams in the tournament. Now hold on before you start getting all crazy. The reason I went with 19 is that I felt like 16 didn’t allow for enough wildcard teams and 20 would make it so the 13th seeded conference winner would have to play an extra game. This way all the conference winners get rest, while the wildcards have to play essentially a play-in game against each other.