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.
