Conference Realignment: What do you think about this scenario?

There are holes in what I said yes, but maybe I just want to get back to bigger round robins….

I forgot about the Georgia Tech-Virginia Tech rivalry. Mea culpa, boys.

The way I think about this, only the 7 division games count towards who wins each division. That leaves 5 games where teams can schedule whoever they want non-conference, including teams on the other side of the conference. Also, no more I-AA cupcakes. You have to schedule your 5 non-conference games with teams on the other side of the conference or other BCS mega-conferences.

Under the 7 division game scenario, GT wouldn’t travel to any of the ACC North schools (except VT if you want to schedule them as a non-division race game). You would only face any of those teams in the ACC Championship Game in, say, Charlotte.

This proposal is indeed green friendly.

There’s 66 (65 + Notre Dame) teams in BCS conferences …
And 64 slots in a 4 conference, 16-team uber-conference world. At least 2 would be left out in the cold.

And oh, by the way, this doesn’t even include strong non-AQ programs like TCU, BYU, Utah and Boise State.

I’ve been thinking about this for some time now. If you really want to get radical, I believe conference expansion isn’t the solution but rather conference contraction.

What if you had four divisions of college football. 6 divisions with 10 teams in each division. Each team plays a round robin schedule of 9 games, plus 3 games against teams from other divisions from the top level.

College football looks like this:

Division IA (top division) – 6 conferences of 10 teams
Division IAA – 6 conferences of 10 teams (which incorporates the rest of the 120 in DI)
Division IAAA – 6 conferences of 10 teams from current I-AA
Division IAAAA – 6 conferences of 10 teams from current I-AA

In the top division, there’s no conference championship games. Rather you take the 6 conference winners and 2 at-larges and have an 8 game playoff.

For fun, you could also implement promotion and relegation from one division to the next just like the EPL. This would certainly mix things up, no?

The 60 in the top division could be determined from the last few year’s results. Teams 61+ would be able to play their way into the top division with promotion. Similarly, the bottom teams in the top division would be relegated to the lower division the following year.

So long Iowa State, Baylor, Washington State, etc.

Notre Dame to the Big Ten is a non-starter.

If the Big 12 were to expand, I’m pretty sure you would see them nab Arkansas and pass on TCU. Seems like BCS conferences would much rather expand by taking other BCS conference teams, especially a conference as strong in football as the Big 12.

If that was the case, then I think you would see Clemson go to the SEC … with the ACC backfilling with …?

Schools like ECU, USF and West Virginia are academic liabilities. I mean, the old ACC probably thinks they could have done better than BC academically …

No way they would go for an ECU or WVU. The Carolina schools would block inclusion of ECU and so would everyone else in fear of placing even more conference power in the state of North Carolina. I doubt Maryland or Virgina would be happy about WVU joining either.

What about Navy?

West Virginia is a tier 3 school, well below even FSU and NC State. ACC takes more than their fair share of pride in quality academics. Can’t imagine WVU passes the sniff test when it comes to academics.

Navy has better academics, but there is the issue of ensuring they continue their non-conference matchups with Army, Notre Dame and Air Force.

They should realign the ACC to North and South. No one can keep the two divisions straight anyway.

Academically, Vanderbilt (rank 17) Tennessee (rank 106), and Kentucky (rank 128) come to mind. That is, if they’d be willing to break away from the SEC. I like to think the idea might be at least appealing when it comes to academics and potential to win. Those three schools really have had no shot in football recently, and they would make ACC hoops that much better.

The Big East made more money from the BCS last year than the SEC, even though the SEC got two teams into the BCS. Something to think about.

I mean, the SEC makes a ton of money on TV. But I would imagine the potential exposure that will come with a new ACC TV deal could sweeten the deal.

I’m sure Vanderbilt makes a lot of money from the SEC TV deal, but exposure seems to be lacking. You hardly ever saw Vandy games on CBS and most were relegated to CBSCS and other channels. I would imagine the same thing will happen with the ESPN deal. ESPNU and ESPN3 (nee ESPN 360) for a school like Vanderbilt.