Written by Jesse Lamovsky

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Ever since the early 1990’s when the great shakeup of college football’s traditional alignments began in earnest, the trend has almost always gone toward expansion rather than contraction. The ACC added Florida State and three Big East defectors; the Big Eight absorbed the leavings of the Southwest Conference; the Big Ten added Penn State and Nebraska; the Pac-10 added Colorado and Utah, and so on and so forth. Very few leagues have shrunk in that span, although the Western Athletic Conference did shrivel from sixteen to nine members in 1999 with the mass defection of the schools that now make up the bulk of the Mountain West, and conferences have lost individual members here and there. For the most part it’s been bigger-bigger-bigger in the ongoing game of musical chairs.

 

Indeed, the future of big-time college football seems to inevitably lie in the “super conferences” covering vast expanses of territory and encompassing almost the entirety of the game. By 2011 five of the eleven FBS conferences will hold championship games with the newly christened Pac-12 likely following suit.    

But what if we went another way with college football realignment? As of now there are 120 schools playing Division I-A football. That’s enough for fifteen conferences of eight teams apiece.

Atlantic Coast Conference

Clemson

East Carolina

Georgia

Florida State

Georgia Tech

Miami of Florida

South Carolina

South Florida

This is the Rivalry Conference. Three of the country’s most fiercely contested in-state rivalries- Clemson/South Carolina, Georgia/Georgia Tech and Florida State/Miami of Florida- are grouped here, with East Carolina and South Florida getting in where they fit in.

 

Big East Conference

Boston College

Connecticut

Notre Dame

Penn State

Pittsburgh

Rutgers

Syracuse

Temple

The Big East gets a big upgrade in prestige with the additions of Penn State and Notre Dame. As I’ve said before, Penn State belongs in the Big East, not the Big Ten- and I absolutely refuse to put Notre Dame in any conference with Ohio State, geography notwithstanding. Temple, expelled from the Big East in 2004, returns in far better shape under Al Golden. Unfortunately for the Owls they won’t be fattening up on the likes of Kent State and Akron anymore.

 

Mideast Conference

Akron

Alabama-Birmingham

Army

Buffalo

Florida Atlantic

Florida International

Navy

Troy

Otherwise known as “the dumping ground for schools at loose ends in the new arrangement,” the Mideast stretches north-south from the Lake Erie coast to South Florida and east-west from New York State to Alabama. The league doesn’t have much rhyme or reason as a collective entity- less so than any other in this alignment- but at the very least there are good or potentially good rivalries in pairs: Akron/Buffalo, Army/Navy, UAB/Troy and Florida Atlantic/FIU.

 

Great Lakes Conference

Ball State

Bowling Green

Eastern Michigan

Central Michigan

Kent State

Northern Illinois

Toledo

Western Michigan

Hence its name, this new league consists of the northernmost Mid-American Conference schools- save Buffalo and Akron- hugging the contours of the Great Lakes.

 

Great Plains Conference

Colorado

Iowa

Iowa State

Kansas

Kansas State

Minnesota

Missouri

Nebraska

For years the Big 12 North schools complained about the dominance of their conference by the South, particularly the University of Texas. The biggest complainer was the school that lost the most in the Big Eight-Big 12 transition- Nebraska. Certainly the Cornhuskers would enjoy their placement in the Great Plains, a conference they would likely run roughshod over.

 

Valley Conference

Arkansas State

Louisiana-Lafayette

Louisiana-Monroe

Marshall

Miami

Middle Tennessee State

Ohio University

Western Kentucky

Not the Missouri Valley; not the Ohio Valley; not even the Steel Valley. It’s just “The Valley,” a group of eight schools, all of them currently in either the Mid-American or Sun Belt conferences, located on or near the valleys of the Mississippi, Ohio and its various tributary rivers. Marshall is the biggest beneficiary here; the Herd ruled the MAC, have struggled in Conference USA, but can more than punch their weight in this company.

 

Lone Star Conference

Louisiana Tech

New Mexico

New Mexico State

North Texas

SMU

TCU

Tulsa

Texas –El Paso

Five members of this conference lie within the state of Texas while three others lie in states- Louisiana, Oklahoma and New Mexico- directly adjacent. As of now TCU would absolutely crush the competition, although Tulsa has had some nice teams recently and SMU looks to be on the fast track to mid-major prominence under June Jones. The Battle for the Iron Skillet between the Horned Frogs and Mustangs would be the league’s showcase game.

Metro Conference

Central Florida

Cincinnati

Houston

Louisville

Memphis

Rice

Southern Mississippi

Tulane

The league that was a force in NCAA basketball during the 1980’s returns in gridiron guise, with seven of its eight members located in major metropolitan areas either on the rim or in the heart of the urban South. Most of them are currently members of Conference USA, the twelve-school monstrosity that will be distributed among five of the new leagues.

Mountain West Conference

Arizona

Boise State

BYU

Colorado State

Fresno State

San Diego State

Utah

Washington State

Members of three current far-West conferences- the WAC, Mountain West and Pac-10- make up this aggregation, which consists of the most prestigious of the non-Pac-10 schools along with Washington State and Arizona. “Prestigious” might be stretching it when describing Wazzou, San Diego State and Colorado State but those schools have enjoyed periods of great success and are still somewhat promising in terms of potential.  

 

Old Northwest Conference

Ohio State

Michigan

Michigan State

Indiana

Purdue

Illinois

Northwestern

Wisconsin

Basically this league consists of the Big Ten schools that use “W” in their call signs instead of “K.” The “Old” in “Old Northwest” serves two purposes- it conjures up the designation of the Great Lakes region as the “old northwest” and it prevents the Northwest Conference from seeking legal action to keep its moniker from being jacked like the gold rims in Menace II Society.  

 

Pacific Coast Conference

Arizona State

California

Oregon

Oregon State

Stanford

UCLA

USC

Washington

This is a truncated Pac-10, with Washington State and Arizona lopped off at its northern and southernmost points. Wazzou has had its moments in the Pac-10, making two Rose Bowls in six seasons back in the late ‘90s and early 2000’s but the football program has fallen on extremely hard times recently and the school itself is geographically positioned more in the WAC/Mountain West zone than in the Pac-10 zone. Arizona was one of the last two schools to join the Pac-10 along with Arizona State, coming over from the WAC in 1978. The Wildcats are also the only league member never to play in a Rose Bowl.

 

Piedmont Conference

Duke

Maryland

Virginia

Virginia Tech

Wake Forest

North Carolina

North Carolina State

West Virginia

This close-packed conference consists of current Big East member West Virginia and seven members of the ACC, including the four-school North Carolina contingent.

Southeastern Conference

Alabama

Auburn

Florida

Kentucky

Mississippi State

Ole Miss

Tennessee

Vanderbilt

The SEC retains its traditional name but loses its two west-of-the-Mississippi members as well as Georgia and South Carolina. It does keep the Sugar Bowl tie-in, however.

 

Southwest Conference

Arkansas

Baylor

Louisiana State

Oklahoma

Oklahoma State

Texas

Texas A&M

Texas Tech

The old, scandal-ridden Southwest Conference is brought back to life in somewhat different form, with current Big 12 members Oklahoma and Oklahoma State and current SEC member LSU joining former SWC stalwarts Texas, Texas A&M, Texas Tech, Baylor and Arkansas in what would surely be one of the toughest, most competitive leagues in the nation… excepting Baylor, of course.

 

Western Athletic Conference

Air Force

Hawaii

Idaho

Nevada

Wyoming

San Jose State

UNLV

Utah State

The less-prestigious and less-advantaged of the far-West schools are grouped here under the old WAC name. Nevada would be the heavyweight here, at least in the short term. The Wolfpack should probably be switched with San Diego State, but the Aztecs get the nod based on potential.

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There are a bunch of FBS schools- the MAC, Sun Belt, several current WAC members, the service academies- that would probably be better served dropping down to the FCS. The problem is there are already more schools in I-AA than in I-A; 126, six more than in the top division. There just isn’t enough room in the FCS for thirty or so new members unless they dump some of their own dead weight- like, say, the Ivy and Pioneer Leagues. So for we keep all of the current I-A schools- even mangy dogs like Western Kentucky and Eastern Michigan- in their places, at least for this column.

Fifteen eight-team conferences would standardize schedules across the country. Each team, big-time or small, would play seven conference games. There would be no conference championship games. Since the conference schedule is shorter there is no need for a twelfth regular-season game. (Yeah, I know. $$$$$$$$$$. But I’m blue-skying here.)

And it fits well with a sixteen-team Tournament. There would be fifteen automatic bids for conference champions and one at-large bid, to be selected and seeded according to the final AP poll of the regular season. With conferences of a smaller size everyone is going to play everyone- no 2002 Ohio State/Iowa scenarios where two teams tie for the title and don’t meet- and no conference championship game means no team going undefeated in the regular season and gorking it at a neutral site in early December, a la Kansas State in 1998. You wouldn’t get many clear-cut cases, if any, of a team getting hosed out of a relatively deserving spot.

Under such an alignment a 2009 NCAA Football Tournament would have looked something like this:

 

16 Ohio (Valley) @ 1 Alabama (SEC)

9 Georgia Tech (ACC) @ 8 Ohio State (Old Northwest)

12 Virginia Tech (Piedmont) @ 5 Florida (at-large)

13 Central Michigan (Great Lakes) @ 4 Cincinnati (Metro)

11 Penn State (Big East) @ 6 Boise State (Mountain West)

14 Navy (Mideast) @ 3 TCU (Lone Star)

10 Iowa (Great Plains) @ 7 Oregon (Pac-8)

15 Nevada (WAC) @ 2 Texas (Southwest)

 

Start the Tournament the first week of December, end it with the Championship Game on New Year’s Day, and you’re good to go. It isn’t perfect- Georgia fans would probably find playing football in an entity called “the Atlantic Coast Conference” tough to swallow- but it beats what we have now. Right? Or…