Ever since the debacle known as the BCS came into effect, I’ve pondered exactly what could be done to make college football better. Obviously, the BCShas failed us many times, but it’s not the only thing holding NCAA football back from being all that it can be. Over the next days and weeks I’ll bring several different points up as to how the NCAA can improve an already great product. First off, what if every conference had TWELVE teams?
Point #1
EVERY CONFERENCE WILL HAVE TWELVE TEAMS.
There are multiple reasons for this, but most obviously would be the conference championships. With 12 teams in each league separated into 2 divisions, you force every conference to have an end-of-the-year conference title game, like the SEC, ACC, MAC, C-USA, and Big 12 already do.
This helps eliminate the idea of the unfairness for those schools in 12 team conferences already that complain they must play a 13thgame in order to make a BCS game, possibly the national title game. Regular season schedules can also be regulated more easily with 12 team conferences. Right now, with the recent inclusion of Western Kentucky, there are 120 teams in Division 1 football. That evens out to a perfect amount for 10 conferences of 12 teams each. In reality, no D1 team would have to play a D1-AA team. Now, certainly it’s good for those lower level schools to get the big payday, but in reality it only hurts the D1 teams to play those games. With this plan, there’ll be no more need for Georgia to play Georgia Southern, or Clemson to play the Citadel. There should always be another D1 opponent on the schedule to set up a date to play.
A big positive to this plan, as I will allude to later, is that once a playoff system is initiated, the cities losing bowls will need to replace that revenue. This is where the conference title games can help out. With a conference title game in the Pac-10, San Francisco can host it instead of their typical Emerald Nuts Bowl every December. Wouldn’t a weekend matchup between the two best Pac-10 teams bring more excitement and revenue to a city than a lame game between a mediocre Pac-10 school and a mediocre ACC school? Or what about the Big 10? Wouldn’t a Motor City Bowl game between two great Big 10 schools be better than their usual lame mid-week ESPN2 game in mid-December?
I guess it would be good for me to show how I would break down each conference with their respective teams in this system. Some things would obviously stay the same.
The ACCwould still have their same teams (Clemson, FSU, Wake Forest, NC State, Maryland, and Boston College in the Atlantic, Virginia Tech, UNC, Miami, Georgia Tech, Virginia, and Duke in the Coastal). The Big 12 would stay the same (Missouri, Kansas, Colorado, Nebraska, Iowa State, and Kansas State in the North, Oklahoma, Texas Tech, Texas, Oklahoma State, Texas A&M, and Baylor in the South). And also the SEC would remain the way it is (Georgia, Tennessee, Florida, Vanderbilt, South Carolina, and Kentuckyin the East, and LSU, Mississippi State, Ole Miss, Arkansas, Auburn, and Alabama in the West).
Beyond that, there’s some additions and revisions that are made. They consist of the following:
Big 10: The WEST division will be Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa, Illinois, Northwestern, and yes, NOTRE DAME, who is past due in need of true football conference ties.
The EAST will have Purdue, Indiana, Michigan, Michigan State, Penn State, and Ohio State.
C-USA: EAST loses UCF (for another conference later on) and adds Western Kentucky, and keeps the others the same which includes East Carolina, Southern Miss, Memphis, Marshall, and UAB.
The WEST is the same, with Tulsa, Houston, UTEP, SMU, Rice, and Tulane.
Big East: Separated into NORTH and SOUTH. The NORTH includes Temple (formerly a MAC team, but Big East member before then), Rutgers, Pittsburgh, UConn, Syracuse, and Army (formerly Independent).
The SOUTH will be Louisville, South Florida, Cincinnati, West Virginia, Navy (former Independent) and UCF (formerly C-USA). The addition of UCF is to simply maintain a good rivalry between them and USF, one that is ending this year.
MAC: The MAC is still the same, but loses Temple to the Big East.
Pac-10 : A fun conference. Split into NORTH and SOUTH, the NORTH will include Washington, Washington State, Oregon, Oregon State, California, and Fresno State (formerly in the WAC).
The SOUTH will be USC, UCLA, Arizona, Arizona State, Stanford, and Hawaii (formerly of the WAC). Fresnois added because it’s provenit’s football strength. Hawaiiis a logical addition geographically, and considering other team’s travel the Pac-10 works best with logistical sense.
The WAC is also to be split into NORTH and SOUTH. In the NORTH there will be Boise State, Idaho, and 4 former Mountain West schools: BYU, Wyoming, Air Force, and Colorado State.
The SOUTH is San Jose State, San Diego State, Utah State, North Texas (formerly of the Sun Belt), and two other Mountain West schools: Utah and TCU. These “stronger” Mountain West schools are mixed into leagues with strong WAC teams, creating yearly battles between BYU and Boise State, as well as allowing the Utah-Utah State rivalry to be played in conference, opening up a slot for a different out-of-conference game.
Finally, the Sun Belt. Divided into EAST and WEST, the EAST includes Florida Atlantic, Florida International, MTSU, Troy, UL-Lafayette, and UL-Monroe.
The WEST will have Arkansas State, 3 former WAC schools (Nevada, La. Tech, and New Mexico State), and 2 former Mountain West teams (UNLV and New Mexico).
So there you have it. 10 conferences with 12 teams, a plan including all 120 D1 schools. This not only creates even more regular season excitement, but makes for one incredible “Weekend of Champions”. Say the schedule for that weekend broke down like this:
Friday Night: Sun Belt Championship (held in Dallas or New Orleans) begins at 8:00 EDT
Friday Night: MAC Championship (held in Cleveland or Cincinnati) begins at 8:00 EDT
Saturday Afternoon: ACC Championship (held in Charlotte) begins at 12:00 EDT
Saturday Afternoon: C-USA Championship (held in Nashville or New Orleans) begins at 12:00 EDT
Saturday Afternoon: Big East Championship (held in New York or Philadelphia) begins at 2:00 EDT
Saturday Afternoon: Big 12 Championship (held in Kansas City or Houston) begins at 3:30 EDT
Saturday Afternoon: WAC Championship (held in Denver or Las Vegas) begins at 5:00 EDT
Saturday Evening: Big 10 Championship (held in Chicago or Detroit) begins at 8:00 EDT
Saturday Evening: SEC Championship (held in Atlanta) begins at 7:00 EDT
Saturday Evening: Pac-10 Championship (held in San Francisco) begins at 10:00 EDT
Certainly you could move some of those to Sunday, but that may be an unfair advantage for some teams if playoffs were to begin the following week to have perhaps that extra day off.
Ideally, this would be a perfect plan. As with anything though, it’s not. For example, what were to happen if additional DI-AA teams decided to make the leap to Division 1? Certainly amends would need to be made for that to take place. But overall, I think for the betterment of the NCAA, these ideas should take place.
That’s my first idea: make all conferences include 12 teams. It evens conference schedules across the board (each team playing 8 in-conference games) and allows for a clear, decisive winner of each conference at the end of the year.
Stay tuned! I’ve got more ideas on how to make college football even better!
