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The Pointless Realignment Outpost


Lee.

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I've made some revisions and additions to my MLB realignment. Here's a quick explanation:

32 teams, football style divisions. NO WILD CARDS. This way, the Yankees and Red Sox actually have to fight each other for a spot in the playoffs, instead of just being all like "Oh, well if we don't get the division we still get the wild card". Also, the only interleague play is against each teams predesignated rivals (Cubs-White Sox, Yankees-Mets, Rays-Marlins, etc). You play 28 games (14 home, 14 away) against each division opponent, 6 games against each team in the other three divisions of your league, and 6 games agaisnst your interleague rival. This will work so, on the last weekend in May, every NL team will play a Friday-Saturday-Sunday series in the AL park. NL parks will be closed for the weekend. Same thing on the second weekend in June, except NL parks run the show (Yes! A whole weekend with no DH!)

Add up the games and it's 162. (84 intradivisional, 72 interdivisional, and 6 interleague).

Here are the updated divisions:

AL East

New York Yankees

Boston Red Sox

Detroit Tigers

Toronto Blue Jays

AL South

Tampa Bay Rays

Charlotte expansion team

Baltimore Orioles

Cleveland Indians

AL North

Milwaukee Brewers

Minnesota Twins

Albuquerque expansion team

Chicago White Sox

AL West

Seattle Mariners

Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim

Texas Rangers

Oakland Athletics

NL East

Philadelphia Phillies

Washington Nationals

Pittsburgh Pirates

New York Mets

NL South

Florida Marlins

Atlanta Braves

Houston Astros

Kansas City Royals

NL North

Chicago Cubs

Colorado Rockies

St. Louis Cardinals

Cincinnati Reds

NL West

Arizona Diamondbacks

San Francisco Giants

Los Angeles Dodgers

San Diego Padres

Oops, forgot the interleague matchups. Here they are:

NYY-NYM

CHC-CHW

KC-ABQ

FLA-TB

ATL-CLT

MIL-STL

BAL-WSH

BOS-PHI

SD-SEA

SF-OAK

LAA-LAD

ARI-DET

MIN-COL

CLE-CIN

TOR-PIT

TEX-HOU

Having entire weekends with no host games for an entire league makes about as much sense as Cleveland in the South division and an MLB team in Albuquerque, which is none.

Nothing wrong with having Cleveland in the South division. It's all just a matter of where teams best fit relative to the other teams. If the Columbus NHL team can be placed in the Western Conference, a Cleveland baseball team can be placed in a Southern Division.

Actually it does matter in baseball. You can get away with a minor one, but not this. Baseball isn't like football where everybody plays on basically the same day once a week. They also have set times. In baseball you play just about everyday with the occasional day off. And you sometimes go from city to city on back to back game days. Here the distance of travel plays a more significant role.

All of this plus putting Cleveland in a division away from the other AL Central or even East teams just doesn't make sense.

Think about it for a second. Tampa Bay and Boston are currently both in the AL East. No one complains about the alignment of that division, and the distance from Tampa to Boston is actually greater than the distance from Tampa to Cleveland. And it's a lot greater than Charlotte to Cleveland and Baltimore to Cleveland. It's the same deal in the NL East right now with the Marlins and Phillies (or Mets). So, it's really not that big of an issue.

And I would like to here your explanation on how an Albuquerque expansion team wouldn't work (considering their AAA team, the Isotopes, currently draw more than some MLB teams do on some days *cough* Florida, Baltimore, Tampa Bay *cough*), and how the interleague weekend deals don't make sense.

Thanks for playing. B)

Exactly. I don't have inter-city distances in front of me, but there are some pretty huge distances that already exist among inter-division teams.

Tampa Bay and Boston; Texas and Seattle; Miami and New York; Houston and Pittsburgh. Again, I'm not looking at a map, but I'm pretty sure the distances between those inter-division teams are close to (if not greater than) the distance between CLE and TB. There are always going to be a couple of "oddball" distances that need to be in any divisional alignment; the key is to not have too many of them, or at least justify them by some other logic. I think AnythingChicago's alignment does a decent job of that.

WIZARDS ORIOLES CAPITALS RAVENS UNITED

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Your using 4 team divisions. They can be more geographically condensed.

And a minor league market is not comparable to a major league market. Just because they're drawing at a Triple-A level does not mean they'll draw enough for the majors and Albuquerque is not a major league sports market.

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Your using 4 team divisions. They can be more geographically condensed.

That's fine, I see your point. But it might be better to come up with an improvement than just saying what you don't like. Can you think of a better way to have 32 teams (in the same cities AnythingChicago wanted) split up among 8 divisions? I'd like to hear your suggestion, I'm not being sarcastic.

Also, I don't understand what you said earlier about putting CLE in a division away from East teams... They would still be in a division with 2 "East" (as it currently exists) teams. Why can't CLE be moved to another division?

WIZARDS ORIOLES CAPITALS RAVENS UNITED

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Cleveland has divisional rivalries with the Central, however they'd also be a good fit with Toronto, Boston and New York, Baltimore too with the other northern teams. If you went five teams with Cleveland, Boston, NY, Baltimore and TB that'd e one thing, but not such 4 team. And I dint post a counter with these teams because I don't believe Albuquerque is a legitimate choice, as I've mentioned.

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Well I started to type out a post explaining how ridiculous it was to even suggest that Albuquerque could be a major-league city, and how the mere brain wave that would make someone pose that suggestion would seem to indicate a defect somewhere in his genetic bloodline that can't be cured and can only be treated with mandatory sterilization, but then I actually did a little bit of research for once.

Based solely on research (having never actually been there), I absolutely do not think that Albuquerque would be a successful big-league city, however, it's really not that far fetched and if we get to the point where some older "traditional" sports cities have to be phased out due to the economics of the game (there are several cities that only really have teams because they just "always have", even though their economic situation is way different now than it was 50 or 100 years ago), markets like Albuquerque actually make sense looking in to.

Living in a major east-coast city, I have a bias that a "big league" city needs a growing (or at least not shrinking) job market, a large, dense urban core, a second layer of blue-collar neighborhoods, a large affluent suburban population, and a well developed public transit system. It seems though that those days are past, and these "non-traditional" markets are really worth exploring. It would be one of (if not the) smallest markets, and would be completely suburban by many standards, but the job market (especially high-paying jobs) is there, the population is "good enough" (from an attendance standpoint - keep reading), and the infrastructure would allow for people to drive their cars to the game (which many of us would cringe at doing.) The big problems are the media presence (it's not really a big media market and not sure it would be able to attract "big league" media talent or provide adequate coverage), and it is especially not going to generate the local revenue from rights distribution and corporate sponsorship that is essential in an un-capped un-shared revenue system. Unless some media conglomerate puts a team (so basically unless they own their own network and distribution), there's just no way that a team there could compete - today. In time, this could be a very different story.

"The views expressed here are mine and do not reflect the official opinion of my employer or the organization through which the Internet was accessed."

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Well I started to type out a post explaining how ridiculous it was to even suggest that Albuquerque could be a major-league city, and how the mere brain wave that would make someone pose that suggestion would seem to indicate a defect somewhere in his genetic bloodline that can't be cured and can only be treated with mandatory sterilization, but then I actually did a little bit of research for once.

Based solely on research (having never actually been there), I absolutely do not think that Albuquerque would be a successful big-league city, however, it's really not that far fetched and if we get to the point where some older "traditional" sports cities have to be phased out due to the economics of the game (there are several cities that only really have teams because they just "always have", even though their economic situation is way different now than it was 50 or 100 years ago), markets like Albuquerque actually make sense looking in to.

Living in a major east-coast city, I have a bias that a "big league" city needs a growing (or at least not shrinking) job market, a large, dense urban core, a second layer of blue-collar neighborhoods, a large affluent suburban population, and a well developed public transit system. It seems though that those days are past, and these "non-traditional" markets are really worth exploring. It would be one of (if not the) smallest markets, and would be completely suburban by many standards, but the job market (especially high-paying jobs) is there, the population is "good enough" (from an attendance standpoint - keep reading), and the infrastructure would allow for people to drive their cars to the game (which many of us would cringe at doing.) The big problems are the media presence (it's not really a big media market and not sure it would be able to attract "big league" media talent or provide adequate coverage), and it is especially not going to generate the local revenue from rights distribution and corporate sponsorship that is essential in an un-capped un-shared revenue system. Unless some media conglomerate puts a team (so basically unless they own their own network and distribution), there's just no way that a team there could compete - today. In time, this could be a very different story.

That is a very fair and elaborate overview. Thank you.

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I'll post this here because this seems to be a better place for it. Mapping out a possible NCAA Super Conferences Scenario.

It all starts with the SEC. The expand to 16 by adding Texas A&M, Missouri, FSU and Va Tech.

Southeastern Conference:

SEC West - SEC East

Texas A&M - Florida

LSU - Florida St.

Arkansas - Georgia

Missouri -S. Carolina

Ole Miss - Tennessee

Miss. St. - Vanderbilt

Alabama - Kentucky

Auburn - Va Tech

As a response the Big Ten and Pac-12 also set forth on expansion into a super conference. The Big Ten goes first by also raiding the ACC by grabbing Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina and Duke. This expands the Big Ten Network in three states and positions themselves as a dominant all-sports conference.

B16 Ten Conference:

B16 Ten West - B16 Ten East

Michigan - Ohio St.

Michigan St. - UNC

Illinios - Purdue

Northwestern - Duke

Nebraska - Penn St.

Iowa - Indiana

Minnesota - Maryland

Wisconsin - Virginia

Pac-12 tried to grab Texas, but can't because Texas won't give up the Longhorn Network. Instead they grab Oklahoma, Okla. St., Kansas and Kansas St. to set up a western 16 team conference. They rename to the Pac-16.

Pac-16 Conference:

Pac 16 Pacific - Pac 16 Plains

USC - Arizona

UCLA - Arizona St.

Stanford - Colorado

Cal - Utah

Oregon - Kansas

Oregon St. - Kansas St.

Washington - Oklahoma

Wash. St - Oklahoma St.

The remaining ACC teams and the Beg East Football teams merge to form a 14-team Atlantic East Conference.

Atlantic East Conference:

AE North - AE South

BC - Miami

UCONN - USF

Syracuse - Ga. Tech

Rutgers - Clemson

Pittsburgh - Wake

West Virginia - NC State

Cincinnati - Louisville

Texas keeps its channel and with the remains of the Big 12 forms its own conference The Big Longhorn Conference (ok the name I gave it is meant to be a humorous on my part). It invites Houston, TCU, SMU, Tulsa, and Memphis to join a 9 team conference of theirs. Texas as a result will still schedule A&M, Oklahoma, and a Marquee Super Conference team to keep up its schedule strength for the polls while hoping to dominate this smaller conference.

Big Longhorn Conference:

Texas

Texas Tech

Baylor

Houston

TCU

Iowa St.

Memphis

Tulsa

SMU

Notre Dame stays independent in football and stays with the Big East Basketball only schools for non-football.

As a result of all this we ultimately get a playoff. A 6-team playoff with the SEC, B16 Ten, Pac-16, and Atlantic East champions given automatic entry. There would be two at-large places based on the "national playoff standings" (current BCS standings). That would allow a team like Texas or Notre Dame a path in as well as a non-champion from a Super Conference. Teams would be seeded by the "national playoff standings" with #1 and #2 receiving byes. The tournament would be played from Christmas through a week after New Years and be played on a rotating basis at the sites of the current Rose, Orange, Sugar, Fiesta, and Cotton bowls.

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The Big East would likely re-extend its invitation to Villanova in that case ('Nova dragged their feet, then finally had decided to accept but the Big East rescinded the invitation partially due to the delay) and possibly try to re-acquire Temple for football.

"The views expressed here are mine and do not reflect the official opinion of my employer or the organization through which the Internet was accessed."

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In my opinion, I don't think Texas would ever revert back to a conference of that stature. They are to big to be playing teams like that in a conference. I think they would rather go independent first, or join the Pac-16. Not that they might consider it, but I just don't see that happening. And I think the Big-10(12) would rather go for different teams than Duke, Carolina, Virginia and Maryland.

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2012-13 season:

Pacific: VAN SJS PHX LA ANA

Northwest: EDM CGY WPG MIN COL

Central: DAL CLB NSH CHI STL

Northeast: DET TOR OTT MTL BUF

Atlantic: BOS NYR NYI PHI NJD

Southeast: PIT WSH CAR FLA TBL

Reasons for moves:

Vancouver goes to the right time zone.

Central teams all in same time zone, even though travel from Dallas to Columbus will be a trip.

Winnipeg gets in with some geographically appropriate buddies.

Detroit gets to move back to the East, and terrorize a different conference. ;)

Boston, a city on the Atlantic, can be in the Atlantic division.

The Pens and Caps can enjoy 8 games against each other in this season.

Division 32 games; 50 games for other 25 teams. Easy-peasy.

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In response to jkrdevil's post above, I think your on the right track, but here's what I see going down:

You SEC and my SEC would be the same, as well as some kinda of merger of the remaining ACC (all sports) & Big East (football schools). This way for NCAA purposes in the b-ball tourney, the basketball Big East keeps its auto qualifier and the new Atlantic East takes the ACC's auto qualifier slot.

As for who goes where:

- That's my ideal SEC as well

- I think ND and Texas have lucrative enough deals that staying/going indy is the best plan.

- Rather than the B10 going south, I see them going towards Rutgers (NY market) and some combo of Maryland/Virginia (DC market), Pitt (seems to fit with the rest of the B10), or Iowa State (just so they're not on an island). Syracuse was a thought here, until I realized that as of 2011 they are no longer in the Association of American Universities.

- The Oklahoma and Kansas quartet going to the Pac is good too. I always had the Okla. pair going west, but the Kansas pair makes sense too.

- Whatevers left of the ACC and Big East becomes the Atlantic East (or something different. This way for NCAA purposes in the b-ball tourney, the basketball Big East breaks off and keeps its auto qualifier and the new Atlantic East takes the ACC's auto qualifier slot.

- The remainders I see are Texas Tech and Baylor. Either they can side for Atlantic East since TCU is Big East in 2012, or can go to CUSA.

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So with all this talk of College Football realignment I figured I'd take a swing at figuring out FOUR power conferences and FOUR lower-tier conferences.

POWER CONFERENCES

WESTERN CONFERENCE

PAC 8

1. California

2. Oregon

3. Oregon St.

4. Stanford

5. UCLA

6. USC

7. Washington

8. Washington St.

SOUTHWEST

1. Arizona

2. Arizona St.

3. Colorado

4. Oklahoma

5. Oklahoma St.

6. Texas

7. Texas A&M

8. Texas Tech

NORTHERN CONFERENCE

GREAT LAKES

1. Illinois

2. Indiana

3. Michigan

4. Michigan St.

5. Notre Dame

6. Ohio St.

7. Penn St.

8. Purdue

NORTH PLAINS

1. Iowa

2. Iowa St.

3. Kansas

4. Kansas St.

5. Minnesota

6. Nebraska

7. Northwestern

8. Wisconsin

EASTERN CONFERENCE

NORTHEASTERN

1. Boston College

2. Cincinnati

3. UCONN

4. Maryland

5. Pittsburgh

6. Rutgers

7. Syracuse

8. West Virginia

ATLANTIC

1. Duke

2. Florida St.

3. Miami (FL)

4. North Carolina

5. NC State

6. Virginia

7. Virginia Tech

8. Wake Forest

SOUTHERN CONFERENCE

SOUTH

1. Arkansas

2. Kentucky

3. Louisville

4. LSU

5. Ole Miss

6. Mississippi St.

7. Missouri

8. Vanderbilt

SOUTHEAST

1. Alabama

2. Auburn

3. Clemson

4. Florida

5. Georgia

6. Georgia Tech

7. South Carolina

8. Tennessee

So the way I see it for the National Championship

Western would play Northern

Southern would play Eastern

Winner of Western/Northern would play Southern/Eastern

Winner of that game would be NATIONAL CHAMPIONS

And the next year rotate.

EX: Western vs. Southern...Northern vs. Eastern

Winner of Western/Southern vs. Winner of Northern/Eastern

Winner is National Champion

And rotate once more the following year.

EX: Western vs. Eastern...Northern vs. Southern

Winner of Western/Eastern vs. Winner of Northern/Southern

Winner is National Champion

The next year rotate back to the original matchup and keep it on that rotation.

LOWER TIER

UN-KNOWN CONFERENCE NAME

WESTERN

1. Fresno St.

2. Hawaii

3. Idaho

4. Nevada

5. San Diego St.

6. San Jose St.

7. UNLV

EASTERN

1. Air Force

2. Boise St.

3. BYU

4. Colorado St.

5. Utah

6. Utah St.

7. Wyoming

UN-KNOWN CONFERENCE NAME

TEXAS

1. Baylor

2. Houston

3. North Texas

4. Rice

5. SMU

6. TCU

7. UTEP

SOUTHERN

1. Arkansas St.

2. Louisiana Tech

3. New Mexico

4. New Mexico St.

5. Tulsa

6. UL-Lafayette

7. UL-Monroe

UN-KNOWN CONFERENCE NAME

SOUTH

1. Memphis

2. Middle Tennessee

3. Southern Miss

4. Troy

5. Tulane

6. UAB

7. Western Kentucky

COASTAL

1. Army

2. ECU

3. FAU

4. FIU

5. Navy

6. UCF

7. USF

UN-KNOWN CONFERENCE NAME

GREAT NORTH

1. Akron

2. Buffalo

3. Kent St.

4. Marshall

5. Miami (OH)

6. Ohio

7. Temple

GREAT LAKES

1. Ball St.

2. Bowling Green

3. Central Michigan

4. Eastern Michigan

5. Northern Illinois

6. Toledo

7. Western Michigan

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I have discovered the most perfect tournament format ever, it came to me in a dream. It looks like this and reminds me of the zodiac and some international, neutral-site, soccer tournaments:

Conference ABCDEF

Division ABC

Team A

Team B

Team C

Division DEF

Team D

Team E

Team F

Conference GHIJKL

Division GHI

Team G

Team H

Team I

Division JKL

Team J

Team K

Team L

In this tournament format, one team must face the other two teams in its division once (2 games) and the best goes on to play in the Conference Finals (1 game) and then the Finals (1 game).

This is the best tournament format because the number of regular season games are equal to the number of playoff games and the schedule is balanced.

The format is similar to the organization of the zodiac signs:

Masculine Conference

Fire Division

Cardinal-Aries

Fixed-Leo

Mutable-Sagittarius

Air Division

Mutable-Gemini

Cardinal-Libra

Fixed-Aquarius

Female Conference

Earth Division

Fixed-Taurus

Mutable-Virgo

Cardinal-Capricorn

Water Division

Cardinal-Cancer

Fixed-Scorpio

Mutable-Pisces

I do not know why this arrangement is so prevalent in my life right now, but I can say that the format has limited characteristics and intriguing.

12 teams

2 conferences

4 divisions

3 teams per division

*each team plays its divisional opponents twice, the best play the same amount of games in regular season as in the postseason

Are there any tournaments which have this particular format that anybody can think of? It would interesting to know. I think the Cuban Baseball League has 16 teams in 4 divisions, which would require the first and second place teams to advance from each division to ensure that the same amount of postseason games equal the amount of regular season games (theoretically), but the second placed team in the division is not the best, so...

It's something that interesting to me.

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Hey everybody. I wasn't exactly sure where to post a topic like this but here it is. This is my version of what the actual FBS confrences should look like. This project was inspired by the new custom confrence feature on NCAA Football 12. There are some new confrences and 3 old ones. The Pac-12; SEC, and ACC are the only confrences to keep their exsistence in this version of the "FBS". In total there are 12 FBS confrences and NO independents. I based this little project on geographical regions and make way for a future tournament for the National Title. #DEATHTOBCS :grin: Sorry but i haven't came with a post-season format yet but be on the lookout for it on a future post. Please feel free to comment and give CC. :

ACC: VIRGINIA TECH VIRGINIA MARYLAND NAVY NORTH CAROLINA DUKE NC STATE WAKE FOREST EAST CAROLINA

PAC-12: NORTH: WASHINGTON WASHINGTON ST. OREGON OREGON ST. CAL FRESNO ST.

SOUTH: USC UCLA STANFORD HAWAI'I SAN DIEGO ST. SAN JOSE ST.

SEC: LSU ALABAMA GEORGIA TENNESSEE OLE MISS AUBURN MISS. ST. VANDERBILT TROY MIDDLE TENN ST. LOUISIANA TECH

NORTHERN LAKES CONFRENCE: OHIO ST. MICHIGAN MICHIGAN ST. NEBRASKA WISCONSIN NOTRE DAME IOWA ILLINOIS INDIANA CINCY N'WESTRN PURDUE

SUNRISE LEAGUE: FLORIDA FLORIDA ST. MIAMI FIU FAU CLEMSON S.CAROLINA USF UCF GEORGIA TECH

THE ALLEY CONFRENCE: OKLAHOMA TEXAS TCU OKLAHOMA ST. TEXAS A&M TULSA SMU TEXAS TECH

HEARTLAND CONFRENCE: KANSAS KANSAS ST. MISSOURI KENTUCKY LOUISVILLE IOWA ST. MEMPHIS W.KENTUCKY BOWLING GREEN

FREEDOM FOOTBALL CONFRENCE: PENN ST. PITT W.VIRGINIA SYRACUSE ARMY TEMPLE BOSTON COLLEGE RUTGERS MARSHALL BUFFALO

PLATEAU CONFRENCE: BYU UTAH UTAH ST. BOISE ST. IDAHO COLORADO COLORADO ST. WYOMING MINNESOTA AIR FORCE

DESERT FOOTBALL CONFRENCE: ARIZONA ARIZONA ST. NEVADA UNLV BAYLOR UTEP NEW MEXICO NEW MEXICO ST.

GULF UNION CONFRENCE: ARKANSAS ARKANSAS ST. UAB HOUSTON RICE TULANE SO.MISS UL-MONROE UL-LAFAYETTE

NEW MID AMERICAN CONFRENCE: OHIO TOLEDO MIAMI U. BALL ST. KENT ST. N.ILLINOIS E.MICHIGAN C.MICHIGAN W.MICHIGAN

(NMAC)

GrizzlyBlack Designs, UDC Firebird

 

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