Division 1 College Conference Realignment

[SeaTac]

One day will just have this:

 

SUPER ELITE-12

Alabama 

Ohio State 

Michigan

Texas

Texas A&M

Penn State

USC

Florida State

Georgia

LSU

Tennessee 

Oklahoma 

 

 

[DG_ThenNowForever]

1 hour ago, SeaTac said:

One day will just have this:

 

SUPER ELITE-12

Alabama 

Ohio State 

Michigan

Texas

Texas A&M

Penn State

USC

Florida State

Georgia

LSU

Tennessee 

Oklahoma 

 

 

 

You're not wrong.

 

Though would it be funny if the FCS was whittled down to two super conferences of 30 teams each, and each of those 30 teams organized themselves into geographically organized conferences? Like, maybe 10 Pacific teams, 10 Midwest teams, 10 Atlantic coast teams, 10 south central teams, and 10 southeastern teams?

 

Something to ponder.

[SeaTac]

24 minutes ago, DG_ThenNowForever said:

 

You're not wrong.

 

Though would it be funny if the FCS was whittled down to two super conferences of 30 teams each, and each of those 30 teams organized themselves into geographically organized conferences? Like, maybe 10 Pacific teams, 10 Midwest teams, 10 Atlantic coast teams, 10 south central teams, and 10 southeastern teams?

 

Something to ponder.

 

I wouldn't be surprised if in the distant future a lot of well known schools end up dropping football & other sports due to financial difficulties. 

[Guest]

Not too busy this afternoon so I've just been messing around with conference ideas and wouldn't mind seeing a standardized model at 24-team conferences like this: https://imgur.com/tz5gXN7

 

Obviously I took a lot of liberties here and can see the ACC splitting in multiple different ways. The AAC & MWC would merge and the Sun Belt & C-USA would merge. The MAC would move down to FCS. No independents. I can also see the Big 12 adding a mix of Louisville/Pitt + a mix of maybe a core dozen G5 schools from in the MWC & AAC.

 

While moving teams around, I also just don't see any path to go beyond 24 in any conference unless they form an entirely new league of the best of the best. There are simply not enough options past 24 unless you're talking 2 leagues of 36.

 

Under the model I created, conference winners would be determined by some kind of mini 6-team playoff composed of #1s and #2s in each division. Winners get auto-bids in a 12-team playoff (top 3 spots based on rank/record), plus 7 at-larges from those power conferences (10 total spots). Then the two "G5" mega conference champions get the last 2 playoff spots without any at-large spots.

 

Big12 conference playoffs/championship in Dallas, Houston, Tampa, Phoenix

B1G conference playoffs/championship in LA, Indy, San Francisco, Vegas

SEC conference playoffs/championship in Atlanta, Nashville, New Orleans, Miami

(rotates?)

 

Will never happen as I don't see the G5's being able to sustain that much travel or commanding much media $ to support that size of conference. More likely, the three P3s split (maybe Oregon St. / Wazzu find a home in there) and that's the new super league.

 

 

[Gary]

Onto actual news. 

 

https://arizonasports.com/story/3530070/arizona-board-regents-calls-pac-12-future/

 

Tonight at 6 Arizona time the Arizona Board of Regents will talk about and vote for both Arizona schools to go into the Big 12

[sportsfan7]

After the TV Networks inevitably blow up the last semblances of traditional conferences and replace it with one superconference, I believe that the next "evolution" of conferences will be back to independents. Right now, the B1G TV-deal is "dragged-down" in per game value by games that don't draw as many viewers as Ohio St-Michigan (or even Nebraska-Penn St etc.,) such as Minnesota-Rutgers and Northwestern-Indiana. Inevitably, this will occur in the superconference as well, since not every game can be Ohio St-Michigan or Alabama-LSU. Some executive will have the "novel" idea of continuing this consolidation down to individual teams selling their TV rights, since Ohio St (and Notre Dame, Alabama, Texas, etc.,) can presumably make more money selling the rights to their home games and only their home games, than from a 1/16th (or however many teams in conference) share in selling the rights to not only Ohio St-Michigan but also relative "snoozefests" like Tennessee-Oklahoma and Clemson-Oregon.

 

Although all of this might sound bad, I personally wouldn't mind it compared to the 1- superconference distant future or maybe even compared to the 2.5-superconference less-distant future. This way teams could schedule traditional rivals, other top teams, and a buy game or two. Could even possibly go to a 13-game schedule since there would be no conference championship. Using TCU and Alabama as examples:

 

TCU

Week 1: Tarleton St

Week 2: SMU

Week 3: Kansas St

Week 4: Arkansas

Week 5: Texas Tech

Week 6: Indiana

Week 7: Off

Week 8: Oklahoma

Week 9: Texas

Week 10: Louisiana-Monroe

Week 11: Texas A&M

Week 12: UTEP

Week 13: West Virginia

Week 14: Baylor

 

Alabama

Week 1: Georgia Tech

Week 2: San Diego St

Week 3: Ole Miss

Week 4: Arkansas

Week 5: Florida Int'l

Week 6: Mississippi St

Week 7: Tennessee

Week 8: Off

Week 9: Texas A&M

Week 10: Troy

Week 11: Washington

Week 12: LSU

Week 13: Chattanooga

Week 14: Auburn

 

There would then be an xx-team playoff. I'm sure the TV Networks would help set up home and aways for teams they have under contract. I assume something similar would happen for basketball, but other sports might retain something similar to traditional conferences. Not sure what other peoples thoughts are on this, but I believe that this is where the sport is eventually headed.

[TrueYankee26]

 

[BBTV]

Can't stop staring at the bottom left of that decal.

[Red Wolf]

3 minutes ago, BBTV said:

Can't stop staring at the bottom left of that decal.

 

I was staring at the top right myself.

[Germanshepherd]

At this point we either end up with 

 

A.  Super-large 24+ team conferences that have divisions that vaguely resemble the old conferences we know and love

 

B. A super-league of 24 teams with everybody else being in lower conferences that vaguely resemble the ones we know and love 

 

I don’t know when we end up with those, but all these years in between are going to suck. 

[jlog3000]

It's abundantly clear that the college sports (including football and possibly basketball, as both are the moneymakers in revenue and profit, out of every other Olympic-based sport) that we know and love today will soon be over and will never be the same. Like when conferences were like 8 teams minimum and 10 teams maximum, and almost there was like a full round robin schedule in conference play in football (or double the games for basketball or volleyball); before the SEC became the first conference to get to 12 and have the conference championship game format for football, which the Big XII would later follow suit a few years ago during the 1990's.

 

And before the eventual but inevitable and imminent era of super-conferences (excluding how the old WAC did, although it was an idea in theory gone wrong after just 3 school years) will occur with over 20 teams each without wanting or needing to care about fair-balanced formats, we must thank/blame the oligarchs in charge of this master plan of having their way since like the early 2010s.

 

Ironically the Big XII (who lost Nebraska to the Big TEN, Colorado to the Pac-12, and Texas A&M & Missouri to the SEC) suffered the blow a bit during that tenure, before eventually wanting to do some of their own adjustments after their 2 top schools are moving elsewhere (hence Oklahoma & Texas to the SEC, got BYU, UCF, Cincy & Houston; and UCLA & USC bolting out the Pac-12 to the Big TEN).

 

I wonder how will the scheduling formats will occur for each conference, and depending on the sport that conference will sponsor; and that's if those with power and influence and in charge of those conferences had learned from what the WAC did from 96-97 to 98-99. Obviously for football, one team cannot play all the other teams in the same school year [a 16 team league, the 15], although to a degree in basketball, it might work, with being just one game minimum. But it would be another story if it's a conference of upto 20 or 24 teams maximum. However, for other sports like soccer or volleyball or baseball/softball, etc., that would be a big challenge.

[heavybass]

Oregon and Washington are apparently staying put in the PAC 12

[DG_ThenNowForever]

Huh. Pac 12 lost USC, Utah, Colorado, and Arizona.

 

What's it in for UW and Oregon? Gotta get out while the getting's good.

[Gary]

 

[Gary]

1 minute ago, DG_ThenNowForever said:

Huh. Pac 12 lost USC, Utah, Colorado, and Arizona.

 

What's it in for UW and Oregon? Gotta get out while the getting's good.

 

Arizona Board of Regents might block the move tothe Big 12 and Arizona might not go. Reports are Michael Crow might block any idea of ASU going to the Big 12 and ABR want both teams to stay or go togrther. Plus hearing the reports that if Washington and Oregon indeed stay, Arizona has said they would to.

[RyanMcD29]

Yeah, that optimism didn't last for long

 

[Guest]

14 minutes ago, RyanMcD29 said:

Yeah, that optimism didn't last for long

 

 

"His smile and optimism... gone"

 

I've been following this more closely on r/CFB but with this news it's over for the Pac9. There is no other deal on the table for 2024 and zero networks are coming to save the remaining teams between now and next July or August with all this instability. Even if another offer were to miraculously appear today from Amazon, it'd be even lower than the Apple deal.

 

I'm just wondering what OSU/Wazzu/Utah plan on doing besides be regulated to the MWC because Cal/Stanford will never play there or with any G5 teams they attempt to bring in to round out the conference. They both can survive as independents and hold out for the B1G... another reason why I don't understand ASU president Crow wants to stick it out with Cal/Stanford - they are going to bounce first chance they get and not think twice about ASU.

 

I think this is all wrapped up by end of today...finally.

[TBGKon]

 

[Gary]

24 minutes ago, solvetica said:

 

"His smile and optimism... gone"

 

I've been following this more closely on r/CFB but with this news it's over for the Pac9. There is no other deal on the table for 2024 and zero networks are coming to save the remaining teams between now and next July or August with all this instability. Even if another offer were to miraculously appear today from Amazon, it'd be even lower than the Apple deal.

 

I'm just wondering what OSU/Wazzu/Utah plan on doing besides be regulated to the MWC because Cal/Stanford will never play there or with any G5 teams they attempt to bring in to round out the conference. They both can survive as independents and hold out for the B1G... another reason why I don't understand ASU president Crow wants to stick it out with Cal/Stanford - they are going to bounce first chance they get and not think twice about ASU.

 

I think this is all wrapped up by end of today...finally.

Because Crow is clueless about athletics. He would be happier if athletics went away so he could focus on academics

[McCall]

53 minutes ago, solvetica said:

 

"His smile and optimism... gone"

 

I've been following this more closely on r/CFB but with this news it's over for the Pac9. There is no other deal on the table for 2024 and zero networks are coming to save the remaining teams between now and next July or August with all this instability. Even if another offer were to miraculously appear today from Amazon, it'd be even lower than the Apple deal.

 

I'm just wondering what OSU/Wazzu/Utah plan on doing besides be regulated to the MWC because Cal/Stanford will never play there or with any G5 teams they attempt to bring in to round out the conference. They both can survive as independents and hold out for the B1G... another reason why I don't understand ASU president Crow wants to stick it out with Cal/Stanford - they are going to bounce first chance they get and not think twice about ASU.

 

I think this is all wrapped up by end of today...finally.

Utah will most likely end up in the Big 12 with the Arizona schools. I wouldn't even say the Big Ten is out of the realm of possibility for them, but not likely. Washington State and Oregon State will either get in the Big 12 as essentially pity invites or likely end up in the Mountain West.