A Crazy Proposal - Conference Realignment

Four years ago, there was a lot of talk about consolidating the conferences into four 16-team super conferences. The conventional wisdom (which is rarely that conventional, or for that matter, that wise) was that eventually the six BCS conferences were going to merge into four super conferences of 16 teams each. What happened? They didn't exactly merge, but one of them - the Big East - basically fell apart. It is now the AAC and isn't considered a power conference any more. Instead, there are five power conferences.

One of the reasons that the super conference idea seemed so intriguing to people was the idea that the four conference champions could form a four-team national championship tournament. Four years later, we do have a four-team tournament, but we're still dealing with five power conferences, and there are other problems with the system. Some otherwise deserving programs, like BYU and Boise State, are still on the outside looking in. The five power conferences do not all have championship games. One of the champions will always be left out - and perhaps two, if one conference gets two participants - which is possible since even among the power conferences, some conferences are better than others. (Of course, under some scenarios, it seems possible that the less powerful conferences might actually be more likely to get more than one representative than the more powerful ones the way things are currently set up.) It is already apparent there is going to be some griping at the end of the year when this all sorts itself out.

Four years ago, we suggested a crazy complete realignment of the conferences that consisted of four 16-team super conferences that were equally balanced (based on an analysis of historical data). You can read it here. We did not publish our complete idea at the time, but we also had designed a way for teams that were "outside" the top 64 programs to play their way into the system, while other teams could fall out if their programs did not perform as well as they needed to through a yearly re-analysis of the programs (using, of course, our program analysis system - you can see the current program rankings here). We're not kidding ourselves to think that our ideas would ever be adopted. They make too much sense in terms of competitiveness and not enough sense in terms of keeping the power and the money with the few programs that already control it.

That being said, we've decided to take another trip to Fantasyland, this time proposing a complete realignment that involves four 12-team conferences, rather than 16 teams. Reducing the number of teams that are "in" to 48 drops some interesting teams out of the mix as far as the current program rankings go, including Louisville, NC State, Maryland, Kansas State, Baylor, Minnesota, Oregon State, Virginia and Kentucky. But remember that those teams would have a chance to play themselves into the system (and based on their performance this year, when the program rankings are recalculated at the end of this year, some of those would likely already move up into the top tier). To this point, they just have not done enough as a program, historically, to be included in our model.

That being said, this is how our proposed alignment turns out under that system. (Remember that the geographic designations are only a general guideline. Some teams may have to travel some in order to engender competitive balance between each of the divisions. And remember that by competitive balance, we don't mean year-to-year, since it is impossible to predict how good any particular program might get in a couple of years, but rather based on the overall historical success of a program, with recent success being weighted greater than distant historical success. Although history cannot predict the future, it can be used to help generate a situation that is more likely to be balanced competitively.):

East Conference

North Division
Boston College Eagles 
Georgia Bulldogs 
Penn State Nittany Lions 
Pittsburgh Panthers 
Syracuse Orange 
West Virginia Mountaineers 

South Division 
Clemson Tigers 
Florida Gators 
Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets 
Miami Hurricanes 
North Carolina Tar Heels 
South Carolina Gamecocks 

Mideast Conference 
  
North Division 
Michigan State Spartans 
Notre Dame Fighting Irish 
Ohio State Buckeyes 
Purdue Boilermakers 
Virginia Tech Hokies 
Wisconsin Badgers 

South Division 
Alabama Crimson Tide 
Auburn Tigers 
Florida State Seminoles 
Mississippi State Bulldogs 
Ole Miss Rebels
Texas A&M Aggies 

Midwest Conference 
  
North Division 
Iowa Hawkeyes 
Michigan Wolverines 
Missouri Tigers 
Oklahoma Sooners 
TCU Horned Frogs 
Tennessee Volunteers 

South Division
Arizona Wildcats 
Arizona State Sun Devils 
Arkansas Razorbacks 
LSU Tigers 
Oklahoma State Cowboys 
Texas Longhorns 

West Conference

North Division
Boise State Broncos 
Colorado Buffaloes 
Nebraska Cornhuskers 
Oregon Ducks 
Utah Utes 
Washington Huskies 

South Division 
BYU Cougars 
California Golden Bears 
Stanford Cardinal 
Texas Tech Red Raiders 
UCLA Bruins 
USC Trojans

We welcome discussion, comments, rejections, mocking, and any other response you can come up with. Please share your thoughts!