The most common idea for a future College Football format is 4 16-team superconferences. However, I’m not a huge fan of simply taking the current major conferences and just eliminating one (most people kill the big 12), and there are currently 64 teams in the major conferences, which doesn’t leave a spot to add Notre Dame. So, what if we just said, “we don’t need tradition?” We’re going to create 4 16-team superconferences that are brand new in an attempt to get 64 teams that deserve to be in the best conferences and to have the conferences make geographical sense, so that teams aren’t flying halfway across the country every week for their games. An important note to be made is that these conferences should be used for football only, which would be a radical change for the NCAA, but I think it would make specifically college football the best that it could be, but it would mess up other sports. That’s why I want to specify that this should be a football only alignment, not used for all sports. In a previous article of mine, which you can view here, I talked about the current small conference teams that most deserve a spot in a major conference. In this article, I’ll discuss which teams I’m kicking out and why, and simply state what team is replacing them. We’ll get to what teams will be in what conference, scheduling and playoff format after that.

 

Current Power 5 teams being dropped:

Rutgers

Rutgers enjoyed brief success in the late 2000’s as the Big East was dying, and briefly was out of being in a major conference after the Big East dropped football, spending a year in the American Athletic Conference before the Big Ten picked them up. They actually went 8-5 in their first year in the Big 10, beating North Carolina in the Quick Lane Bowl, beating Michigan and still going just 3-5 in Big 10 play. They’ve finished no better than 4-8 in the last 4 years and winning no more than 3 conference games in a year. They went to 9 bowl games in 10 years from 2005-2014, mostly playing in the weakening Big East, but they have a total of 1 other bowl game in school history, back in 1978. Their football teams looks worthy of being in a major conference about once every 30 years, and spends about 5 years being good before slipping back down. It’s time to put that cycle to rest and put them down. They’ll be replaced by Notre Dame.

Kansas

The Jayhawks went 12-1 in 2007, including an 11-0 start that put them all the way up to #2 in the AP Poll before losing to rival Missouri, costing them a shot at the Big 12 championship, before beating Virginia Tech in the Orange bowl to cap the best season in Kansas history. And yes, they finished in the top 10 in 1992, and in 1968 they won the Big 8 and were ranked 7 in the final AP Poll and, wait, we just went back 50 years for the third impressive season. Those are the only 3 years since 1908 that Kansas has won 9 or more games in a season. They’ve won no more than 3 games in a year, and a total of 16 games, since 2010. That’s an average of a little less than 2 wins a year for a 9 year stretch. Sorry, new head coach Les Miles, you’re too late to save this team. They’ll be replaced by Houston.

Indiana

Indiana has never won 10 games in a season. Ever. They’ve won 2 Big Ten championships in over 100 years in the conference. They have 3 bowl wins in school history, having appeared in just one Rose Bowl following the 1967 season, losing 14-3 to USC. They have a .419 winning percentage all time, one of the worst of any FBS team, and they’ve been around longer than a vast majority of those below them. They have the most losses of all FBS teams. They’ve been awful forever, and they haven’t won 8 games in a quarter century, since 1993. They haven’t been ranked since the week of September 20th, 1994, the longest streak by far of any Power 5 conference team. It seems there’s simply nothing that can be done for the Hoosiers. At least they have basketball. They’ll be replaced by Boise State.

Wake Forest

Wake Forest’s .411 all-time win percentage is the worst among any current Power 5 conference team. They, like Indiana, have 2 conference championships in school history, winning the ACC in 1970 and 2006. Among the “tobacco road” rivalries of the 4 ACC teams in the state of North Carolina, Wake Forest has losing records against North Carolina, Duke and NC State, with 37-57-2 against Duke being the “best,” or least bad, of those. Wake Forest also has the smallest student body of any power 5 team, and is 6th smallest in the FBS, behind just Rice, Tulsa, Army, Navy and Air Force. So while some factors have been out of their control, the fact is they haven’t had much success in their schools history, so they’re out. They’ll be replaced by San Diego State.

Vanderbilt

James Franklin led the Commodores to back-to-back 9-4 seasons in 2012 and 2013, which were there first 9-win seasons since 1915. Like Indiana, they have 0 10-win seasons in school history, and they haven’t won any SEC championships despite being a charter member and having played 85 years in the conference. They last won a conference championship in 1923, when they played in the Southern Conference. They have never been ranked in a preseason AP Poll, and have been ranked just 3 times in a postseason AP Poll. Despite this, they have a nearly .500 all-time record at 600–613–50, due in large part to the fact that they have never had a winless season. They have never even appeared in an SEC championship game, which have been played since 1987, another sign of their futility and reason for them to get bumped. They’ll be replaced by BYU.

Oregon State

The Beavers had a nice run from 1999-2013, going to 11 bowl games, being ranked at some point in 11 of those seasons, and winning a share of the PAC-10 title in 2000. 2000 was also the first time they were ranked since 1968. It was their first PAC-10 title since 1964, which was also their last bowl game before 1999. From 1971-1998 they had 0 winning seasons, with 9 seasons of 1 win or fewer. That’s hideous. So sure, they were pretty good in the 50’s and 60’s and had another run about 50 years later, but that’s not good enough for a power conference team to excuse what happened in the middle, along with the fact that they have 9 total wins in the past 4 seasons, so it appears they’re headed for another drought. They’ll be replaced by Cincinnati.

Duke

Duke football was really good. From the 30’s until about 1962. Since then, they’ve served as something to watch before basketball season starts, but not nearly as much fun. They’ve been ranked once in a postseason AP Poll since 1961, in 2013 when they played in the ACC Championship Game. They lost that game, 45-7, and along with a tie for the conference crown in 1989 that’s the best they’ve done in conference since ’62. David Cutcliffe has managed to make the Blue Devils no longer a doormat in the ACC, as they’ll finish this year above .500 for the 5th time in the past 6 years, but a 50 year span that saw more winless seasons (4) than bowl appearances (3), and more years of 2 or fewer wins (14) than above .500 (10) from 1963-2012 is enough to have them be kicked out of the power 5. They’ll be replaced by UCF.

Iowa State

The Cyclones technically won shares of the Missouri Valley Intercollegiate Athletic Association in 1911 and 1912, going a combined 4-0-1 in conference play those two years. They haven’t won a conference title since. They tied for the Big 12 North division in 2004 (at 4-4 in conference), but Colorado was selected to play in the championship game, and got blown out by undefeated Oklahoma anyway. They’ve been ranked just twice by a final AP Poll, never higher than 19, and have spent a grand total of one week ranked in the top ten in school history (#9 in the AP Poll the week of October 13th, 2002). Another team that has never won 10 games in a season, the Cyclones reached 9 wins in 2000, the last time they were ranked in a postseason poll. They’re almost never terrible, but they’re never very good either. They won’t be missed. They’ll be replaced by USF.

 

4 Superconference Setup

Instead of naming the conferences after the current conferences and just getting rid of one (probably the big 12, their teams end up the most split up), I decided to use the names of former, now defunct conferences, for reasons including the fact that I like the names and they were in areas roughly the same as where the teams in these conferences were located. I couldn’t find logos for the conferences, so our team came up with logos for them.

 

Freedom Football Conference:

North: Boston College, Maryland, North Carolina State, Penn State, Pittsburgh, Syracuse, Virginia, Virginia Tech

South: Central Florida, Clemson, Florida, Florida State, Miami, North Carolina, South Carolina, South Florida

Pioneer Conference:

East: Cincinnati, Louisville, Michigan, Michigan State, Notre Dame, Ohio State, Purdue, West Virginia

West: Illinois, Iowa, Kansas State, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, Northwestern, Wisconsin

Dixie Conference:

East: Alabama, Auburn, Georgia, Georgia Tech, Kentucky, Mississippi State, Ole Miss, Tennessee

West: Arkansas, Baylor, Houston, LSU, Oklahoma, Oklahoma State, TCU, Texas A&M

Frontier Conference:

North: Boise State, Cal, Colorado, Oregon, Stanford, Utah, Washington, Washington State

South: Arizona, Arizona State, BYU, San Diego State, Texas, Texas Tech, UCLA, USC

 

So there we have it. 4 16-team conferences, 8 8-team divisions, and about as much balance as there currently is in college football. Not enough. I thought I could fix it, and I was wrong. The South is the best conference, I had to give the East the state of Florida and put Texas the West to give those conferences a chance, and dear lord are there some bad divisions (Freedom North, Pioneer West, Frontier North most years, Frontier South based on this year). Overall though, it gives us 4 very good conferences that we can work with for the playoff.

Scheduling and Playoff Format

Every team will play all 7 other teams in their division, along with 2 crossover games from the other division in their conference. Each team will be required to play at least one other team from the Power 4 conferences in their out of conference schedule. This will ensure every team has played a difficult schedule, and while strength of schedule will always vary, teams in serious conversation for the playoff will have played good teams no matter what.

The 8-team playoff will start with the 4 conference champions getting automatic bids. The other 4 spots will still be selected via the playoff committee, and they will still have a full top 25 ranking to determine seeding and help with bowl selections outside the playoff. The first round of the playoff will be held at 4 bowl games, let’s go with the original 4 games the BCS used, the Rose, Fiesta, Sugar, and Orange bowls. The semifinals can be named simply as the national semifinal games, and those could happen at the sites of the Cotton and Peach bowls, as the stadiums in Dallas and Atlanta are beautiful and there’s a reason those were added, but the Peach bowl especially hasn’t quite been as big as the other 5. The national championship game will be played at rotating sites. As for the times of these games, the quarterfinals will be played the Friday and Saturday before Christmas, with them being played no later than Christmas Eve. On years when Christmas falls on a Saturday, these games will instead be played on the Thursday and Friday that would be the 23rd and 24th. The semifinals will be played one week later, with the winners of the Friday games playing Friday and Saturday game winners that Saturday. When Christmas and New Year’s Day are on a Saturday, they’ll get an extra day of rest and still play Friday and Saturday. The Championship Game will be played on the second Monday of the new year, so that it will be just over a week after the semifinal, very similar to how it is now.

I think this would be a very entertaining system, and I think that if these conferences were used for football only this would work. I understand the problems of kicking teams like Indiana, Kansas and Duke out of major conferences for basketball purposes, and I wouldn’t want to do that, but let those basketball schools be basketball schools and their football doesn’t have to be that good (think UConn, or in a more extreme example, Villanova). This format probably makes it even harder for small conference teams to get into the playoff, which sucks for them, but the last time a team that wouldn’t be in these major conferences was Army in 1945, and that really only happened because of World War II. Other than Army’s back-to-back championships in ’44 and ’45, you have to go back to 1927 when Yale and Illinois were declared champions by different selections 9 years before the Associated Press started their polls. There is still one more idea I have for college football formatting for the future, so watch out for that in a few weeks. Until next time,

CM

Stats and information gathered from ESPN and sports-reference.com