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People like to throw out scenarios on how to "fix" college football. I'm no different. My idea is broad, wide-ranging, and will never, ever happen. That doesn't matter. It's my damned idea. I would take the existing 119 Division I-A teams (as of the addition of Florida International and Florida Atlantic beginning in 2005), and add in 61 teams from Division I-AA, leaving us with 180 teams. These teams are broken into 15 12-team conferences, and those 15 conferences are divided into five regions. Each region would have an "A" conference (ACC, SEC, Big Ten, Big Twelve, and Pac-10), a "B" conference (Big East, Conference USA, Mid-American, Mountain West, and WAC), and a "C" conference (Atlantic Ten, Southern, Ohio Valley, Gateway, and Big Sky). The teams in the "C" conference would continue to have their own playoff system (all five conference champs plus three at-large teams, or all 10 division champs plus six at-large teams), and would be ineligible for the big prize. The champions of all the "A" and "B" conferences, plus a second team from each of the "A" conferences and one extra at-large team, would compete in a 16-team playoff at the end of the regular season. In addition, each conference in the "A" and "B" levels would determine their last-place team (either by declaring one team to be the last-place team using tiebreakers, or by having them play off at the end of the season. The last-place team in each "B" level conference would be sent down to that region's "C" conference, while the region's "C" conference champion would move up to replace them. Because some stability in the "A" conferences is vitally important, however, this would only happen between the "A" and "B" levels if the same team finished in last place in the "A" level conference two years in a row, and the same team was the "B" level champion two years in a row. (The stability argument works both ways, by the way; it's not just that an "A" level team isn't going to be excited to move down a level, but a "B" level team might not necessarily be all that thrilled about moving up for competition purposes, although it would certainly be a bonus in the pocketbook.) You could also have a mechanism for teams to move up into the 180-team field from below, but I'm not too interested in getting into it. As it is, I've condemned the rest of Division I-AA to basically having to move down to Division II. The regions: EASTERN: "A" - Atlantic Coast (remains unchanged) ATLANTIC COASTAL Boston College Duke Clemson Georgia Tech Florida State Miami (FL) Maryland North Carolina North Carolina State Virginia Wake Forest Virginia Tech "B" - Big East EAST WEST Army Cincinnati Connecticut Louisville Massachusetts Pittsburgh Navy South Florida Rutgers Syracuse Temple West Virginia (Army and Navy join from the independent ranks, Temple is let back in just because, and Massachusetts becomes the team I forcibly drag up from Division I-AA to get us up to 120 "A" and "B" teams. These additions, as well as the clear current weakness of the Big East, are why they slip to a "B" ranking.) "C" - Atlantic Ten NORTH SOUTH Hofstra Delaware Lehigh James Madison Maine Lafayette New Hampshire Richmond Northeastern Villanova Rhode Island William & Mary (Having lost UMass, the A-10 snatches up Lafayette and Lehigh; the only other team which makes both geographic and competitive sense would be Colgate, and I preferred to keep Lafayette and Lehigh in the same conference.) SOUTHERN: "A" - Southeastern (remains unchanged) EAST WEST Florida Alabama Georgia Arkansas Kentucky Auburn South Carolina Louisiana State Tennessee Mississippi Vanderbilt Mississippi State "B" - Conference USA (remains unchanged from 2005 lineup) EAST WEST Alabama-Birmingham Houston Central Florida Rice East Carolina Southern Methodist Marshall Texas-El Paso Memphis Tulane Southern Mississippi Tulsa "C" - Southern NORTH SOUTH Appalachian State Citadel Chattanooga Furman Eastern Kentucky Georgia Southern Elon McNeese State Western Carolina Northwestern State Western Kentucky Wofford (The current Southern lineup, plus the two generally-successful Louisiana schools from the Southland and two of the Kentucky schools from the Ohio Valley and Gateway. Both of those conferences survive, but the Southland gets swallowed up by other conferences -- a casualty of geography.) MIDWEST: "A" - Big Ten NORTH SOUTH Michigan Illinois Michigan State Indiana Minnesota Iowa Notre Dame Purdue Northwestern Penn State Wisconsin Ohio State (Adding Notre Dame to get to 12 teams, just like everyone really expects someday. The divisions... I just couldn't think of a more sensible way to do it.) "B" - Mid-American (remains unchanged from 2005 lineup) EAST WEST Akron Ball State Bowling Green Central Michigan Buffalo Eastern Michigan Kent Miami (OH) Ohio Northern Illinois Toledo Western Michigan "C" - Ohio Valley NORTH SOUTH Dayton Austin Peay State Eastern Illinois Davidson Morehead State Jacksonville State Murray State Samford Southeast Missouri St. Tennessee State Tennessee-Martin Tennessee Tech (Filling out their numbers from the Pioneer conference; two of these teams are former Ohio Valley members anyway, and Dayton's got some interesting history. Davidson would have more logically gone to the Southern while Eastern Kentucky stayed here, but I felt it appropriate to keep them with their Pioneer cohorts.) GREAT PLAINS: "A" - Big XII (remains unchanged) NORTH SOUTH Colorado Baylor Iowa State Oklahoma Kansas Oklahoma State Kansas State Texas Missouri Texas A&M Nebraska Texas Tech "B" - Mountain West EAST WEST Air Force Boise State Colorado State Fresno State Louisiana Tech Hawai'i New Mexico Nevada Texas Christian Nevada-Las Vegas Wyoming San Diego State (As you can see, Utah and BYU have disappeared... filling out the ranks with the five teams which are generally at the top of the WAC.) "C" - Gateway NORTH Drake Nicholls State Illinois State Sam Houston State Indiana State Southern Illinois Northern Iowa Southwest Missouri State Western Illinois Stephen F. Austin Youngstown State Texas State (The remainder of the Southland ends up here, along with Drake from the Pioneer conference to keep Northern Iowa company. Another case where I could have done things differently by leaving Western Kentucky here and sending Nicholls State to the Southern with their fellow Louisiana cohorts, but chose this route.) WESTERN: "A" - Pacific Ten UNIVERSITY STATE Arizona Arizona State California Brigham Young California-Los Angeles Oregon State Oregon Southern California Utah Stanford Washington Washington State (Stealing BYU and Utah to make up the 12. Since you have 6 clear pairs of natural rivals in the Pac-10, I thought it would be cute to keep them all separated... and I also decided to keep the private schools in ONE division. Because I'm evil.) "B" - Western EAST WEST Florida Atlantic Arkansas State Florida International Idaho Louisiana-Lafayette New Mexico State Louisiana-Monroe North Texas Middle Tennessee State San Jose State Troy Utah State (Weakest of the "B" levels, clearly, but what can you do? This is, precisely, "what's left of the WAC" plus the Sun Belt. "C" - Big Sky EAST WEST Montana Eastern Washington Montana State California-Davis North Dakota State Idaho State Northern Arizona Portland State Northern Colorado Sacramento State South Dakota State Weber State (I just grabbed what I thought would be the best four Great West teams to fill out this lineup.) |