16-Team Superconferences

[Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets]

       As a follow up to my “College Football Fix” article (where I put all 130 FBS teams into 13, 10-team conferences that were balanced and regional), I have decided to make an attempt at what I believe major college football will become: the best 64 teams (most of them from the current Power 5) divided into four, 16-team “superconferences”. The conferences will be semi-regional, will be divided into two divisions each, and both the conferences and divisions within the conferences will be arranged for competitive balance. Unfortunately, I could not make rivalries as important as I did in my 130-team exercise, but I did my best. That being said, non-conference games are still possible, of course.

        First I had to narrow down the 130 FBS teams to 64 worthy inclusions. Conveniently, the Power 5 as they are currently constructed consist of 64 teams. However, ya gotta include Notre Dame. So off the bat one of the current Power 5 teams has to go. (Note: there is a real life scenario where four “superconferences” are created and Notre Dame remains an independent, but for the purpose of this exercise I will include them in a conference.) Also, if we’re going to create these “superconferences” we have to assume they will de facto break the FBS into two divisions, leaving the rest of the schools (presumably mostly made up of the Group of 5 schools) to crown their own champion. Therefore, we should include the best 64 teams from FBS. I used my ranking system from the 130-team experiment to determine the best schools. Here are those criteria again:

• 1s are considered blue blood college football powers who are expected to be in the running for a national championship every year. There are only so many of these schools and I tried to spread them out as much as possible so as not to make any of the 13 conferences too top heavy.

• 2s are teams that regularly make bowl games, have some good stretches of national relevance in their history, and in any given year could easily win one of the 13 conferences.

• 3s are teams that have had some stretches of national relevance in their history - though nothing too dominant, or if it was it was a LONG time ago (looking at you Rice) - or they are teams that have moved into FBS and have a good tradition at a previous level of competition thus know how to compete for championships. These schools could possibly win one of the 13 conferences if everything fell right in the rest of their conference, and they had a good season on the field.

• 4s are teams that for one reason or another will probably never be able to compete for their conference title (again, looking at you Rice)...but who knows.

       I allowed for some schools that are not highly ranked to be included in the “superconferences” as they have been part of the top tier of college football for such a long time ((cough)…Kansas...(cough)).

After some serious consideration I put in Navy, BYU, UCF and Boise State – along with the aforementioned Notre Dame. I removed Indiana, Wake Forest, Oregon State, Rutgers and Vanderbilt. All of those hurt for one reason or another, but you cannot argue they are better programs over the last 20-25 years than the five I replaced them with, and unfortunately the future of college football is probably going to look a lot more like the last 20 years than it will the previous 80. So without further ado, here are the conferences:

Western Conference

Coastal Division

USC

Oregon
Boise State
Stanford
California
Washington
Washington State
UCLA

Mountain Division

Texas

Texas A&M
BYU
Utah
Colorado
Texas Tech
Arizona
Arizona State

Mid-American Conference

North Division

Notre Dame

Wisconsin
Nebraska
Iowa
Iowa State
Minnesota
Northwestern
Missouri

South Division

LSU

Oklahoma
Oklahoma State
Kansas State
TCU
Baylor
Arkansas
Kansas

Continental Conference

Valley Division

Ohio State

Michigan
Michigan State
West Virginia
Louisville
Kentucky
Purdue
Illinois

Southern Division

Alabama

Auburn
FSU
Miami
Tennesee
Ole Miss
Mississippi State
UCF

Atlantic Coast Conference

Atlantic Division

Georgia

Clemson
South Carolina
Georgia Tech
North Carolina
NC State
Duke
Maryland

Coastal Division

Florida

Penn State
Pitt
Virginia Tech
Virginia
Boston College
Syracuse
Navy

What do you think?