Make NCAA Football Its Own Separate Entity

With the news of Texas A&M departing for the SEC, and the likelihood of Oklahoma, Oklahoma State, Texas, and Texas Tech going west to form a 16 team PAC, it appears as if the Big 12 conference may soon become extinct.

That leaves Kansas, Kansas State, Baylor, Missouri, and Iowa State left standing at the grave of the former Big 12 and without a conference schedule to play.

Here we go again. So much for old rivalries like Oklahoma vs Nebraska!

The time has come for Division-I NCAA football to separate itself from the rest of college athletics. Seriously, why not consider this? In college, D-1 football does what it wants anyways. It is the only major sport that doesn’t settle it’s championship by a playoff. The majority of money made for the schools is generated by football. So instead of destroying rivalries in every sport, why not savor what we already have and let football do it’s own thing?

The solution is simple. With the exception of football, keep all of the conferences as they are formed currently. That would save the schools tons of money keeping the rest of it’s athletic programs like baseball, softball, volleyball, etc, in close proximity to their location. Does Colorado’s baseball team really need to travel to Oregon and Washington when they should be playing Kansas and Nebraska? Do you think Oklahoma softball fans are going to travel to UCLA and Arizona, when it is much more sensible for them to travel to Baylor and Kansas State? ACC basketball purists are still livid over conference expansion thanks to football. Do you honestly think these people want ACC basketball diluted even more?

College Athletics has gotten way out of hand. The players and the fans are just bit players in a billion dollar industry. Let’s end some of this madness by letting D-1 football become separate from the rest of the NCAA and help preserve what we still have in NCAA Division I Basketball, because let’s face it, I don’t want to see an end to Big East basketball as we know it. The Big East needs more teams in football, but adding these same teams into the basketball conference is ridiculous. For once, why don’t we try to have our cake and eat it, too?

My proposal for new Division-I football realignment, which does NOT include realigning the rest of college athletics, is to create 6 super conferences of 14 teams, creating two 7 team divisions in each conference.

*Each team has a 12 game schedule.

*You play all 6 teams in your division, plus three games against the other division, which rotates yearly. That leaves 3 exhibition games on the slate for every team.

*The two division winners play vs each other in the Conference Championship. The winners of these championship games advance to a EIGHT team playoff, which will include 2 additional teams, 1 being the highest ranked team that did NOT win their conference championship AND the highest ranked team NOT affiliated with the Power 5, which will be seeded 8th. This adds the element of the Cinderella Team.

*The 6 Conference Champions will be seeded according to ranking.

*#1 vs #8 / #2 vs #7/ #3 vs #6/ #4 vs #5

*Each round the highest seed will face the lowest seed.

*The Major Bowls (Rose, Fiesta, Orange, Sugar, Cotton) all rotate yearly for the National Title game, and two additional bowls will rotate in for the playoff games.

All teams not included in the 8 team playoff and that have winning records enter the Bowl Games.

Here are the conferences after realignment:

ACC: Duke, Central Florida, Clemson, East Carolina, Florida State, Georgia Tech, Maryland, Miami, North Carolina, North Carolina State, Wake Forest, UAB, Virginia, Virginia Tech

Big East: Boston College, Cincinnati, Connecticut, Louisville, Marshall, Northern Illinois, Navy, Notre Dame, Pitt, Rutgers, South Florida, Syracuse, TCU, West Virginia

Big Ten: Akron, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Michigan, Michigan State, Minnesota, Nebraska, Northwestern, Ohio State, Toledo, Wisconsin, Penn State, Purdue

Big 12: Baylor, Houston, Iowa State, Kansas, Kansas State, Missouri, Oklahoma, Oklahoma State, Rice, SMU, Texas, Texas Tech, Tulane, Tulsa

PAC 10: Arizona, Arizona State, Boise State, BYU, California, Colorado, Oregon, Oregon State, Stanford, UCLA, USC, Utah, Washington, Washington State

SEC: Alabama, Arkansas, Auburn, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, LSU, Mississippi,
Mississippi State, South Carolina, Southern Mississippi, Tennessee, Texas A&M, Vanderbilt

To me, this realignment scenario fits the best, and the plan is to keep everyone as close to each other as possible, which saves money for these institutions, and provides the fans the possibility of a few road trips during the season. It’s not perfect by any means, but I fear college athletics will never be perfect anyways, so why not construct a system that will reward not only the players and teams, but the fans, as well? The madness of never ending conference realignment has to be stopped. Stability is needed.

I’m sure ESPN, ABC, CBS, NBC and FOX can come up with a creative way to make lucrative TV contracts work for these 6 conferences, too.

The rest of the lower tier Division I conferences would then be to forced to reshape as well, but you can’t make an omelette without cracking a few eggs. In the end, I believe everyone will be happy with less travel and scheduling conflicts.

Perhaps this may take an Act of Congress to force this, but really, enough is enough. Whatever occurs, the fact remains: Something has to be done before college athletics are ruined forever.

And we don’t want that, do we?


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