For the good of the game

In the spirit of Ohio State petitioning the Obama administration to have their bowl ban lifted, I thought maybe it was time to petition for something more. I think we need an individual responsible for protecting college sports (specifically college football) from itself.

Here's what I have so far - let me know what you think:

Division 1 college football (FBS ) has become a jumbled mess of misaligned conferences full of vagabond teams chasing the all-mighty dollar. The Big TEN has 14 teams. Texas and Texas A&M will no longer play each other. Missouri and Kansas will no longer play each other. Penn State and Pittsburgh haven’t played each other regularly in years. Nebraska and Oklahoma – perhaps one of the top 2-3 rivalries of the 1970s and 80s was devalued by the creation of the Big 12 and has disappeared completely with Nebraska’s move to the Big1T4en. 

At what point will this end? The demolition two of the most dominant basketball conferences of the past 30 years the ACC and the Big East have shown that tradition and logic are thrown out the window to get a better football television deal.

Please exercise your executive power to create a College Football/Athletics Czar.  This position should have “For the good of the game” powers similar to what Bowie Kuhn wielded in 1970s MLB. At a minimum the Czar would have the power to review and restrict the movement of schools to illogical conferences and ideally would have the power to return conferences to something like the logical geography of the early 1990s.

Where have all the conferences gone? Realignment in FBS

It appears the Big 12 and the Big East are coming apart. There is a lot of talk of four - 16-team super conferences leaving every one else outside looking in.

The Big 12 dissolving is not really that surprising to me. The inequity of Texas getting so much more than the other schools is hard to take. And the Big 12 is really only in existence because the SWC fell apart. From the beginning when they didn't guarantee an Oklahoma-Nebraska match-up every year, I thought there were problems.

The Big East has never been a football conference in my mind - Miami's success not-withstanding. It has always been about basketball. So when BC, Miami and Virginia Tech left a few years ago, I didn't think anything of it - because they weren't basketball schools. But when Syracuse leaves - Syracuse one of the founders - one of the darlings of Madison Square Garden leaves, I realized football money trumps basketball and logic.

Will the B1G be left without a chair when the realignment music stops? Should they even play this round? Who will be left of interest?

As always there is the golden child - Notre Dame. They make perfect sense - great academics, national following, geographically perfect. They currently are in the Big East in everything but football and hockey. With the Big East losing luster, will they be forced to blink this time? I read on twitter the suggestion of ND getting the same option from the B1G (everything but football), Why would the conference take that?

Missouri? Geographical - but little else. Kansas - Basketball & geography. The other Big 12 cast offs are even less appealing.
From the east - Rutgers - near NYC geographically - but not in the minds of fans (NYC or otherwise). Louisville, UConn etc. not much to go on.

Any chance the B1G loses teams if they don't add? I don't think Nebraska wants to go anywhere again so soon. PSU has always wanted another eastern team - maybe this is their chance to run if no one new joins from the east. I'd take a ND for PSU any day - let's make that trade.

Although the B1G was ahead of the curve on the last expansion, I think they're behind now and maybe that's the right place to be.

Hypothetical geographic realigned standings (week 9)

I haven't updated this in a while, but I have updated the standings for my geographically realigned conferences. After nine weeks

Far West - close race with Arizona & Stanford both 2-0; Hawai'i, Nevada & USC are 2-1, Fresno St is 1-1 - the other teams have either more than one loss, no wins or no conference games.

Mountain - Utah is out in front at 2-0; Boise, Colorado, Oregon and Utah St are all 1-0

Plains - Nebraska is 3-0, Wisconsin is a half game back at 2-0

Rio Grande - TCU is 2-0 with Texas A&M at 1-0

Great Lakes - MSU is 5-0 - as no one else is undefeated - it will be tough to catch them (M is 2-1; with 2 more conference games)

Ohio Valley - Kentucky is 3-0, Cincinnati, OSU and Toledo are all 2-0

Gulf - Arkansas is 3-0, LSU & Southern Miss are 2-0 and Louisiana-Lafayette is 1-0

SouthEast - Alabama, Florida St and Central Florida are all 1-0

Mid Atlantic - Virginia Tech is 4-0, South Carolina is 2-0

NorthEast - Pitt is 2-0, Temple is 3-1, Penn St is 1-0

The overall conference strength is as follows:

Plains 61-38
SouthEast 56-36
NorthEast 57-39
Far West 57-40
Mountain & MidAtlantic 51-46
Great Lakes 51-51
Rio Grande 50-50
Gulf 46-51
Ohio Valley 45-58

Hypothetical geographic realigned standings (week 2)

After two weeks the FBS teams are 141-89 overall. The ranking of the created conferences are:

The Plains 19-5
Far West 16-6
Northeast 17-7
Mid Atlantic & Rio Grande 15-8
Great Lakes 14-9
Mountain 12-9
Southeast 13-10
Gulf 10-13
Ohio Valley 10-14

In Michigan's Great Lakes Conference the overall standings are:

	Overall		Conf
Great Lakes	W	L	W	L
Michigan	2		1
MSU	2		1
Notre D	1	1	1	1
Purdue	1	1		1
WMU	1	1		1
Northwestern	2
Ball St	1	1
CMU	1	1
Illinois	1	1
Indiana	1
NIU	1	1
EMU		2

Only 2 teams are 2-0 in their respective conferences. Texas Tech in the Rio Grande and Kentucky in the Ohio Valley.

I would say the MSU-ND game is one of the bigger conference games this weekend. Others include: Texas - Texas Tech, Tulsa - Ok State, CMU-EMU, Ohio - OSU among others.

Hypothetical geographic realigned standings (week 1)

You may or may not remember when I attempted to divide all 120 FBS teams into 10x12 geographically aligned conferences.

After 1 week all but three teams have played a game (NM St, ULM and Fl Int).

The FBS teams are 76-41 so far. Ranking the conferences by winning percentage so far you'd have:

Plains & Mid Atlantic (10-2)
Southeast (9-2)
Northeast (9-3)
Far West (8-4)
Rio Grande (7-4)
Great Lakes & Mountain (7-5)
Gulf (5-6)
Ohio Valley (4-8)

There were 12 conference match-ups in the opening week of games.

In the Far West - USC over Hawai'i
Mountain - CU over CSU & BYU over Washington
Rio Grande - Texas over Rice & TTU over SMU
Great Lakes - MSU over WMU & ND over Purdue (Michigan is already a 1/2 game behind two teams! But M plays them both...)
Ohio Valley - OSU over Marshall & Kentucky over Louisville
Gulf - Miss St over Memphis
SE - Fl Atl over UAB
NE - Maryland over Navy

16 Conference games this week include:
UTEP @ Houston
GTU @ So Carolina
Duke @ Wake
So Fla @ Florida
Iowa St @ Iowa
M @ Notre Dame
Ark St @ ULL
BYU @ USAFA
Ark vs. ULM
LSU @ Vandy
Toledo @ Ohio
Rice @ No Tex
WKU @ Kentucky
Idaho St @ Utah St
Miss @ Tulane
Stanford @ UCLA

Conference championship games 1993-2009

Using the determined divisions, I went back and looked at which schools would have won the respective divisions each season and determined the Big1T2en championship game match-up (where possible - Nebraska is often a variable)

Here goes:

year	Bo	Woody
2009	Iowa/Neb	OSU
2008	MSU	PSU
2007	M	OSU
2006	M	OSU
2005	M	PSU
2004	M	Wis
2003	M	OSU
2002	Iowa	OSU
2001	Neb	Ill
2000	NU/Neb	PU
1999	Neb/MSU	Wis
1998	M	Wis/OSU
1997	M/Neb	PSU(OSU/PU)
1996	NU/Neb	OSU
1995	NU/Neb	OSU
1994	Neb	PSU
1993	Neb	Wis/OSU

3 possibly 4 times since PSU joined the conference M and OSU would have met the next week. Doesn't appear that there would have been any other next week repeats. And only a few other definite repeats. Only Minnesota and Indiana failed to show up at all in the championship game.

I don't really have a problem with how the divisions came out. Nothing would be perfect, supposedly they based it on the records since 1993.

Big1T2en re-nonalignment

My theory is none of the other sports will need divisions in the new Big1T2en, why does football need them. I'll ignore the obvious answer that you can't/don't want to play all the conference teams during a football season.

Why not keep/assign rivalries, fill out the rest of the schedule rotationally and then whichever two teams end up with the best records, they play in the conference championship. Wouldn't the BCS have preferred that Oklahoma play Texas (or Texas Tech) in the Big 12 championship a couple years ago instead of Missouri?

Here's my rivalry table

Team	Rivalry 1	Rivalry 2	Rivalry 3
Illinois	N'Western	Purdue	OSU
Indiana	Purdue	N'western	MSU
Iowa	Minnesota	Wisconsin	Nebraska
Michigan	OSU	MSU	Minnesota
MSU	Michigan	PSU	Indiana
Minn	Wisconsin	Michigan	Iowa
Nebraska	Iowa	PSU	Wisconsin
N'Western	Illinois	Indiana	Purdue
OSU	Michigan	PSU	Illinois
Penn St	OSU	MSU	Nebraska
Purdue	Indiana	Illinois	N'Western
Wisconsin	Minnesota	Iowa	Nebraska

Nothing would be perfect of course. In fact there is quite a disparity in the quality of each teams trios of rivals. Looking at the past 10 years winning percentage and ordinal ranking of those winning percentages of the trios:

Team	rivalry %	Riv rank	Ordinal	Ord rank
Illinois	0.600766667	6	6.00	6.5
Indiana	0.519536667	10	8.33	10
Iowa	0.62547	4	4.67	4
Michigan	0.608326667	5	6.00	6.5
MSU	0.548256667	9	7.00	9
Minn	0.64852	2	4.17	2
Nebraska	0.638716667	3	4.50	3
N'Western	0.42925	11	10.00	11
OSU	0.572173333	8	6.67	8
Penn St	0.663706667	1	3.83	1
Purdue	0.408276667	12	11.00	12
Wisconsin	0.59705	7	5.83	5

Funny how PSU fans always think they're getting the shaft from the conference. Looks like they would have the toughest trio. However since the teams would only have 3 rivals every year instead of the 5 they would have in a divisional system, I think it would be more likely the differences would balance out in the remaining 5 or 6 conferences games.

This way you would have had a UM - OSU championship game in 2006 for instance, instead of a geographical OSU vs - Wisconsin(?) or Penn St.

College football "Manifest Destiny"

Interesting article about the future realignment of college football here. His realignment of teams into four 16 team conferences is similar to what I did. Except of course he cuts the 120 teams down to 64. Interesting cut format. He starts by talking all teams that averaged over 50,000 in home attendance. 46 teams made that cut. Then looking at teams with over 30,000 avg home attendance that added another 26 teams for the 18 spots. Several teams from current BCS conferences miss the final cut. Duke, Wake Forest, Vanderbilt, Indiana and UConn are mentioned as omitted.

He makes no mention about what happens to the FBS tames that didn't make the 64 team cut. But one commenter made an interesting suggestion, treating it like a European Futbol league where the top non-qualifiers have a chance to replace the "worst" teams in the sweet 64 each season.

I like the concept - But I'd probably stick to six or eight 10 or 12 team conferences. so maybe 60-72 or 80-96 teams would make more sense to me.

FBS realignment Follow up

I started here with a realignment of the 120 FBS college football teams into ten 12 team conferences. I wanted to look at the relative strengths of the proposed conferences. Here are the results based on one year of CFRC final standings:

Conference	Range	Mean	Median	Std Dv
Far West	20-113	61.67	57.00	28.21
Mountain	4-110	53.42	47.50	37.11
Plains	11-89	46.50	54.50	25.63
Rio Grande	3-117	69.92	71.50	41.66
Great Lakes	32-120	78.33	79.00	25.94
Ohio Valley	6-119	75.92	79.50	37.08
Gulf	14-111	72.58	88.00	34.97
South East	1-107	49.08	49.00	32.96
Mid Atl	8-82	44.08	39.50	24.32
NorthEast	10-104	53.50	41.50	31.61

Based on this data, Michigan's Great Lakes Conference was arguably the weakest last season - a case could also be made for the Ohio Valley and Gulf conferences. The Mid-Atlantic, NorthEast and SouthEast were the strongest.

I was curious if there is a built in bias towards BCS schools. The Mid Atlantic conference does have 11 BCS school out of the 12 (poor ECU) at the other end of the scale The Rio Grande and the Ohio Valley only have 4 BCS schools. The GL has a respectable 7 of 12 (counting Notre Dame).
I hope to follow these proposed conferences this season to see how they fair.

FBS Conference realignment

With all the talk about adding teams to the Big1T1en, I thought maybe the best thing to do would be to realign all the conferences. My criteria was create ten twelve team conferences. Based geographically. This would result in 16 team tournament with the conference champions and 6 at large teams.

Here is my first attempt at the 10 conferences:

Far West	Mountain	Plains	Rio Grande	Great Lakes
Arizona	Ore St	Iowa	Baylor	Ball St
ASU	WSU	Iowa St	Houston	CMU
Cal	Oregon	Kansas	NMSt	EMU
Fresno St	Washington	KSU	No Tex	Illinois
Hawaii	Colorado	Minnesota	Rice	Indiana
Nevada	BYU	Mizzou	SMU	Michigan
SDSU	Utah	Nebraska	TCU	MSU
SJSt	Air Force	Ok St	Texas	NIU
Stanford	Colorado St	Oklahoma	Tx A&M	Northwestern
UCLA	Boise St	Tulsa	Tx Tech	Notre D
UNLV	Idaho	Wisconsin	UNM	Purdue
USC	Utah St	Wyoming	UTEP	WMU
Ohio Valley	Gulf	South East	Mid Atlantic	NorthEast
Akron	Ark St	Alabama	Clemson	Army
BGSU	Arkansas	Auburn	Duke	BC
Cincinnati	La Tech	Fl Atl	ECU	Buffalo
Kent	LSU	Fl Int	Ga Tech	Maryland
Kentucky	Memphis	Florida	Georgia	Navy
Louisville	Miss St	FSU	NC St	Penn St
Marshall	Mississippi	Miami	So Carolina	Pitt
Miami (OH)	So Miss	MTSU	Tennessee	Rutgers
Ohio	Tulane	S. Flo	UNC	Syracuse
Ohio St	ULL	Troy	Va Tech	Temple
Toledo	ULM	UAB	Virginia	U Conn
WKU	Vandy	UCF	Wake	WVU