Conference Realignment: One Solution To Rule Them All

I originally presented this system last year, and I continue to believe it is the best way to restructure college football in this era of big money. Currently, big money is driving every bad decision in college athletics, from the southeastern conference adding a school from a state that was not even in the Confederacy to the Big East adding a team from San Diego to its ranks. (Just think about that last one for a moment and soak in its absurdity.)

My new system is based upon three primary changes. Those changes are:

1) Separate the organization and structure of college football from all other sports (all football conferences are "football-only").

2) Reorganize all football conferences along geographic lines.

3) Implement a system of promotion and relegation within Division I football.

The primary benefits of these changes, all of which are major and sorely needed, in my opinion, are:

1) Allow schools who have top-tier football programs to enjoy the money associated with big-time college football without having to hamstring basketball and non-revenue sports with huge travel budgets.

2) Preserve historic rivalries and natural geographic matchups in all sports.

3) Provide a guaranteed path for "lower-tier" schools to be able to legitimately compete for a national championship based wholly on merit.

None of the current athletic conferences would need to be dissolved. In fact, virtually all of them could keep operating as they are today with their "regular" membership in all sports except football, and with a "football-only" division that is completely separate. (Though I suspect that if this change were passed, a new wave of realignment would occur that would bring many schools' non-revenue sports back into, more or less, their previous historical places.) For that reason, I have used current conference names in the "stacks" I have created below.

For reference purposes, here is the current conference alignment as it looked for the 2012 football season (and it gets even crazier in 2013):

And here is the new conference/stack map for the promotion/relegation system:

Have I piqued your interest? Then, please, read on...

The stack breakdown by state is as follows. (The total number of schools in the stack is in parentheses.) Every Division I school in each state is in the associated stack, with the lone exception of Miami (FL), who is in the ACC stack. I did this both for competitive reasons and because of the fact that Miami has far more in common from a demographics standpoint with the Atlantic seaboard and northern schools than with the schools in the southeast. Miami (FL) is literally the only exception to my geographically-based rule. Here is the state breakdown:

SEC stack (45): GA, FL, AL, MS, SC, TN, KY

ACC stack (57): NC, VA, WV, VA, DC, MD, DE, NJ, CT, RI, MA, PA, NY, NH, VT, ME

Big Ten stack (40): OH, IN, MI, IL, WI, MN, IA, ND, SD

Big XII stack (42): LA, TX, AR, OK, KS, NE, NM, CO, WY

Pac-12 stack (33): CA, AZ, UT, NV, OR, WA, ID, MT, HI

Now, when flaming my conference alignment in the comments below, please remember that I haven't changed the 8-game conference schedule or the 12-game overall schedule, so out-of-conference matchups are always available to teams who are no longer grouped in the same stack or conference.

Also, remember that conference membership will literally change every year, with the best two performers advancing a level and the worst two performers dropping a level.

Here are the promotion/relegation rules:

- Each of the top two tiers is a twelve-team league with two divisions. The third tier (historically the Division I-AA teams) is broken down into two conferences, which are not limited in size.
- At the end of the regular season, the team in each division with the worst conference record is relegated to the league on the next lower tier.
- At the end of the season, the second-tier team who wins their division is promoted to the top-tier league in their stack.
- At the end of the season, the winners of each of the two third-tier conferences is promoted to the second-tier league in their stack. (For the Pac-12 stack, which only has one third-tier conference, the top two finishers from that league are promoted.) For very large third-tier conferences, this might necessitate a playoff due to equivalent conference records (if whatever tiebreakers are in place are tied, as well).

For the first season, each stack breaks down as follows:

SEC	(Top)
East	West
Clemson	Alabama
Florida	Auburn
Florida State	Mississippi State
Georgia	Ole Miss
Ga. Tech	Tennessee
South Carolina	Vanderbilt

Conference USA	(Second-Tier)
East	West
Florida Atlantic	Kentucky
Florida International	Louisville
Troy	Memphis
UAB	Middle Tenn. State
Central Florida	Southern Miss
South Florida	Western Kentucky

Third-Tier Conferences
Southern Conference (TN, AL, KY, MS)	Big South Conference (GA, FL, SC)
Austin Peay	Charleston Southern
Chattanooga	The Citadel
Eastern Kentucky	Coastal Carolina
Jacksonville State (AL)	Furman
Morehead State	Georgia Southern
Murray State	Georgia State
Samford	Jacksonville U. (FL)
South Alabama	Presbyterian
Tennessee-Martin	Wofford
Tennessee State
Tennessee Tech

If this system were in place in 2012:

Relegated: Georgia Tech (to Conference USA)
Tennessee Auburn (to Conference USA)
Florida Atlantic (to Big South)
Southern Miss (to Southern Conference)

Promoted: Central Florida (to SEC)
Louisville (to SEC)
Eastern Kentucky (to Conference USA)
Georgia Southern (to Conference USA)

ACC	(Top)
North	South
Boston College	Miami (FL)
Penn State	NC State
Pitt	North Carolina
Syracuse	Virginia Tech
UConn	Virginia
West Virginia	Wake Forest

Big East	(Second-Tier)
North	South
Army	Appalachian State
Buffalo	Duke
Delaware	East Carolina
Rutgers	Marshall
Temple	Maryland
Villanova	Navy

Third-Tier Conferences
Colonial Athletic Association (DC, KY, MD, NC, VA, WV)	Patriot League (CT, DE, MA, ME, NH, NJ, NY, PA, RI)
Campbell	Bryant
Davidson	Bucknell
Elon	Central Conn. St.
Gardner-Webb	Colgate
Georgetown	Duquesne
James Madison	Fordham
Liberty	Holy Cross (MA)
Old Dominion	Lafayette
Richmond	Lehigh
Towson	Maine
VMI	Marist
Western Carolina	Monmouth
William & Mary	New Hampshire
	Rhode Island
	Sacred Heart
	St. Francis (PA)
	SUNY-Albany
	SUNY-Stony Brook
	UMass
	Wagner

If this system were in place in 2012:

Relegated: Boston College (to Big East)
Virginia (to Big East)
Army or Delaware (to Patriot League)
Maryland or Appalachian State (to CAA)

Promoted: Rutgers (to ACC)
Duke or East Carolina (to ACC)
Old Dominion (to Big East)
Stony Brook or Lehigh (to Big East)

Big Ten	(Top)
East	West
Indiana	Illinois
Michigan	Iowa
Notre Dame	Minnesota
Ohio State	Northwestern
Purdue	Wisconsin
Michigan State	Iowa State

Mid-American Conference	(Second-Tier)
East	West
Cincinnati	Northern Illinois
Akron	Central Michigan
Kent	Eastern Michigan
Bowling Green	Western Michigan
Miami (OH)	Toledo
Ohio U.	Ball State

Third-Tier Conferences
Pioneer Conference (IA, ND, SD, IL)	Ohio Valley Conference (IN, OH, MI)
Drake	Butler
North Dakota	Dayton
North Dakota State	Valparaiso
South Dakota	Indiana State
South Dakota State	Youngstown State
Northern Iowa
Eastern Illinois
Illinois State
Southern Illinois
Western Illinois
Robert Morris

If this system were in place in 2012:

Relegated: Indiana (to MAC)
Illinois (to MAC)
Akron (to Ohio Valley)
Eastern Michigan (to Ohio Valley)

Promoted: Cincinnati (to B1G)
Northern Illinois (to B1G)
North Dakota State (to MAC)
Butler (to MAC)

Big XII	(Top)
North	South
Kansas	Arkansas
Kansas State	LSU
Missouri	Oklahoma
Nebraska	Texas Tech
Oklahoma State	Texas
TCU	Texas A&M

Mountain West	(Second-Tier)
East	West
Colorado	Air Force
Louisiana Tech	Baylor
Louisiana-Lafayette	Colorado State
Houston	Tulsa
Rice	UTEP
SMU	Wyoming

Third-Tier Conferences
Southland Conference (LA, AR)	Missouri Valley Conference (TX, NM, CO, MO)
Louisiana-Monroe	North Texas
Tulane	New Mexico
McNeese State	New Mexico State
Nicholls State	UT San Antonio
Northwestern State (LA)	Lamar
Southeastern Louisiana	Sam Houston State
Arkansas State	Stephen F. Austin
Central Arkansas	Texas State
	Northern Colorado
	Missouri State
	SE Missouri State

If this system were in place in 2012:

Relegated: Kansas (to Mountain West)
Arkansas (to Mountain West)
Colorado (to Missouri Valley)
UTEP (to Missouri Valley)

Promoted: Louisiana Tech (to Big XII)
Baylor or Tulsa (to Big XII)
Louisiana-Monroe (to Mountain West)
New Mexico (to Mountain West)

Pac-12	(Top)
North	South
Boise State	Arizona
Cal	Arizona State
Oregon	BYU
Oregon State	UCLA
Stanford	USC
Washington	Utah

WAC	(Second-Tier)
North	South
Fresno State	Hawaii
Idaho	Nevada
Washington State	UNLV
Montana	Utah State
Eastern Washington	San Diego State
San Jose State	Northern Arizona

Third-Tier Conference

Great West Conference (CA, UT, OR, ID, MT)

San Diego U.

Cal Poly

Southern Utah

UC-Davis

Portland State

Sacramento State

Weber State

Idaho State

Montana State

If this system were in place in 2012:

Relegated: Cal (to WAC)
Utah (to WAC)
Idaho or Montana (to Great West)
UNLV (to Great West)

Promoted: San Jose State (to Pac-12)
Utah State (to Pac-12)
Montana State (to WAC)
Cal Poly (to WAC)

I think this is an equitable system, and it completely eliminates the threat of further realignment. If a team from the lower tiers wants to play their way up into big-boy football, they have a path with which to do just that.

Please also note that I'm not dealing with the postseason at all in this post. In fact, you could ostensibly still have the Division I-AA playoffs, since Division I-AA is now just the third tier of football. Heck for people who love playoffs, you could even have a new playoff between the champions of the tier two leagues. But the bottom line is that this system is created to deal with the sport as a whole and the regular season, not the postseason.

The real sticking point, from a practical standpoint, is the issue of scholarships. Today's schools in Division I-A (tiers one and two in this system) currently are allowed 85 scholarships, while Division I-AA schools (tier three in this system) are only allowed 60 scholarships. I think that issue could be overcome, however, either by simply lifting the I-AA scholarship limit to 85 or by providing a special "golden parachute" provision for schools that get relegated to tier three by allowing them to phase down to 60 scholarships over a two-year period.

Let me know what you think in the comment section below!

Go Dawgs!