There is going to be change in the landscape of college football, of that there is zero doubt. Whether it happens all at once or gradual doesn’t really matter, it’s coming. No one knows for certain what will transpire, where some schools will end up, and most importantly, it seems, if there will finally be a playoff in college football.
Earlier this week SEC commissioner Mike Slive made a statement in his weekly press conference.
The SEC has no "immediate plans" to add a 14th team, he said. Slive said the conference isn't "thinking in terms of numbers" and that the league only considers the strength of the SEC and the "attractiveness of Texas A&M as an institution."
Here at Track Em Tigers, we have been over where we thought the fallout began, and who was to blame, but in reality, none of that matters. What does matter is that conference realignment will take place like a shifting of the landscape during a major earthquake.
Jerry Hinnen of CBSSports.com posted this Tuesday of this week.
According to the report, University of Texas president Bill Powers and athletic director DeLoss Dodds flew to Oklahoma Sunday for a meeting with Sooners officials. Powers' and Dodds' aim: convince Oklahoma (and by association, joined-at-the-hip in-state rival Oklahoma State) to remain in the Big 12 and forgo applying for membership in the Pac-12.
http://eye-on-college-football.blogs.cbssports.com/mcc/blogs/entry/24156338/31952360
There are almost as many opinions as there are scenarios pertaining to league expansion, that are floating around in cyber space. What follows is a combination of a group discussion I was involved in this past weekend. It is going to take some time to explain, so bear with me.
continue reading after the jump...
Once the NCAA allows those changes in college football, it will never be able to go back to "Bowl Games" as rewards for the teams with good records, or (most popular vote) highest rankings. Once the populous gets a taste of real championship level college football, Bowl games as they are today, would never suffice. We all have a healthy appetite for college football, or you wouldn’t be this far into this post.
As to the conferences that will survive this shifting of tectonic proportions, they seem to be the ACC, SEC, B1G, and the PAC. The NCAA needs to mandate that each conference have 20 members. No more, no less. As you can imagine, this is where the discussion group went bonkers, and quite honestly, almost didn’t make it through. We made it past this number and without full consent kept the discussion going.
That’s when we really got some interesting ideas about schedules, and a real playoff picture started to form, I actually semi-embraced the idea. Here’s what formed from these talks.
2 ten team divisions in each conference would allow each school to play a 9 game divisional schedule, and have 3 more games as it liked. Everybody plays a 12 game schedule. Each divisional winner earns a spot in the playoff automatically.
Yes, I know some rivalries would go by the wayside, but hasn’t that happened already?
That would give us the 8 teams from the conferences. All other schools would be allowed back into FCS status, and therefore would not qualify for FBS championship playoffs.
The conference championship would be the first round of the playoffs and then the highest ranked conference champion would play the lowest ranked conference champion in round two while the other two conference champions play each other. The survivors play for the National Championship.
It was stated, and somewhat true, that this style format would make each conference game a playoff game. Thereby creating interest in every divisional game played.
If we move to 16 team conferences, and stay in the same BCS formula, doesn’t that allow for the beauty/popularity contest to continue?
With change of the structure of FBS conferences, has to come a retooling of the determination of a true national champion. Without a complete reevaluation and change of the system, we might as well stay just like it is, and not change a damn thing. And every year Notre Dame can start out in the top 25, whether they deserve to be there or not.
WAR EAGLE!