My Proposal To Realign D-1 FBS College Football In Order To Make Conferences Even (Vol. 1)
So I half ass threw this together and tweeted it out yesterday. I thought no further than "What college football conferences would look like if someone tried to make them all even?"
I also thought, "Well this is just a silly college football hypothetical, I'm sure people won't take it that seriously."
Next thing I know the main account tweets it out, and my stupid hypothetical is being roasted by the internet.
In hindsight, it would have been really nice if I had named the 2nd conference, "North" instead of "North Pacific", considering it includes Northern Illinois. It also would have been nice had I realized that Jacksonville State was located in Alabama, and not Florida (fuck you for that Jacksonville State, how about you have an original fucking name for your city). And it would have been really nice if I didn't type out the word 'Southcenteral'. I wish I wouldn't have given the conferences regional names whatsoever. If I would have done something like name every conference after a legendary coach, I wouldn't have left myself open to such valid criticism.
But if you ignore the geographical names of the regions, I think I did a fairly decent job. It's not like the current college football conference setup makes much more geographical sense.
I think my biggest problem is with the Southeastern, and Southcentral conferences. I had a tough time splitting up the SEC. Alabama and Georgia have it way too easy. They both get one tough conference game per year and the rest is a cakewalk. So that would need fixed.
Additionally, even if you don't factor in the money, running college football this way would clearly not work. It looks fun on paper, but with 14 team conferences, teams can't play everyone in conference. Is one team in the Southeastern just not going to have to play Alabama?
What I should have done was split it up into more conferences. With 133 teams, you could do 16 conferences of 8 teams, then 5 independents. That way everyone in conference would have to play one another, along with a slate of non-conference games. Then it actually might be doable.
Also, I'm not considering basketball for this at all. Maybe down the road I'll perfect my conferences and start working in basketball, but for now this is strictly a college football hypothetical.
Either way, I've heard your criticisms. I will take your advice into cooperation, and head back to the lab. Vol. 2 on the way.