By Popular Demand: College Football Realignment

Welcome to a new series in which I take your post ideas and run with them. Today’s topic: College Football Realignment.

I am nothing if not a people pleaser.  Due to popular demand (yes, Blax is popular!), I am presenting you with my HOT TAEK on college football realignment.

As I was prepping this post, I read about how ESPN can unilaterally end the ACC’s Grant of Rights agreement in February 2025.  This would give Florida State, Miami, and any other ACC team that wants to leave the ability to find greener pastures.   Which will probably happen.

This actually works perfect for my Grand Idea.  Here is how I would do college football realignment:

For the 2024 college football season, there are 130 teams in what is called the Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS), the top tier of college football.  The lower tier is called the Football Championship Subdivision (FCS).

As we all know, these subdivisions are bullshit.

The way I look at it, you can place all the 130 teams and their respective conferences in three different levels.  Before I get to that, let’s review the current conferences that make up the FBS.  

I have combined the Pac 2 and the Independents into one little grouping to make things easier.  It works out to 9 conferences plus that little group. As I mentioned before, it is obvious which teams and conferences are better than others.

My plan creates three levels of competition with promotion and relegation between the three levels.  There are three conferences in each level and conferences are tied to each other through the promotion/relegation process.  The last place team in Level One and Level Two conferences is relegated.  The champion of the Level Two and Level Three conferences is promoted.  The second-to-last place team in each of the Level One and Level Two conferences will play a bowl game against the runner-up of the corresponding Level Two and Level Three conferences to determine who goes to the higher-level conference.

At the Top Level, we have three conferences made up of 19 teams each:

SEC, Presented by ESPN (AKA College Football East)

Big Ten, Presented by FOX (AKA College Football Central)

Big Twelve (AKA College Football West)

The conferences would look like this:

Please note that I have added (highlighted in red) Clemson, Florida State, and Miami from the ACC to the SEC (as will probably happen in 2025 anyway).  I have also added Notre Dame to the Big Ten (about fucking time!).  Finally, I have added Oregon State, Washington State, and San Diego State to the Big 12. San Diego State is in bold because that is a jump in level from their current league.

The second level looks like this:

Please note that the remnants of the ACC are now in the second level.  I have also moved the Liberty Flames (highlighted in red bold) into the Mountain West.  The Mountain West is tied into the Big Twelve for promotion/relegation while the ACC is tied into the Big Ten and the AAC is tied into the SEC.  This, for the most part, works out geographically.

We follow the same process for the third level, which looks like this:

Conference USA is tied to the Mountain West, the MAC is tied to the ACC, and the Sun Belt is tied to the AAC.  Again, for the most part, this works out geographically.   To make things even and more interesting, I have moved Texas State and Arkansas State to CUSA and I am also adding North Dakota State and South Dakota State from FCS.  I have also added Youngstown State from FCS to the MAC and I have moved UConn and UMass into the Sun Belt.

Or UConn and UMass can give up football as they should have done long ago.

You now have a Level One of three conferences with 19 teams each, a Level Two of three conferences with 12 teams each, and a Level Three of two conferences with 13 teams each and one conference with 14.  That is a total of 132 teams. Promotion and relegation moves up and down this table:

Obviously, there is no way you can play each team in the conference.  Each team gets 10 games in the conference (teams rotate year to year based on final standings) plus there are 2 “rivalry” games that can be played against anyone in any conference.  Only conference games count towards conference rankings and playoff consideration. Tie-breakers would be head to head, point differential for common games, and then for all conference games.

The National Championship would be decided in a playoff between the top three teams in the SEC and the Big Ten and the top two teams in the Big 12.  Like the Champions League, teams in the same conference would not play each other in the opening rounds.  Champions and the top-ranked runner up would get home games. Let’s say the rankings finish like this:

• 1- SEC Champ
• 2- SEC Runner up
• 3- Big Ten Champ
• 4- SEC 3rd place
• 5- Big Twelve Champ
• 6- Big Ten runnerup
• 7- Big Twelve runner up
• 8- Big Ten 3rd place

In that situation, the matchups would be:

QF1 – SEC Champ hosts Big Ten 3rd place

QF2 – Big Ten Champ hosts Big Twelve runner up

QF3 – Big Twelve Champ hosts SEC 3rd place

QF4 – SEC Runner up hosts Big Ten runner up

Let’s look at possible relegation/promotion scenarios and bowl games after Year 1:

West

Relegated Automatically: Washington State Cougars (Level One to Two), UTSA Roadrunners (Level Two to Three)

Promoted Automatically: Boise State (Level Two to One), Louisiana Tech (Level Three to Two)

Bowl Games: San Diego State v Fresno State (winner to Level 1), New Mexico v New Mexico State (winner to Level 2)

Central

Relegated Automatically: Rutgers Scarlet Knights (Level One to Two), California Golden Bears (Level Two to Three)

Promoted Automatically: NC State Wolfpack (Level Two to One), Eastern Michigan Eagles (Level Three to Two)

Bowl Games: Purdue Boilermakers v Pittsburgh Panthers (winner to Level 1), Boston College Eagles v Eastern Michigan Eagles (winner to Level 2)

East

Relegated Automatically:  Vanderbilt Commodores (Level One to Two), Temple Owls (Level Two to Three)

Promoted Automatically: Memphis Tigers (Level Two to One), Louisiana Ragin’ Cajuns (Level Three to Two)

Bowl Games: Mississippi State v Tulane (winner to Level 1), Rice v Troy (winner to Level 2)

The regular bowl games could still happen, and you could still have conference tie-ins like before.  For example, the #4 team in the SEC could play the #3 team in the Big Twelve.  The #3 team in the ACC could play the #3 team in the Mountain West.  The #3 team in the Sun Belt would play the #3 team in the MAC.  

I think this works.  It gets us out of the false belief that all FBS teams are created equal and it provides interesting competition at the end of the year.  

Your thoughts?

If you have suggestions for future posts, please add them in the comments.