First off, this is a exercise for the fun of it, not a discussion of if I think conferences will eventually really get to this size. Please don't take this too seriously or snap at me! (I'm insecure already, LOL).

At 14, the SEC is doing 6-1-1. At 6-2-1, they would see everyone in the league ever 3 years, or every 6 years home and home.

At 15 (assuming no divisions, etc) 4 permanent opponents and 5 rotating would mean seeing everyone every other year or 4 year Home and Home (For my purposes, I'll be an SEC homer and say the SEC could add lets say Kansas, so they could get some decent basketball and AAU status school. Yes I know basketball doesn't really matter in all this, but Kansas was a reasonable candidate when MrSEC did his study).

At 16, assuming 4 pods, you would do 3 permanent opponents, one other pod, and 2 in the other, for 3-4-2 or 3/6 so home and away every 4 years. (For SEC, add Virginia)

At 18 (17 seems weird to me), you do 5 permanent and 4 rotating, and see everyone home and home every 6 years/ see everyone in 3. (UNC, Duke)

At 20, with pods it would be four permanent and 5 rotating, seeing everyone in 3/home and home in six. (Florida State, Oklahoma)

I think that is the biggest a league could reasonably get as I can't figure out a schedule for 21 or 24 that would allow everyone to see everyone reasonably.

Your thoughts (on conference size, not on my SEC expansion choices and their realism)? I feel like Big 10 could do the same (maybe fighting over Virginia, Kansas, UNC, Duke) but also with GT, Miami, etc. ACC might could (UConn, Cincy, West Virginia as a start). Pac 12 may be stuck unless they get Hawaii, UNLV, Boise type schools.

i think 28-38

conferences can act like a mini NCAA of like minded schools each with 3-4 pods of traditional rivals that have near identical membership as historic conferences.

It really depends on how you look at conferences. I think 16 or 18 with 3 pods of 6 is the max to feel like a conference but ideally 10 or 12 are the best. Than again, i have no problem with the big 10 jumping to 40 and 4 divisions of 10 with a 4 game football playoff. Such a union would have 1 leadership structure to get contracts etc. I think that would work great…they could jump all the way to 60 or 70 with 6 or 7 divisions of 10. Its still technically 1 conference, just with a lot of divisions. More likely the big 10 won't KO everybody but i could see it get down the big 10 and SEC.

It seems to me a benefit of having a larger conference would be the ability to control a larger market share of college football say
1/2 all p5 fbs. This would put espn etc.. in a much tougher position trying to get enough content forcing them to pay even more per school.

For me, the largest I could see any of these conferences talking about getting is 16. I think we may have had a situation relatively recently where one conference may have been willing to go to 20 in order to get the brands they wanted but they don't want to over expand. After 16, its still more cuts from the pot but what do they add?

At sixteen you can start up pods and you can have a viable conference tournament that takes the winners of each pod/division.

Sure, you could do that same method by simply taking the teams with the best four records but general college fans are already preprogrammed to accept the idea of divisional winners meeting up in post seasonal tournament play. That is how marketing professionals work and that is who is going to fork over the cash for any new creations by these conferences.

Conferences like the ACC can go ahead and select out of the entire field which programs they want to be their four teams in their tournament or two teams in their championship but in the end the marketing professionals know that people get more interested in those games when they know the teams actually won something such as a division title to get there.

Everyone thought the Florida State and Duke line up would be a fluke but it turned into a wonderful David vs Goliath marketing scheme.

I think that for conference unity and savory rivals, 8-10 is the sweet spot, alas those days are history. 12 works well in tournaments to give the top 4 a bye... blew by that one too. I don't care for 14 because I think it's a bloated 12 and you don't play schools in the opposite division enough. The next iteration will probably be pods and keeping regionality in those pods. That said I think 4 pods of 5 in gives equal home/away in division. You could play around with the remaining games with the other divisions giving preference to the closest schools. So 20 would be my max.

History says that anything above 12 is inherently unstable. When the Southern Conference grew to 23 it split and the SEC schools left. When the Southern Conference grew back to 17, the ACC schools left. The mountain west and WAC tried to work a 16 team conference and could not do it.

The voting coalitions needed to run the conference get larger and larger and schools that used to be able to call the shots, can lose that power.

History doesn't tell us everything as conditions have changed drastically thus allowing for differences in what is feasible now.

The game is no longer a regional one, thus the rules have changed.

(04-30-2014 08:50 PM)He1nousOne Wrote:  History doesn't tell us everything as conditions have changed drastically thus allowing for differences in what is feasible now.

The game is no longer a regional one, thus the rules have changed.

People haven't changed, though. Large numbers still have difficulty working closely together.

For 8 conference games, 14 teams is perfect. 3 permanent partners and 5 games to rotate between the remaining 10 teams.

For 9 conference games, 15 teams is perfect. 4 permanent partners and 5 games to rotate around the remaining 10 teams.

For 9 conference games, 16 teams works too with 4 4-team pods. 3 divisional partners and 2 games in each other division to rotate around the remaining 12 teams every other year. You'd play everyone home and away every 4 years.

Beyond 16 it gets too messy and doesn't fee like a conference. But a 32 team league could operate just like the NFL because by then it would be all pay or play and would be an NFL minor league. 16 games and a playoff.

(04-30-2014 09:53 PM)Hokie Mark Wrote:  

(04-30-2014 08:50 PM)He1nousOne Wrote:  History doesn't tell us everything as conditions have changed drastically thus allowing for differences in what is feasible now.

The game is no longer a regional one, thus the rules have changed.

People haven't changed, though. Large numbers still have difficulty working closely together.

Only when they don't have coinciding interests. It is not an absolute that a larger group of institutions cannot work together.

The pro leagues are at 32, 30, 30, 30 so obviously that many can work together. Now the caveat is the pro leagues have a single business. College conference have to collide a number of differing interests.

This is what i would like to see ESPN create:

Big 30

Atlantic: BC, UConn, Cuse, Pitt, WVU, Cincy, Lville, ND, St John's, Gtown
Coastal: UVA, Vtech, UNC, Duke, NC state, WF, Clem, Gtech, FSU, Miami
Central: Texas, Texas Tech, TCU, Baylor, OU, Ok state, KU, KSU, Iowa State, BYU

Football 4 pods of 7 with a 6-1-1-1 format and 2 game playoff of the pod winners. Basketball and all other sports have no cross over with each division having their own tournaments. The trick would be getting ND and Texas to agree. Ideally, you would want to put the LHN under a big 30 network banner or acc- whatever the league is called. As for ND, maybe you just let them play the 6 pod games and that is all that counts in the standing to get to the 4 team playoff. Maybe bring in Navy to play 3 games ND misses but those games don't count.

id like to see this:

sec (28 teams)
wvu, uva, vtech, unc, duke, ncsu, wf, uga, gtech, scar, cu, uf, fsu, miami, uk, ville, tenn, vandy, bama, auburn, ole miss, msu, lsu, aggie, texas, ou, osu, arkansas

big ten (28 teams)
BC, syracuse, pitt, notre dame, rutgers, maryland, psu, osu, michigan, msu, iu, purdue, illinois, nw, wisky, minn, iowa, nebraska, colorado, washington, arizona, usc, ucla, stanford, cal, oregon, kansas, missouri

pac 19
wsu, osu, utah, byu, utah st, arizona st, boise st. idaho, nevada, unlv, sjsu, frenso, sdsu, air force, csu, new mexico, new mexico st, hawaii, utep

AAC 19
tcu, smu, baylor, tech, rice, tulsa, tulane, memphis, cincy, ucf, usf, ecu, uconn, isu, ksu, uconn, umass, army, navy

5 team playoff (de facto 9 team playoff if you factor the ccgs)
-sec champ
-b10 champ
-aac champ vs pac champ (winner advances to round of 4)
-at large bid

9 was perfect for football, 10 was perfect for basketball... those days are gone. :(

(04-30-2014 07:37 PM)Big Ron Buckeye Wrote:  I think that for conference unity and savory rivals, 8-10 is the sweet spot, alas those days are history. 12 works well in tournaments to give the top 4 a bye... blew by that one too. I don't care for 14 because I think it's a bloated 12 and you don't play schools in the opposite division enough. The next iteration will probably be pods and keeping regionality in those pods. That said I think 4 pods of 5 in gives equal home/away in division. You could play around with the remaining games with the other divisions giving preference to the closest schools. So 20 would be my max.

I agree with 20 being a cap. The key would be the ability to design pods that group all the teams that have annual protected rivalries within the same pods. If you move to a 9 game conference schedule, then four rotating 5-team pods would allow a every school to play every other conference school at least once during a college players 4 year career. The fans would see every school of the conference in thier home stadium over and 8 year rotating period.

The most efficient method would be to eliminat divisions and pods all together. Protect a few rivalry games and simply do a continuous rotation through the rest if the conference schedule. Basically, each new season would pick up the rotation where the last season left off. That would allow each school to cycle through the conference as quickly as possible. It would also allow a return to the 8 game conference schedule.

18 is the perfect number. 2 nine team divisions play a round robin with no cross over & div winners play in the championship game.

(05-02-2014 09:30 PM)whitey Wrote:  18 is the perfect number. 2 nine team divisions play a round robin with no cross over & div winners play in the championship game.

If you have no crossover games there is no reason to be in a conference together and share money/voting rights/bids. This would be completely idiotic for schools in every conference because try telling Oregon State they would potentially never play USC again. This applies to everyone because the only way for a conference.

Even the SEC would consider splitting in that scenario. If you had nine SEC teams in one division that never play the other side in OOC or in conference they lose interest in playing them. So whats stopping the SEC west from just breaking away and adding four teams?

(05-03-2014 03:36 AM)TrojanCampaign Wrote:  

(05-02-2014 09:30 PM)whitey Wrote:  18 is the perfect number. 2 nine team divisions play a round robin with no cross over & div winners play in the championship game.

If you have no crossover games there is no reason to be in a conference together and share money/voting rights/bids. This would be completely idiotic for schools in every conference because try telling Oregon State they would potentially never play USC again. This applies to everyone because the only way for a conference.

Even the SEC would consider splitting in that scenario. If you had nine SEC teams in one division that never play the other side in OOC or in conference they lose interest in playing them. So whats stopping the SEC west from just breaking away and adding four teams?

Exactly. As well as the larger groups having more difficulty working together. The pros, in addition to being one business, have a strong commissioner to help herd the cats. Conference commissioners don't have nearly the power.

No conference 14 or over has lasted very long. Its too hard to find 14-16 institutions as aligned as necessary to keep them together. The Big 10's stability has been that they did have similar institutions. The SEC lost 3 outliers and have kept the 9 who were pretty similar + Vanderbilt for 80 years. Although the SEC is starting to grow apart. The states of Georgia and Florida aren't as much like Mississippi and Louisiana as they used to be. UGA and UF aren't as much like Ole Miss and LSU as they used to be.

At the G5 level, but for the artificial constraint of how the CFP money is divided, the current marketplace would probably favor 16 to 18 in the marketplace because it is so easy to staple together a group of schools with little to no interest in playing each other who could effectively align together to negotiate bowls and television and probably be better off.

The way the CFP money is allocated though creates a disincentive to get to 16 or 18.

The G5 would be better served being the G4 or even G3 using raw force of numbers to increase leverage in what I call the TV secondary market filling the holes left by NFL and the P5.