I want to spin this discussion away from another thread cluttering another topic:
https://csnbbs.com/thread-911884-post-17...id17136466
The goal here according to the original poster, JRSec, is to create a "college football's upper tier". He also mentioned "The League Concept. In short the placing of all of the best football programs and brands into one league."
I have discussed several times the concept of moving Oklahoma and Texas away from the Big 12 into other conferences. The premise is by keeping them in the Big 12 you have to pay them a good rate but you have to pay the "Little 8" members the same first/second tier rate and you are overpaying them. Move Oklahoma/Texas to the Big Ten or SEC and you don't have to pay the rest of the Big 12 nearly as much money. Even if you have to pay OU/UT's new conference more, you could net pay less.
I can take this further. What if we were able to streamline and take out the fat from all the conferences and just have a league/conference of "the best" as JRSec said? Now what does "best" mean? I can't speak for JRSec but when selecting some of the teams he mentioned things such as "viewers", "recruits", "passion", "small state", "could be competitive if they tried", "In the SEC only one doesn't try or have attendance". So those factors certainly could be tied in. It shouldn't necessarily be the 36 best programs. Imagine you are trying to pitch this group of teams to one or more of the major network executives. Could you get them on board vs. the current setup? Would college football overall be more popular than it is now. Of course if you are one of the schools that is downgrading you would be less interested and we would be going from 65 to 36. But if the Alabama and Ohio State fans are more interested because they don't have to play the Rutgers and Mississippi States every year and get more high quality games, TV ratings go up and that might make up for the lost teams' fanbases. Other than Baylor fans, is anyone really going to miss them in college football's upper echelon?
His list contained 36 teams so I'll use that as a cap. If the goal of the league is to be "national" it has to have representation in all parts of the country and have more representation in areas with more population. But you can't leave out the top brands or passionate fan bases either. So my list tries to account for all of that.
I'll try two different arrangements with the same 36 teams.
A 4 by 9:
East: Maryland, Michigan, Michigan State, North Carolina, Notre Dame, Ohio State, Penn State, Pittsburgh, Virginia Tech
South: Alabama, Auburn, Clemson, Florida, Florida State, Georgia, Kentucky, Miami, Tennessee
Midwest: Illinois, Iowa, LSU, Missouri, Nebraska, Oklahoma, Texas, Texas A&M, Wisconsin
West: Arizona State, BYU, California, Colorado, Oregon, Stanford, UCLA, USC, Washington
A 6x6 with 3 "conferences" combining two divisions:
Clemson, Maryland, North Carolina, Penn State, Pittsburgh, Virginia Tech
Illinois, Michigan, Michigan State, Notre Dame, Ohio State, Wisconsin
Florida, Florida State, Georgia, Kentucky, Miami, Tennessee
Alabama, Auburn, LSU, Oklahoma, Texas, Texas A&M
Arizona State, BYU, Colorado, Iowa, Missouri, Nebraska
California, Oregon, Stanford, UCLA, USC, Washington
Makeup by conference:
SEC (9): Alabama, Auburn, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, LSU, Missouri, Tennessee, Texas A&M
Big Ten (9): Illinois, Iowa, Maryland, Michigan, Michigan State, Nebraska, Ohio State, Penn State, Wisconsin
Pac 12 (8): Arizona State, California, Colorado, Oregon, Stanford, UCLA, USC, Washington
ACC (6): Clemson, Miami, North Carolina, Notre Dame, Pittsburgh, Virginia Tech
Big 12 (2): Oklahoma, Texas
Other (1): BYU
Who do you think didn't make it that should? Who should they replace? Who's your list of 36? Knock yourself out! But be ready to defend your choices to me as well as other CSNBBS readers!
Each team will play 8 league games. In the 4x9, obviously you would play the eight teams in your division. You can then play four more games. Non division league games would be encouraged but obviously teams are still going to want seven home games a season so they'll still want to play "buy" teams that don't need return home games as opposed to standard home and homes. In the 3x12, you would play the five teams in your division and either three or four games in the cross division (that could be negotiated).
Each format would have semifinals and a national championship. In the 4x9, it's the four division winners determined by true round robin play with the "top" team playing the "bottom" team and the #2 and #3 teams playing in the SF's. In the 6x6/3x12, the six divisional winners would play for three league championships. Then there would be a final four but with the three league winners and one wild card.
Which of these formats do you like better?
In terms of "bowls", I would say this league would retain the pick of the litter bowls. The top four teams need three "bowls", two semifinals and one championship (I won't have double hosting as is the case currently). I'll guesstimate most of these teams will find enough cupcakes that well more than half of them will still be "bowl eligible" every year (six wins in a regular season). So I will reserve 14 bowls, the current NY6 (Rose, Sugar, Orange, Cotton, Peach, Fiesta) along with the Citrus, Outback, Gator, Holiday, Alamo, Las Vegas, Music City, and Texas? (the one in Houston). That will accommodate up to 26 of the 36 teams in a given year.