RE: How is realignment affected if football is outlawed?
OK, this is a ridiculous postulate, but I'll bite.
Assumption, a bill passes congress tomorrow and bans college football starting in say 2023 (long enough for Senators in office to retire and not face voter wrath). President Trump signs the bill mistaking it for a dinner order takeout from Burger King. Then spend the next two months blaming congress for the bill in repeated twitter storms. Whatever it happens.
What would happen is realignment at the major level (M6 = P5 plus Big East, 76 schools counting UConn now) would come to a screeching halt. OU and Texas would have no big paydays awaiting them in the SEC or B1G, as Basketball is not the same value. So they stand. The P12 is still too far away, and so nobody does anything.
If we look at the resources, using budgets as a guide, of the 76 M6 school, 61 are in the top 64 ($7m cutoff), 73 in the top 86 ($6m cutoff) , all 76 in the top 96 (Butler, Oregon State, Washington State $5m cutoff). So they are all top 100.
Gonzaga, Dayton and Memphis are 3 non M6 in the top 25. There is a cluster in the 65-86 range including all you'd expect: Wichita State, SMU, BYU, Cincy, Saint Louis, Temple, Colorado State, San Diego State, VCU. The group of 10 with the trailing 3 M6 includes Tulsa, UNLV, URI, Houston, and South Florida. (I discount LUC in the top 86 as a one time surge in cost due to the tournament appearance and top 96 GCU and Duquesne as a flukes). There are a dozen more schools in the upper mid-major with budgets above $4m including Richmond, Nevada, New Mexico, GMU and South Florida, plus some schools who include some decidedly not upper mid-major characteristics (St. Mary's, UMass, UTEP, Santa Clara, Tulane, Fordham, St. Joe's).
There really isn't anyone in the above who would excite a M6. Gonzaga fits the Big East, but is in the wrong time zone. Memphis is an atrocious school from an AI standpoint ... well Louisville got in the ACC is the argument I guess (weak argument). Dayton hasn't had the success you expect from that big a budget team to have. All the rest are in the transition zones, would be in the bottom group of any M6 conference, not likely to contribute to their NCAA bids.
So M6 is fixed.
Gonzaga and maybe BYU look attractive to the MWC, who might also try to boot SJSU. Similarly the American probably sees VCU and Dayton as attractive and might try to boot ECU (Tulane is equally bad, but you don't kick out a high standing academic school). But one wonders if SJSU and ECU would not direct some of their large investment in football into basketball with football banned, and take advantage of their strong local recruiting zones. Still one could make a case for Gonzaga and BYU with the MWc and Dayton and VCU or even Saint Louis with the AAC. On the other hand they both might just stand pat.
I think CUSA does blow up. I can see a upper South and Midwest basketball conference forming from that blow up, even raiding MVC schools. But it's hard to compose a conference that would actually be multi bid.
The West is already pretty much aligned by type of school and region, and some other conferences are as well i.e., (AEC, NEC). So I would not look for much change there. The South might completely reorg at the lower levels. But I have no clue how. And I don't think it'd matter, still one bid conferences.
So there you have it, things would probably be more stable.
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