What if… (My proposal for a redesigned NCAA/BCS)

Around the middle of this past June, college football saw a rather interesting shake up surrounding the transfer of schools between conferences. Having grown up in Southern California as a USC fan, I have a certain affinity for the Pac-10. So, it came as a surprise (a rather exciting surprise) that it seemed imminent for Texas and half of the rather successful Big XII to be joining the conference.

My mind went wild with thoughts of how the Pac-16 would be THE premier athletic conference in the country, with a legitimate chance to sweep well over a majority of all intercollegiate sports. And then that fell through, the Texas and Oklahoma schools remained in the Big XII, and the Pac-16 fell to the Pac-12 with the inclusion of Utah and Colorado. The disappointment was strong, but a thought had come to me while I fantasized about a USC v. Texas conference championship game: super conferences.

As the idea of even larger conferences grew in my brain, so did the very real possibility of a professional sports style setting for the regular season and postseason. And that eventually grew into what I’ve proposed below.

Now, I should include a few caveats before I begin. First, I’m not an expert on the workings of the NCAA, nor of the Bowl Championship Series. But I am a fan, and I have an idea that I think is worth considering. Second, in most ways (and with most sports) I’m a traditionalist. That is to say that I think there shouldn’t be extensive use of instant replay in baseball, and that historical rivalries and tradition should be preserved in college football. But at the same time, I’m also a realist, so I do think that in certain instances (such as foul balls and home runs) that instant replay is acceptable. So I understand the want to continue to have the bowl games and their prestige, but I also realize that much of the bowl games are driven by revenues and marketing. Finally, I in no way believe this is a perfect plan. And I’m completely willing to edit and consider alternatives from everyone who has an idea about it.

So, without further ado..

The NCAA does not recognize a national champion in Division I-A football (the Football Bowl Subdivision). At current count (and forgive me if my math is off, I’m only a law student), the FBS is made up of 121 institutes of higher learning which compete every year for rankings in the USA Today Coach’s Poll and the Associate Press Poll in the hopes of driving up their scores in the Bowl Championship Series so as to be selected for the BCS Championship Game or one of the other BCS bowl games. The BCS was created in the hopes of creating a singular national champion in the sport while maintaining the numerous bowl games and their postseason revenues for the various conferences and schools.

But the BCS has never truly lived up to its call, never created what could be seen as a truly fair national champion because of its exclusion of many smaller conferences, and even still gave rise to a split national championship in 2003-2004 (USC and LSU). Calls for an FBS playoff have grown, but fallen mostly on deaf ears. The argument, as best as I can tell, seems to be a mixture of academic need, traditionalism and greed. The schools argue that a playoff system would take up too much of the school year, and the NCAA and BCS argue they want to keep the bowl system alive as much as possible, while failing to state just how much money they’re bringing in and how hard it would be to create a tenable playoff system to encompass all 121 FBS teams and their 11 conferences.

And that’s where their mistakes are.

What if there were no conferences as they exist right now? What then? What if you could create a playoff system which was not a month (or more) long, but instead only three weeks? Well, then you would get what I’ve come up with. (Assuming you went through my exact same thought process, of course.)

I have to begin by stating that the NCAA and BCS are correct in stating that the 121 team FBS is simply too big to have a realistic playoff system for a singular (and recognized) national champion. And the schools themselves are also correct that a traditional style playoff system (not unlike the one used by the FCS), would take too long and too drastically affect the revenues of the many schools and conferences.

So what do we do?

Well, first we have to reorganize all of NCAA Division I football. Well, not all of it, but some of it. The number of teams in the FBS has to be reduced from 121 to 80. A number of factors went into which schools I choose for relegation to the FCS and which schools stayed where they are, such as their traditional strength, their attendance and pulling power, their traditional rivalries, and their current conference affiliation. My apologies to those schools who didn’t get to stay up top – perhaps the discussion of relegation and promotion protocols (not unlike domestic European soccer leagues) can be discussed in the future. Those 41 teams which didn’t make my cut get included in the now expanded FCS, probably organized into new conferences just for football.

Now, those remaining 80 teams are a mosaic of the current organization of the FBS, taking either part or all of all but a single conference (the Mid-American Conference). In fact, only the Big Ten, Big XII, Pac-10 and SEC had their entire conference included in what I am now calling the Bowl/Champion Subdivision. (Notice I kept the “BCS” in the hopes of being able to parlay what has been a rather well executed marketing and branding campaign into the new organization of the premier level of college football.)

So how is this reconciled so that the conferences used throughout other intercollegiate sports are able to continue in the BCS? They’re not. This may be among the most radical things you’ll read in this proposal (which is saying a bit, I think, considering how radical the proposal is), but for this to work all of the BCS schools essentially need to be made independent of their current collegiate conference. Now, that’s not to say that the conference is going to lose all the revenue of their BCS teams. In fact, I would propose that the money made by those schools continue to be split and shared among the conferences as if this change hadn’t been made. That is to say that this “independence” is purely so that the reorganization of the sport and the playoff structure below is possible.

What’s the reorganization? Four 20-school super conferences: the Pacific Coast Conference, the Mid-West Conference, the Southeastern Conference, and the Atlantic Coast Conference. Each of these is meant to, to a degree, be an analog to the more traditionally prestigious or notable conferences in college football: the Pac-10, the Big Ten, the SEC, and ACC/Big East, respectively.

Each of these super conferences consists of two 10-team divisions, which I have provisionally named Division X and Division O (mostly because I don’t have the time or drive to figure out how name them well). Each of these divisions would operate in much the same way that conferences do right now, and would be useful for the playoff system I will explain below. Here’s what I’ve come up with for the organization of the BCS:

Pacific Coast Conference (PCC)

• Division X
  • Arizona
  • Arizona State
  • California
  • Oregon
  • Oregon State
  • Stanford
  • UCLA
  • USC
  • Washington
  • Washington State
• Division O
  • Baylor
  • Boise State
  • Fresno State
  • Hawaii
  • Oklahoma
  • Oklahoma State
  • TCU
  • Texas
  • Texas A&M
  • Texas Tech

Mid-West Conference (MWC)

• Division X
  • Air Force
  • Illinois
  • Indiana
  • Michigan
  • Michigan State
  • Minnesota
  • Northwestern
  • Ohio State
  • Tulsa
  • Wisconsin
• Division O
  • BYU
  • Cincinnati
  • Colorado
  • Colorado State
  • Iowa
  • Iowa State
  • Notre Dame
  • Penn State
  • Purdue
  • Utah

Southeastern Conference (SEC)

• Division X
  • Alabama
  • Auburn
  • Georgia
  • Georgia Tech
  • Houston
  • Kentucky
  • Mississippi State
  • Ole Miss
  • Tennessee
  • Vanderbilt
• Division O
  • Arkansas
  • Central Florida
  • Florida
  • Florida International
  • Florida State
  • Kansas
  • Kansas State
  • LSU
  • Missouri
  • Nebraska

Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC)

• Division X
  • Boston College
  • Marshall
  • Maryland
  • Miami
  • North Carolina
  • North Carolina State
  • South Carolina
  • Virginia
  • Virginia Tech
  • Wake Forest
• Division O
  • Army
  • Clemson
  • Connecticut
  • East Carolina
  • Louisville
  • Navy
  • Pittsburg
  • Rutgers
  • South Florida
  • West Virginia

So now we move to the season itself. As you can see, many of the traditional rivalries still exist within conferences or divisions, but also a number of them have either become or remain intersectional. As such, the scheduling of a season would have to meet the following requirements: three games against non-conference teams, three games against conference, non-division teams, and five games against division teams. This is a total of at least eleven games every season for each BCS team.

The three non-conference matchups allow for travel, exciting intersectional matchups, and traditional intersection rivalries such as USC v. Notre Dame. The three conference, non-divisional games allow for the inclusion of traditional (or new) rivalries which were not accommodated by the divisional realignment, while maintaining competition within the conferences. Finally, the remaining divisional games will require strong competition against which each school is vying for a conference championship game spot.

Ah, did I not mention that yet? Yes, each of these super conferences would have a conference championship game which would be able to travel within the general regional area of the conference, such as an ACC Championship Game at the Meadowlands or a MWC Championship Game at Lucas Oil Stadium.

Okay, so after an 11 game season which includes fierce national and conference matchups, and four hard fought conference championships in primetime as the 12th game of the season for eight schools, we now have four conference champions or, as I like to refer to them, semifinalists. Yes, I’m talking about using these conference championships as the first of three rounds which would produce a singular, NCAA recognized national champion.

Before we get to those semifinal games, though, we need to consider the bowls and the rest of the BCS. The remaining schools who placed, say, fifth and up in their divisions would be ranked by conference record (so 10 from each conference), and then placed into bowl games which have contractual matchups, such as third place PCC v. fifth place ACC, or something of the sort. This allows the bowl system to remain, for the most part, intact, and allows all these schools which would be considered “bowl eligible” to continue to reap the benefits (and revenues) of these postseason games.

Now, with those four remaining semifinalists, we maintain two of the most storied and famous bowls for New Year’s Day: the Rose Bowl and the Sugar Bowl. And, in the interest of maintaining the tradition of these games, their participants would be predetermined: the Sugar Bowl would be an annual matchup between the champions of the SEC and ACC, and the Rose Bowl would be an annual matchup between the champions of the PCC and the MWC (not unlike the traditional Pac-10/Big Ten matchup).

The winner of the Rose Bowl would then face off with the winner of the Sugar Bowl one week later in a single (and, finally, NCAA recognized) national championship game. This championship game, not unlike the conference championship games or the Super Bowl, would be able to travel around the country from year to year, moving constantly from region to region and perhaps even from professional stadium to college stadium.

And that’s it. A reorganized Division I and BCS, four conference championships, two semifinals, and a national championship game. Is it perfect? Of course not. But at least it’s a step in what I would consider the right position: keep the bowls, add a playoff, and have a singular national champion recognized by the NCAA.

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