ACC, PAC-12, and BIG alliance / conference realignment

[BlazeOrange]

You'd never get buy-in from the established fiefdoms, but if you could (and since I'm bored today)...

Establish a relegation system BY CONFERENCE:

• Start with four 11-team conferences at the top (B1G roughly covering the north, SEC covering the south, ACC covering the east coast, and a reconfigured B12/PAC covering the west coast). Keep the names or come up with new ones.
• Each conference has two associated lesser 11-team conferences, so you have B1GA, B1GB (start with lower level current B1G schools and fill out with upper level MAC), B1GC (lower level MAC and others in region), and similar pillars for the other regional conferences. End up with total of 132 teams, which is close to what we have in D1.
• Play 10 game in conference schedule, plus 2 non-conference games.
• A-level has an immediate conference championship game with winners earning top 4 seeds in playoffs. Fill out the rest of the bracket with only A-level teams however (I don't want to try to solve this one here).
• Bowl games configured to include conference championship games at the B and C levels with winners bumping up a level the following season. Other bowl games include relegation games of the bottom two A and B levels with losers dropping a level the following season. That's 16 bowls, each with serious stakes on the line.
• If other bowls want to invite teams and hold games as usual, they are free to. The non-playoff A-level and non-championship game B-level would have some solid teams that might support this.
• As an alternative, you could do immediate championship games and last place games, followed by bowl games pitting (for example) the B-level champion against the A-level loser, with the spot in the higher level division the following season being on the line.
• Revenue is shared within each conference pillar, although top levels get bigger cuts.

Drawbacks:

• Schedule uncertainty: Non-conference games are not affected and can still be scheduled years in advance. Conference schedules can largely be drawn up with only 1 or 2 games having TBD opponents, which would be resolved within the current timeline that schedules are released.
• Teams getting relegated downward would lose all of their players to transfers. As opposed to what is happening with the portal now?
• The existing conferences won't give up their money. Probably true, as you'd roughly double the size of current 16 team conferences to 33 team pillars. Could you double the income with weighted revenue sharing, plus the addition of multiple high stakes games that will draw in more viewers and $?
• How to deal with the major independents (you know who). Screw 'em. They can put a schedule together with whoever wants to play them non-conference and find themselves a nice bowl game opponent, but they won't be invited to the playoffs.
• Requires the various interests to play nice with each other and make some sacrifices for the greater good. Not what history has shown us is likely to happen.

Sorry for the TLDR, but as I said, I'm bored today.

 

[Hoo's That]

You'd never get buy-in from the established fiefdoms, but if you could (and since I'm bored today)...

Establish a relegation system BY CONFERENCE:

• Start with four 11-team conferences at the top (B1G roughly covering the north, SEC covering the south, ACC covering the east coast, and a reconfigured B12/PAC covering the west coast). Keep the names or come up with new ones.
• Each conference has two associated lesser 11-team conferences, so you have B1GA, B1GB (start with lower level current B1G schools and fill out with upper level MAC), B1GC (lower level MAC and others in region), and similar pillars for the other regional conferences. End up with total of 132 teams, which is close to what we have in D1.
• Play 10 game in conference schedule, plus 2 non-conference games.
• A-level has an immediate conference championship game with winners earning top 4 seeds in playoffs. Fill out the rest of the bracket with only A-level teams however (I don't want to try to solve this one here).
• Bowl games configured to include conference championship games at the B and C levels with winners bumping up a level the following season. Other bowl games include relegation games of the bottom two A and B levels with losers dropping a level the following season. That's 16 bowls, each with serious stakes on the line.
• If other bowls want to invite teams and hold games as usual, they are free to. The non-playoff A-level and non-championship game B-level would have some solid teams that might support this.
• As an alternative, you could do immediate championship games and last place games, followed by bowl games pitting (for example) the B-level champion against the A-level loser, with the spot in the higher level division the following season being on the line.
• Revenue is shared within each conference pillar, although top levels get bigger cuts.

Drawbacks:

• Schedule uncertainty: Non-conference games are not affected and can still be scheduled years in advance. Conference schedules can largely be drawn up with only 1 or 2 games having TBD opponents, which would be resolved within the current timeline that schedules are released.
• Teams getting relegated downward would lose all of their players to transfers. As opposed to what is happening with the portal now?
• The existing conferences won't give up their money. Probably true, as you'd roughly double the size of current 16 team conferences to 33 team pillars. Could you double the income with weighted revenue sharing, plus the addition of multiple high stakes games that will draw in more viewers and $?
• How to deal with the major independents (you know who). Screw 'em. They can put a schedule together with whoever wants to play them non-conference and find themselves a nice bowl game opponent, but they won't be invited to the playoffs.
• Requires the various interests to play nice with each other and make some sacrifices for the greater good. Not what history has shown us is likely to happen.

Sorry for the TLDR, but as I said, I'm bored today.

Relegation is a concept totally alien to American sports and for good reason. It is totally beyond me how fans of soccer, the primary culprit, can enjoy yoyoing from division to division. Be the top dog in a lower division, get elevated, smashed to smithereens in the upper division the next season, and sent back to the lower division. Rinse. Repeat. Curse you Ted Lasso! Nobody talked about this idea before that show.

 

[orange79]

Relegation is a concept totally alien to American sports and for good reason. It is totally beyond me how fans of soccer, the primary culprit, can enjoy yoyoing from division to division. Be the top dog in a lower division, get elevated, smashed to smithereens in the upper division the next season, and sent back to the lower division. Rinse. Repeat. Curse you Ted Lasso! Nobody talked about this idea before that show.

You just answered your own question. They're fans of soccer.

 

[Scooch]

If the NCAA had barred the FBS from having championship games, I think it would have been unlikely we would have had this mad scramble to realign conferences. The SEC started it all off by taking in SCAR and Arky, getting them to 12 for the championship game. The championship game was wildly successful, so "everybody" had to have one. Without the championship game, it's doubtful they would have gone to 12 because there would be no reason to thin the payout from networks. Until the season went to 12 games, they had to have a rotation in the schedule of permanent teams and teams that would rotate on and off. Bama always played Auburn and Tennessee (there may have been a 3rd, LSU?). Auburn always played Bama and Georgia. Tennessee always played Bama and Vanderbilt. Georgia always played Florida and Auburn, etc.

I’ll go a step further… the NCAA inane decisions to enforce a Division 3 rule on D1 is what set all of this in motion. They could have easily waived the 12 team requirement for holding a conference champ game. Do that and the SEC, Big 8, etc. wouldn’t have had that as their primary motivation to get to 12 in the 1990s.

Conference expansion would have happened eventually. There was too much money available for that to not be the ultimate outcome. But it wouldn’t have happened when it did, and with the ensuing chaos, if the NCAA didn’t utterly botch that ruling.

 

[WoadBlue]

Relegation is a concept totally alien to American sports and for good reason. It is totally beyond me how fans of soccer, the primary culprit, can enjoy yoyoing from division to division. Be the top dog in a lower division, get elevated, smashed to smithereens in the upper division the next season, and sent back to the lower division. Rinse. Repeat. Curse you Ted Lasso! Nobody talked about this idea before that show.

Never, ever want to ape anything Limey. it is always fruity at its core.

 

[Hoo's That]

Never, ever want to ape anything Limey. it is always fruity at its core.

IDK if they invented it, but every top soccer division except the MLS does it.

 

[Forza Azzurri]

Relegation is a concept totally alien to American sports and for good reason. It is totally beyond me how fans of soccer, the primary culprit, can enjoy yoyoing from division to division. Be the top dog in a lower division, get elevated, smashed to smithereens in the upper division the next season, and sent back to the lower division. Rinse. Repeat. Curse you Ted Lasso! Nobody talked about this idea before that show.

Well, it does eliminate the issue of tanking, which is something a number of our sports are grappling with right now.

It also keeps it interesting for the fans whose teams are at the bottom of the table. They celebrate salvation as much as Real celebrates winning Champions.

Most, if not all, of those teams are like the AQs in the NCAA tournament - no chance on winning it so just really, really happy to be part of the show.

 

[cusefan88]

Well, it does eliminate the issue of tanking, which is something a number of our sports are grappling with right now.

It also keeps it interesting for the fans whose teams are at the bottom of the table. They celebrate salvation as much as Real celebrates winning Champions.

Most, if not all, of those teams are like the AQs in the NCAA tournament - no chance on winning it so just really, really happy to be part of the show.

6-pt relegation showdowns in April/May are honestly incredible to watch.

 

[BlazeOrange]

Relegation is a concept totally alien to American sports and for good reason. It is totally beyond me how fans of soccer, the primary culprit, can enjoy yoyoing from division to division. Be the top dog in a lower division, get elevated, smashed to smithereens in the upper division the next season, and sent back to the lower division. Rinse. Repeat. Curse you Ted Lasso! Nobody talked about this idea before that show.

Using my 11-team division idea in each pillar and applying last season's standings to break up the levels, the following schools would've been in the second tier in their conferences and potentially playing to move up:

ACC: Florida State, North Carolina, Virginia Tech
B1G: Penn State, Wisconsin, Michigan State
B12: West Virginia, Colorado, Oklahoma State
SEC: Florida, Auburn, South Carolina

 

[Scooch]

Relegation requires longstanding tiers of professional leagues where player contracts are held independently. Needless to say, that doesn’t exist in the U.S for our 4 major sports. You can’t relegate the Pacers to the G League, or the White Sox to the International League. The infrastructure simple isn’t constructed in a way that could enable it.

It could be possible in college sports, but we’d have to blow up the existing conferences. And no one is going to willingly take the risk of losing a spot in a league with a guaranteed annual media payment of tens of millions of dollars.

No sport on Earth would design relegation in today’s media and economic environment. It’s an anachronism from a bygone age.

 

[Forza Azzurri]

Relegation requires longstanding tiers of professional leagues where player contracts are held independently. Needless to say, that doesn’t exist in the U.S for our 4 major sports. You can’t relegate the Pacers to the G League, or the White Sox to the International League. The infrastructure simple isn’t constructed in a way that could enable it.

It could be possible in college sports, but we’d have to blow up the existing conferences. And no one is going to willingly take the risk of losing a spot in a league with a guaranteed annual media payment of tens of millions of dollars.

No sport on Earth would design relegation in today’s media and economic environment. It’s an anachronism from a bygone age.

Leaving aside the realities of the modern sports world, if you did have a league with NFL-style economic equality at the top level but significant economic inequality between the top level and lower-levels and promotion/relegation, it would be the sporting Hunger Games.

 

[Forza Azzurri]

6-pt relegation showdowns in April/May are honestly incredible to watch.

Yup. There is a desperation to them that you also find in one-bid league conference tourney championships where the winner gets the golden ticket to the dance and the loser gets...un gazz...

 

[Forza Azzurri]

Relegation requires longstanding tiers of professional leagues where player contracts are held independently. Needless to say, that doesn’t exist in the U.S for our 4 major sports. You can’t relegate the Pacers to the G League, or the White Sox to the International League. The infrastructure simple isn’t constructed in a way that could enable it.

It could be possible in college sports, but we’d have to blow up the existing conferences. And no one is going to willingly take the risk of losing a spot in a league with a guaranteed annual media payment of tens of millions of dollars.

No sport on Earth would design relegation in today’s media and economic environment. It’s an anachronism from a bygone age.

BTW, just my opinion but I believe the Jets should be relegated for 50+ years of ineptitude. Let 'em play Bergen and Bosco and Joes...

 

[sutomcat]

BTW, just my opinion but I believe the Jets should be relegated for 50+ years of ineptitude. Let 'em play Bergen and Bosco and Joes...

They would still lose…..

 

[HtownOrange]

They would still lose…..

Agreed. I still think the Jets could take Rutgers by two TDs..

 

[orange79]

Agreed. I still think the Jets could take Rutgers by two TDs..

14-0, as Rutgers fumbles twice inside their own 10 yard line.

 

[cuse62]

14-0, as Rutgers fumbles twice inside their own 10 yard line.

And dive at o lineman’s knees in victory formation.

 

[Moontan]

No sport on Earth would design relegation in today’s media and economic environment. It’s an anachronism from a bygone age.

It works in most European countries. In each league/division you play everyone home-and-home.

The larger European countries have a top league of 18 or 20 teams. Some smaller countries are 12-16.
In most countries, the top 2 (or 3) leagues are professional with lower leagues being primarily at an amateur level.

I just don't see this format working out for US college league sports.
We've got FBS & FCS for football with some schools recently making the move up to FBS, but those were strictly on the school's financial front... committing more $$ to football investments (player pay, facilities, etc.).

 

[Hoo's That]

Relegation requires longstanding tiers of professional leagues where player contracts are held independently. Needless to say, that doesn’t exist in the U.S for our 4 major sports. You can’t relegate the Pacers to the G League, or the White Sox to the International League. The infrastructure simple isn’t constructed in a way that could enable it.

It could be possible in college sports, but we’d have to blow up the existing conferences. And no one is going to willingly take the risk of losing a spot in a league with a guaranteed annual media payment of tens of millions of dollars.

No sport on Earth would design relegation in today’s media and economic environment. It’s an anachronism from a bygone age.

A-freaking-men!!

 

[Scooch]

It works in most European countries. In each league/division you play everyone home-and-home.

The larger European countries have a top league of 18 or 20 teams. Some smaller countries are 12-16.
In most countries, the top 2 (or 3) leagues are professional with lower leagues being primarily at an amateur level.

I just don't see this format working out for US college league sports.
We've got FBS & FCS for football with some schools recently making the move up to FBS, but those were strictly on the school's financial front... committing more $$ to football investments (player pay, facilities, etc.).

I get that it works. I'm just saying that it works because it's a century+ old process built on a model of having multiple tiers of professional leagues. U.S. sports don't employ that model. And we agree that colleges, specifically the existing haves, wouldn't have any incentive to embrace it.

The best solution for college sports is to split football off into its own entity and let every other sport return to their geographical roots.

 

[HRE Otto IV]

The best solution for college sports is to split football off into its own entity and let every other sport return to their geographical roots.

So I was thinking what would be my ideal for a 10 team non FB conference. Looking at history and location, it would make the most sense for the 9 OG Big East teams to be together. But who would be #10?

Really of those OGs, SU and Pitt are the outsiders location wise. The rest all represent the Amtrak line. Yes, UConn is not on it but they represent the entire state and thus the two stops. But if you wanted #10 to be an Amtrak fit, it is had to find one.

It is kinda nuts that there isn't a school that really represents Baltimore. The closest fits are Towson or Loyola neither of which are worth adding. Maryland I suppose could but they would be ACC bound. The other Amtrak hole is Wilmington, which Delaware could fill. But like Towson/Loyola, Delaware is not worth adding.

You could double up in Philly, with Temple being the best choice. They do have some history with the others on the FB side. UMass would fit I suppose but they have no history. Same with DC area George Mason/Washington. Penn State is Northeastern but again no history in BBall. Which leaves Rutgers.

The Rutgers Big East history is awful, but they do have a history. There is no reason to double up in NJ, but it was fun taking that place over. And it sets up nice rivalry week games: Rutgers-Seton Hall, BC-PC, StJ-UConn, Nova-Pitt, Cuse-GTown.

Outside of the location fit there is also the history fit. But many of the former Big East teams really are location outsiders. The current 5 Western Big East teams don't fit. The three FB 2.0s don't fit location wise or culturally. Of the three FB 1.0s the best fit would be West Virginia, not really culturally though.

Location they are a decent fit. They have had success in the Big East for BBall. They have a rival (Pitt), but then screw up the other rivalries. Who gets Seton Hall? Where does Nova go?

Lastly there is Notre Dame. I think they would be better with the current 5 Western Big East, St Louis, Dayton, etc. And if you take them, who is their rival? BC? Put PC with Seton Hall?

So I think I would have #10 as 1. Rutgers, 2. West Virginia, 3. Notre Dame.

 

[HtownOrange]

So I was thinking what would be my ideal for a 10 team non FB conference. Looking at history and location, it would make the most sense for the 9 OG Big East teams to be together. But who would be #10?

Really of those OGs, SU and Pitt are the outsiders location wise. The rest all represent the Amtrak line. Yes, UConn is not on it but they represent the entire state and thus the two stops. But if you wanted #10 to be an Amtrak fit, it is had to find one.

It is kinda nuts that there isn't a school that really represents Baltimore. The closest fits are Towson or Loyola neither of which are worth adding. Maryland I suppose could but they would be ACC bound. The other Amtrak hole is Wilmington, which Delaware could fill. But like Towson/Loyola, Delaware is not worth adding.

You could double up in Philly, with Temple being the best choice. They do have some history with the others on the FB side. UMass would fit I suppose but they have no history. Same with DC area George Mason/Washington. Penn State is Northeastern but again no history in BBall. Which leaves Rutgers.

The Rutgers Big East history is awful, but they do have a history. There is no reason to double up in NJ, but it was fun taking that place over. And it sets up nice rivalry week games: Rutgers-Seton Hall, BC-PC, StJ-UConn, Nova-Pitt, Cuse-GTown.

Outside of the location fit there is also the history fit. But many of the former Big East teams really are location outsiders. The current 5 Western Big East teams don't fit. The three FB 2.0s don't fit location wise or culturally. Of the three FB 1.0s the best fit would be West Virginia, not really culturally though.

Location they are a decent fit. They have had success in the Big East for BBall. They have a rival (Pitt), but then screw up the other rivalries. Who gets Seton Hall? Where does Nova go?

Lastly there is Notre Dame. I think they would be better with the current 5 Western Big East, St Louis, Dayton, etc. And if you take them, who is their rival? BC? Put PC with Seton Hall?

So I think I would have #10 as 1. Rutgers, 2. West Virginia, 3. Notre Dame.

Reasonable logic, but I would replace Rutgers with Penn State, keep WVU at #2 and ND at #3. Rutgers, would be somewhere low on the list, like sewer low on the list. Also, PSU "builds" a bridge for SU and Pitt.

 

[TexanMark]

My 10 team regional conference for all sports but FB

Syracuse
BC
Pitt
UConn
Rutgers
WVU
Penn St
Georgetown
Nova
St Johns

This would give us MSG for BB

 

[HRE Otto IV]

Reasonable logic, but I would replace Rutgers with Penn State, keep WVU at #2 and ND at #3. Rutgers, would be somewhere low on the list, like sewer low on the list. Also, PSU "builds" a bridge for SU and Pitt.

It is fun taking over the Rutgers home court. Penn State is awful at BBall and in the middle of nowhere.

 

[HRE Otto IV]

My 10 team regional conference for all sports but FB

Syracuse
BC
Pitt
UConn
Rutgers
WVU
Penn St
Georgetown
Nova
St Johns

This would give us MSG for BB

Seton Hall is a fun home game because we take it over. And it is a good arena. Providence not as much but still a good trip.