🏈 Anyone else smell smoke?

[Swamptick]

Wow. I am definitely watching this with interest.

 

[LBS]

LINK: Tommy Deas (Tusc.News) talked to Slive

http://deas.blogs.tidesports.com/10336/sec-expansion/

Tommy Deas did a piece referencing a conversation he had with Commissioner Slive (see Link above), but the biggest contribution was what Tommy made of the bits that Mr. Slive passed.

Of note, Tommy implied that Georgia Tech, Florida State, and Miami may not be targets as the SEC already owns too much of those TV markets. He was clearly Westward looking, and spoke to a scenario where only Texas and Texas A&M were added...resulting in 7-team divisions with Auburn going to the East.

LBS does not see it the same way as Tommy. I still see value in a move into Florida.

 

[ExiledTidefan]

I had some free time to ponder what changes might come to college football at this level. What I came up with was basically 6 super conferences, 16 teams each, with 2 smaller conferences (Conference USA, International), 12 teams each, that pick up the pieces from programs in the current Conference USA and Sun Belt in one, and teams from the current WAC along with the service academies in the other. Basically, the Sun Belt, the Big East, Mountain West and the WAC just go away and realign.

THe 6 super conferences would have 16 teams each, with the SEC picking up GTech, Clemson, Memphis, and S. Miss. My ACC had East Carolina, W. Virginia, UCONN, Pitt, Rutgers, and Cincinatti joining. I have a new Big 10, called the Big MidWest, which has Syracuse, Kansas, K State, Notre Dame, and Missouri joining.

I moved Iowa to my all-new Great Plains conference, which features most of the old Big 12, minus the teams moved to the Big MidWest, adding TCU, La Tech, Wyoming, UTEP, Houston, and Colorado State.

The PAC 10 is the conference which probably changed the least. It's fairly well placed now, though talent-wise, not at all balanced. I attempt to settle that by adding Boise State, BYU, UTAH, Nevada, NMSU, and New Mexico. Again, whole chunks of the WAC and Mountain West come in.

I have a 6th BIG conference called the Heartland, which is not going to be very competitive in the way I have it built. These are old MAC teams, along with a couple Conference USA teams:
HEARTLAND CONFERENCE-
MTSU, BOWLING GREEN, AKRON, MARSHALL, W. MICHIGAN, MIAMI OH, N. ILLINOIS, E. MICHIGAN, W. KENTUCKY, BALL ST., C. MICHIGAN, OHIO, KENT STATE, TOLEDO, S. ILLINOIS.

The point of aligning in this way is to develop a league play format like the NFL has, and to model the playoffs similarly, but with 16 teams going in. The Champions of the SEC, Big Mid West (BMW), ACC, Pacific Coast (PCC), Great Plains (GPC), and Heartland all get auto bids to the tournament, taking 6 slots, and the final slots are handed out by polling and an NCAA decision committee, or could be calculated by fan/media voting. That gets 10 more programs in. A team that wins the newly created International Conference, let's say Navy, would likely get a 4 seed, as would the winner of the new Conference USA, for example, Troy. Here's a look at the playoffs based on BIG conference champs getting auto bids, and 10 more being selected would look like this:
1Alabama (auto)1Texas(auto) 1Boise St(auto) 1Florida
2Iowa 2 Oregon (auto) 2Ohio State 2Cincinnati
3TCU 3 Penn State 3Virginia Tech 3Wisconsin
4C. Michigan(auto) 4 Ga Tech 4Nebraska 4Troy (auto)

As you can see, a 16 team playoff formatted the way I show results in auto bids to teams who will get slaughtered. C. Michigan would have played the overall #1 seed Bama, while Troy would have been Florida's sacrificial lamb. FOR A SECOND, focus not on who got in, but got left out: LSU, Ole Miss, Clemson, W. Virginia, Pitt, Miami, Oklahoma, Iowa, Oregon State, USC, Stanford. These are perennial bowl teams, with a few of them figuring into the title picture at times. You would really need to expand to 32 teams or some wild card format to get everyone deserving into my tourney, which brings us back to the whole "makes the season too long, blah, blah" conversation.

One more thing: the current bowls could be used to make this work. Each weekend, bowls which are geographically close together could be used to field these regionals, so they still get some great revenue. The Cotton Bowl might be paired with the Sugar, Independence, Liberty to produce the Southern regional champ. The Orange, Gator, Chick Fil A and Music City might produce the Atlantic regional champ. Further still, the Rose, Fiesta, Humanitarian, and Sun might produce my western champ. Or use the current BCS bowls as the finals.

 

[ExiledTidefan]

I had some free time to ponder what changes might come to college football at this level. What I came up with was basically 6 super conferences, 16 teams each, with 2 smaller conferences (Conference USA, International), 12 teams each, that pick up the pieces from programs in the current Conference USA and Sun Belt in one, and teams from the current WAC along with the service academies in the other. Basically, the Sun Belt, the Big East, Mountain West and the WAC just go away and realign.

THe 6 super conferences would have 16 teams each, with the SEC picking up GTech, Clemson, Memphis, and S. Miss. My ACC had East Carolina, W. Virginia, UCONN, Pitt, Rutgers, and Cincinatti joining. I have a new Big 10, called the Big MidWest, which has Syracuse, Kansas, K State, Notre Dame, and Missouri joining.

I moved Iowa to my all-new Great Plains conference, which features most of the old Big 12, minus the teams moved to the Big MidWest, adding TCU, La Tech, Wyoming, UTEP, Houston, and Colorado State.

The PAC 10 is the conference which probably changed the least. It's fairly well placed now, though talent-wise, not at all balanced. I attempt to settle that by adding Boise State, BYU, UTAH, Nevada, NMSU, and New Mexico. Again, whole chunks of the WAC and Mountain West come in.

I have a 6th BIG conference called the Heartland, which is not going to be very competitive in the way I have it built. These are old MAC teams, along with a couple Conference USA teams:
HEARTLAND CONFERENCE-
MTSU, BOWLING GREEN, AKRON, MARSHALL, W. MICHIGAN, MIAMI OH, N. ILLINOIS, E. MICHIGAN, W. KENTUCKY, BALL ST., C. MICHIGAN, OHIO, KENT STATE, TOLEDO, S. ILLINOIS.

The point of aligning in this way is to develop a league play format like the NFL has, and to model the playoffs similarly, but with 16 teams going in. The Champions of the SEC, Big Mid West (BMW), ACC, Pacific Coast (PCC), Great Plains (GPC), and Heartland all get auto bids to the tournament, taking 6 slots, and the final slots are handed out by polling and an NCAA decision committee, or could be calculated by fan/media voting. That gets 10 more programs in. A team that wins the newly created International Conference, let's say Navy, would likely get a 4 seed, as would the winner of the new Conference USA, for example, Troy. Here's a look at the playoffs based on BIG conference champs getting auto bids, and 10 more being selected would look like this:
1Alabama (auto)1Texas(auto) 1Boise St(auto) 1Florida
2Iowa 2 Oregon (auto) 2Ohio State 2Cincinnati
3TCU 3 Penn State 3Virginia Tech 3Wisconsin
4C. Michigan(auto) 4 Ga Tech 4Nebraska 4Troy (auto)

As you can see, a 16 team playoff formatted the way I show results in auto bids to teams who will get slaughtered. C. Michigan would have played the overall #1 seed Bama, while Troy would have been Florida's sacrificial lamb. FOR A SECOND, focus not on who got in, but got left out: LSU, Ole Miss, Clemson, W. Virginia, Pitt, Miami, Oklahoma, Iowa, Oregon State, USC, Stanford. These are perennial bowl teams, with a few of them figuring into the title picture at times. You would really need to expand to 32 teams or some wild card format to get everyone deserving into my tourney, which brings us back to the whole "makes the season too long, blah, blah" conversation.

One more thing: the current bowls could be used to make this work. Each weekend, bowls which are geographically close together could be used to field these regionals, so they still get some great revenue. The Cotton Bowl might be paired with the Sugar, Independence, Liberty to produce the Southern regional champ. The Orange, Gator, Chick Fil A and Music City might produce the Atlantic regional champ. Further still, the Rose, Fiesta, Humanitarian, and Sun might produce my western champ. Or use the current BCS bowls as the finals.

 

[rick4bama]

Well just heard about this the other day. What I heard was Texas was one, the other was one that use to be in the SEC and it wasn't G.Tech it was Tulana.

 

[mhardiman]

Well just heard about this the other day. What I heard was Texas was one, the other was one that use to be in the SEC and it wasn't G.Tech it was Tulana.

That would not make any sense; The SEC would not gain anything from Tulane with already having the New Orleans/Louisiana TV market with LSU, and another thing weird is Tulane's athletic program as of a couple years ago was in such bad financial shape that Tulane was talking about doing away with football or at least drop down to Div II. The biggest Question I have about this whole "16 Team Super Conferences" is didn't the original schools of the SEC leave the Southern Conference because there was just too many teams, and would name about five conference champions because it was too hard to name a true conference champion. Yeah you can have divisions with a conference championship which SoCon didn’t have, but you could have three or four way tie in a division and have a mess. I think fourteen teams are manageable, but sixteen teams are too much. I wish Notre Dame would just cave and join the Big Ten and end all this. Also there is no need for a play-off; the BCS I think has gotten it right each year, and the last thing College Football needs to do is creating an NFL type of landscape IMO.

 

[ExiledTidefan]

Agreed that the BCS got it right most years in existence. I shudder to think I am saying this, but 2004 when Auburn got locked out of the National Championship, was the biggest blight on the BCS so far. USC would have killed them too, just like Oklahoma, but Auburn was more deserving. I digress.

In my format, you would need to play ONLY conference games during the regular season, so I'd propose a 10 game regular season (play all 7 of your division opponents, then 3 from the other division, which would be rotated, with the exception of the 1 team from the other division you choose to keep on the schedule, in our case Tennessee.) Then a conference title game. Head to head matchups would decide the tiebreakers, with the higher ranked teams owning tiebreakers. This keeps the importance on the REGULAR season, which is the one thing that I believe MUST stay intact, if a playoff is advanced.

Expanding from a 16 team tourney to a 32 team tourney would mean 5 more games to play for a champion. A total of 31 playoff games would be played, which is very close to the number of bowl games we have right now, so the bowl format isn't thrown out the window! 4 regions, with 8 teams in each, bracket style. I can't think of a more fun way to watch college football! And, remember I said drop the out of conference regular season games, so this format allows the folks beating their chest saying "just try to keep up with our conference" to test their mettle out of conference.

all of this is probably just fantasy as the BCS seems to have a strangle hold on how it's going to be done from now on. But if conferences are going to realign and get larger, I think we need to restructure the whole thing in one fell swoop.

 

[LBS]

The TV market drive, paired with some of the comments that I've read in the press about "already having that market" confuse me.

Are they going to a foothold in a market or total domination. We're in Florida where there are a million TVs that could careless about the Gators (even if there are a million who do). In Georgia, we have UGA, but at Tech fans also not an attractive target to TV advertisers?
Tulane I can see, as that is a "desitination school" where most alumni leave the area.

If Texas and Texas A&M would not come, would we be interested in some other school in the Dallas TV Market area? This level of "reaching" for a market was the only explanation I could come up with for that U. of Maryland rumor (Baltimore/D.C. market).

 

[psychojoe]

If Texas and Texas A&M would not come, would we be interested in some other school in the Dallas TV Market area? This level of "reaching" for a market was the only explanation I could come up with for that U. of Maryland rumor (Baltimore/D.C. market).

I'm not sure how good they'd be playing an SEC school every week, but TCU would get us in the Dallas-Fort Worth market. Not a large following outside of Texas though,and without another Texas school, no natural rivalries. FSU would add a significant following, no doubt, Ga Tech not so much.

 

[LBS]

I'm not sure how good they'd be playing an SEC school every week, but TCU would get us in the Dallas-Fort Worth market. Not a large following outside of Texas though,and without another Texas school, no natural rivalries. FSU would add a significant following, no doubt, Ga Tech not so much.

I don't have heartburn with what you wrote, but apparently some articles that I have read would.

They say FSU is not needed because either the Gaotrs carry such a large share of the market (I don't believe it) or that all we need is a team in a market (presumabley our "Product" is good enough to take it from there).

If all we need is a foothold, then TCU would do, would it not? This direction makes me wonder what an SEC schedule and SEC money could do for/to a TCU. The have a small stadium, but that could change. If a Texas boy wanted to play in the SEC, TCU could see a huge rise in talent.

So, could the SEC create its own competition, as long as it gets into a market?

 

[mhardiman]

Agreed that the BCS got it right most years in existence. I shudder to think I am saying this, but 2004 when Auburn got locked out of the National Championship, was the biggest blight on the BCS so far. USC would have killed them too, just like Oklahoma, but Auburn was more deserving. I digress.

In my format, you would need to play ONLY conference games during the regular season, so I'd propose a 10 game regular season (play all 7 of your division opponents, then 3 from the other division, which would be rotated, with the exception of the 1 team from the other division you choose to keep on the schedule, in our case Tennessee.) Then a conference title game. Head to head matchups would decide the tiebreakers, with the higher ranked teams owning tiebreakers. This keeps the importance on the REGULAR season, which is the one thing that I believe MUST stay intact, if a playoff is advanced.

Expanding from a 16 team tourney to a 32 team tourney would mean 5 more games to play for a champion. A total of 31 playoff games would be played, which is very close to the number of bowl games we have right now, so the bowl format isn't thrown out the window! 4 regions, with 8 teams in each, bracket style. I can't think of a more fun way to watch college football! And, remember I said drop the out of conference regular season games, so this format allows the folks beating their chest saying "just try to keep up with our conference" to test their mettle out of conference.

all of this is probably just fantasy as the BCS seems to have a strangle hold on how it's going to be done from now on. But if conferences are going to realign and get larger, I think we need to restructure the whole thing in one fell swoop.

I used to agree with you that <?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags" /><st1:City><st1lace>Auburn</st1lace></st1:City> deserved to get thumped by USC rather then <st1:State><st1lace>Oklahoma</st1lace></st1:State>, But it was actually an <st1lace>Auburn</st1lace> fan that convinced my they should not have. We were both on the agreement that we did not want to see a play-off system in college football, and I made the comment that the only time I though the BCS got it wrong was 2004 when <st1:City><st1lace>Auburn</st1lace></st1:City> got left out of the championship game. And he said this; "College football is the only sport that your past successes or failures determines your future; that’s beautiful and I love that, and we had our chance against USC the year before in 2003 and we got killed." I said "that was the year before, and two completely different teams," and his reply was "yes, we had attrition, but so did USC and every team in the country so all is equal. We had no right in the National championship game." I can’t believe that came from a barner, but I have to agree with him.<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" /><o></o>