📡 Every college football conference should scrap divisions. Here's the whole Power 5 plan.

[TerryP]

Most college football conferences have divisions. The SEC started the trend in 1992, when it added a conference championship and needed a way to pick two reps. It made sense at the time.

But several conferences have grown to 14 teams. That’s way too many for a division setup, since even a nine-game schedule means some teams go years without playing alleged conference rivals.

Really, every conference should get rid of divisions and just assign a few annual rivals. As you’ll see below, this would preserve major rivalries, ensure every team sees its whole conference, balance schedules, and remove the risk of a weak team taking a spot in a conference title game.

(How would a conference handle a three-team tie for first place? However it wants, but Playoff rankings make business sense, since you don’t want your long shot spoiling your contenders.)

Since each conference has its own unique issues, here are custom proposals for the entire Power 5. Most non-power conferences could also adapt one of these.


1. We started with the SEC, since its rivalries are the most complicated. Most everybody liked our proposal.
Scrapping divisions in the 14-team SEC would mean we could protect three annual rivalries for each team, plus ensure every other matchup happened every other year.

Result: no major rivalries lost, and every team visiting every SEC stadium once or twice every four years.

Here were those annual rivalries Bill Connelly and I picked, and here’s a bunch more about our SEC plan, including our finding that this would make every team’s two-year schedule strength basically equal:



Here's the other conferences.

How to get rid of all CFB divisions

 

[alabama mike]

:headscratch: Why in the world would any conference do that, it makes sense? I really like to look at the entire list in detail but a quick once over looks good.

 

[PurlJam]

I can't see Missouri and Arkansas as an annual rivalry over Arkansas/LSU for the "Golden Boot".

 

[TerryP]

I can't see Missouri and Arkansas as an annual rivalry over Arkansas/LSU for the "Golden Boot".

Much like A&M and UofSC, that's an invented rivalry with a gawd awful trophy.

The first thing I noticed about the SEC's lineup is no LSU vs UF game. I'd start there if it were up to me, but good god then what to do? This seems to move away from the "have's" and "have-nots" model that the SEC's divisions were patterned after when the conference split.

One other thing to note is this model moves away from the "have's" and "have-not's" from which the SEC's divisional model was patterned. In this case, you have Bama playing two of the "have's," and LSU only playing one with Bama.

 

[PurlJam]

Much like A&M and UofSC, that's an invented rivalry with a gawd awful trophy.

The first thing I noticed about the SEC's lineup is no LSU vs UF game. I'd start there if it were up to me, but good god then what to do?

Give us Vandy, Kentucky and Missouri as permanent annual rivals.

 

[bama alum]

Give us Vandy, Kentucky and Missouri as permanent annual rivals.

We already have a high school team before the barner game. Besides, where's the fun in laughing at UTurd?

 

[PurlJam]

We already have a high school team with the barner game. Besides, where's the fun in laughing at UTurd?

FIFY.