After a few days of the video being up, I wanna acknowledge some of the mistakes you guys found in it… 1. University of New Hampshire was unintentionally left out of the video (pour one out for your favorite Wildcats fan) 2. I butchered the Tri-State Conference and the name does not even relate to the schools included in it. Thank you guys for pointing them out!
So a couple of things here, I think this fixes college basketball’s biggest problem which is these schools playing buy games in November because the adjusted metrics would look much different however as a Saint Louis University grad for my masters and a Wichita State grad for my bachelor’s I hate you have my two schools together. As good as it is to Have Lindenwood and SIUE Division 1 you put them in a league that they would be non competitive in for a decade
It killed me to see Georgetown out the Big East. That said, all those DC schools together in one conference could make some awesome new inter-city rivalries. I can imagine how fun DC would be in a year where Gtown, Howard, GW, and American were all competitive with one another. Great job on this.
@@NA.NA..I agree, adding some of those bigger schools in the 2000s really made things even larger than life at MSG and brought so many amazing moments in the BET
Bro... mad props. I know you weren't exaggerating when you said this took a long time. I loved the vid, the realignments, the conference names, everything. Keep it up man!
This actually feels like when Cross Country, Indoor/Outdoor Track or Swimming & Diving do when they have to regionalize their competitions before qualifying for the National event.
Here’s my revamped version of the current Missouri Valley: Creighton, Wichita St, Drake, Northern Iowa, Tulsa, Southern Illinois, Loyola Chicago, Indiana State and Bradley. The conference got history and it’s sad what happened to Indiana St
Amazing video! The georgraphy nerd in me loves it. My only suggestion is to have an even number of teams per conference. With 352 teams, I would do 22 conferences of 16 teams per conference. That way, we have 30 conference games plus 12 non-conference games. Going to check out your other vids, excellent work!
I like the 16-team conference setup as well. But, I would divide them into two groups of 8 each. Each team plays their group opponents twice (one home one away) for 14 games and each non-group opponent once (half home half away alternating each year) for 22 games total. Each team would play each other team at least once. That leaves 8 to 10 non-conference games. It would be ideal if each conference teamed with (at least) two other conferences to play two conference "series games" (one home one away) - think old "Big 10-ACC Challenge" - for four of the 8 to 10 non-conference games. The conference tournaments could be a "Best 8" single elimination (three rounds) or a "Best 10" (four rounds) with two play-in games (7 vs 10 and 8 vs 9) to play the Top 2 seeds in the next round. Lowest seeded play-in winner vs 1 seed and other winner vs 2 seed. Teams would be seeded based on their conference records regardless of Group standings - mitigating "weak group" issues. Mathematically speaking, once you get below 8th place, you're talking primarily of sub-500 teams with low probability to win the tournament. BTW: I would also exempt the HBCU conferences from the alignments he proposed due to cultural history. I would also exempt the Ivy League because they are comprised of non-scholarship player teams.
I was thinking about this as well. If you keep the 32 conference lineup each conference would have about 11 teams per. Plus with 10 teams transitioning to D1 in basketball there's going to be 362 you could even cut it down to 30 conferences and have about 12 in each. Either way hopefully that would mean more competitive non-conference schedules for most all teams in an effort to make their March resume look better
This video is a perfect example of lazy creators just throwing together clips from other people. I'm Joking!!! 🤣 This was clearly a massive task and I thank you for the amazing content.
Alright, so as a fan of college basketball (though I admittedly only know my stuff for about 20 conferences), I have some thoughts and maybe considerations for a future (4 years later type) update video. First, while sticking to even numbers of teams is cool, it doesn't matter as much as you'd expect in college basketball and I feel that there are cases where dividing some groups to 11 or 13 or 9 would be helpful. Also, I gotta say I'm a big fan of the execution for the most part, and that these changes aren't (mostly) as drastic as they seem, so don't take my ideas as hard criticism, I'm just trying to come at this from a slightly less geographic, slightly more talent/money/success level direction than is present in the video. Okay, as far as actual teams I'd suggest changing . . . 1: St Mary's may be a bit much for this rendition of the Golden State Conference, but that may just be recency bias. However, the program is good enough I'd consider putting it in the WCC or Mountain West. 2: Again, there's probably not an easy solution without a LARGE amount of reshuffling but New Mexico and NMSU have historical success FAR beyond the other 6 teams placed in the SWAC (I'll get back to this later with some other teams) 3: Drake feels out of place in the Summit League, even considering the geographic reshuffling. 4: Similarly, Butler and Loyola Chicago feel a bit out of place in the MAC. 5: Wichita St and St. Louis also feel a bit much for the AAC. 6: I'd personally send Nebraska back to the Red River Conference (B12 stand-in), though this one isn't a big deal. 7: Western Kentucky, and Murray St. fit above the other proposed CUSA teams. 8: Dayton deserves better competition than the Great Lakes Conference. 9: For as much as the Eastern Athletic Conference makes sense to make, this is one that I think probably needs to be split up a bit. Liberty and VCU are better fits elsewhere IMO. 10: Georgetown, despite recent flops, is a far better team than this CAA would match up 1:1 with. 11: UMass is a bit odd to me in the North Atlantic Conference. 12: Again, potentially a recency bias, but Yale feels like a better team than that conference could handle. Not that the Ivy is particularly balanced now, but that one may have been fine to leave. (idk I'll decide later after I give a place for all these teams I wanna move). 13: I get the emphasis on location, but FAU, USF, and UCF are definitely another tier from the rest of those Florida teams, no questions asked there. 14: The SEC should probably have more teams 15: Davidson needs a bit of a boost, and I'm not just saying that because Curry went there. Maybe Winthrop too. 16: The Dixie State Conference probably shouldn't have UAB in it. Alright, I only have issues with 16 conferences . . . well . . . now I need to give you an idea of how I'd fix it right? Can't just complain and not give my take on it. . . Part 1: The West: OK, so St. Mary's to the WCC and UNM/NMSU to the Mountain West works . . . but creates voids and a 6 team SWAC I need to solve. There are two options I see, dissolve the SWAC, sending up to 2 teams to the Golden State Conference (yes I know it breaks the geography, but not that bad if NAU+GCU do it), 2-3 to the Summit League (Air Force + Northern Colorado + Denver?), which leaves UTEP as the hard team to place. You could realistically go back to the Golden State Conference or Pacific Coast Conference, breaking geographically, or integrate UTEP into the Lonestar Conference (Which I have plans for don't worry). The second option for the SWAC, which I REALLY REALLY prefer, is the SWAC easing the pressure off of the very large Lonestar Conference by absorbing UTSA, SMU, North Texas, and Texas Southern. Part 2: The Great Lakes (and friends): So my biggest issue here is that there are a ton of teams which fit geographically but not in terms of proficiency. I realized when doing this that I ended up with maybe up to 8 teams (on notes 4-8) which could make up their own conference consisting of Drake, Butler, Loyola Chicago, Wichita St., St. Louis, Dayton for sure, plus perhaps Western Kentucky and Murray St. Looking around for other fits, I found DePaul to be the only other reasonable fit. So, maybe the solution for these high end mid-majors (+DePaul and Butler) is to go for a 10 team conference using 8 of the 10 I listed (sorry WKU and Murray St.). 8 is a small conference, but not beyond reason, and the geographic fit isn't *terrible*, stretching from Kansas to Ohio. This also doesn't decimate any other conferences, unlike I saw with the SWAC in Part 1, so I don't need to backfill any teams. I'll call this conference the Central Conference (I know, not very creative). Part 3: East Coast and Gulf: Across all of the East coast, there were, once again, a sizeable number of teams I found outta place skill-wise/money-wise. Those include (across ALL of the coast states): Liberty, VCU, Georgetown, UMass, Yale (to a lesser degree), Princeton, Davidson, Winthrop, UAB, FAU, USF, and UCF. Now just throwing those teams together doesn't quite work geographically, as that's most of the coast, though it does incorporate the right number of teams (12). So I expanded my search a bit into what teams I could place elsewhere and came up with this plan, which is REALLY ambitious and totally destroys a century of traditions but I need you to realize this is basketball-centric and I don't really care. UAB, USF, and UCF are probably a package deal in my scenario. The SEC only has 8 teams, while the Appalachian Valley Conference only has 10. I want to send the 4 best basketball schools in this SEC (Alabama, Miami, Florida, Auburn) to the Appalachian Valley Conference while ditching Vandy and Georgia Tech, bringing it to 12 teams and upping the strength of the conference quite a bit. This leaves Georgia, Florida St., Mississippi, and Mississippi St in a conference alone. I intend to fill those spots with UAB, USF, UCF, Vanderbilt, and Georgia Tech, bringing that conference up to 9. As for the other 9 teams more up the coast (except FAU), they may be a bit wack with FAU being way, way South relatively speaking, but it makes a cohesive conference still, and I'm sorta fine with leaving the conference a little bit widespread as a compromise for making it work in general. This leaves Liberty, VCU, Georgetown, UMass, Yale, Princeton, Davidson, Winthrop, and FAU in a conference together which Imma just call the Disaster Zone Conference, alluding to the fact that I don't have a better solution and this conference is a bit of a mess, but skill-wise makes decent sense and isn't as bad as plenty of real life conferences. Now this realignment does create some problems, notably in Florida, where the Sunshine Conference only has 7 teams. My solution was to delete the Dixie State Conference for the following reason: That conference has the widest range of talent left below the bigger conference which I already messed with, and gives room for some easy reshuffling. If we delete that conference, I see Alabama A&M and North Alabama headed to the Sunshine Conference from the Southland Conference, being replaced by former Dixie State teams in Southern Miss, Troy, and South Alabama. FIU and FGCU jump ship to the Sun Belt from the Sunshine Conference, being replaced by Alabama St, Alcorn St, and Mississippi Valley St, formerly of the Dixie State Conference. Finally, Jackson St, Jacksonville St, and Samford will join some combination of the Sun Belt (+2 of the 3) and Blue Ridge Conference (+1 of the 3). Since this is by FAR the most complicated reshuffling I did, here's the new team counts for the most affected conferences. To my eyes, this puts the conferences at . . . Appalachian Valley Conference: 12 Teams SEC: 9 Teams Disaster Zone: (New) 9 Teams Dixie State: Gone Sun Belt: 13 Teams Sunshine: 10 Teams Southland: 9 Teams Blue Ridge Conference: 10 Teams Call me crazy, but I like this more. I'd love to hear some feedback on if what I just wrote is even coherent, but I also want to make it clear that I like the original video and I'm not here to dumpster the quality of it. These changes would be far easier to show visually than in text which is why this is so long.
I decided to make some stuff up about 4 schools joining the NCAA D1 with CCNY joining the Big East, OCU joining the AAC, and Alaska and Alaska-Anchorage joining the WAC, while keeping the Ivy
This absolutely inspires me to do the same! I did something very similar with football like you did, but never thought about trying basketball. I'll let you know what I come up with if thats cool?
It's a tough project, and as you've seen in the previous comments, the two biggest issues are maintaining specific sacred-to-the-alumni rivalries that geography might not support (the greatest example in sports that I know of is Celtics-Lakers in the NBA) and the CULTURE of the schools involved, not just "how well do they play hoops?". Saw someone comment that Harvard would form a cross-Atlantic conference with Oxford and Cambridge before they stooped to play in a conference with (for example) Stonehill and other "non-elite" schools. But for the same reason as the Ivy League's common culture, the HBCUs absolutely MUST be together, because regardless of sports, their events are so much more than the game in action. Literally, the AUDIENCES engage in competition as well! Having said all that, it's irrelevant to the exercise you were performing, so no point reductions, and no other notes. 10/10. Keep up the stupendous work.
This looks like a great start. If football (logically) secedes from the NCAA, they can keep unwieldy 3 time zone conferences for only football and stick with something like this for all other sports. The only thing I would change is putting Georgetown back in the Big East. Despite the recent sucking, they still have a reputation and history with a lot of the Big East teams, and a conference like that would be better with 10 teams instead of 9.
Hey there, Sportsmanlike Misconduct! Excellent College Basketball Conference Realignment video. I'm very impressed with what you did with your college basketball conferences, and considering that this was no doubt a massive undertaking, I think you did a doggone good job. Keep up the great work!
my main two problems are saint Mary’s should be in the mountain west and for Dayton to be in the Central American because they are way better than the rest of their competition
The only one that stood out to me was Georgetown. They are too good historically and even currently to be put with those teams. I’d leave them in the big east giving them an even number. That was the only thing that stood out. Great job making this video. Very impressive.
If the powers that be had any brains or integrity, they'd get back to a 10 to 12 team conference that is geographically represented, so that travel expense can be reduced and the supporters can make reasonable arrangements to follow their teams. Also, it would be an opportunity to get some of these lesser known schools mingling with the bigger name schools. Then we can find out who's really who. Not that I'm a fan of the transfer portal, but the dawning of this ridiculous concept is the great equalizer. Any level talent can pick and choose from season to season which schools they want to play for. More players than not or deferring to immediate play time on a lesser known team than riding the bench on a big name team. The talent level is pretty well dispersed. Its just that the Joe Lunardis and Jay Bilas of the world haven't caught up yet. If you stick Norfolk St in the ACC, they will win games and be competitive. If you stick Bethune Cookman in the SEC, they will win games and be competitive. These are just random examples. They need to knock off this haves and have nots mentality and start thinking about geographical logistics and accessibility for the fans.
Okay, first of all, it's clear that you put in a lot of work for this video, and I tip my hat to you. I also give props for the HBCU representation instead of ghettoizing them in nonsensical conferences. (That said, you are NOT going to see four HBCUs competing with PWIs under a conference with DIXIE in its name, EVER.) For the most part I can't disagree too much with the pairings, but I hate to see the ACC schools and the Ivies break up; I get that you can only do so much and maintaining regional integrity mattered, but so does academic fit, IMO. But as strictly an intellectual exercise, great job.
So basically you are grouping colleges together geographically, along with the relative size of their basketball program. To be fair, these are the teams each team should schedule non-conference games with first if they are not already in the same conference currently I went to one of the smaller and academic schools in the Northeast. None of the other 9 teams you named are from the existing conference my school is in, but we schedule non-conference games all these schools almost every single year I will give a donation if you can guess it correctly which school i went to haha
The "tri-states" in this case apparently are Massachusetts, Connecticut and Rhode Island. And, even if we throw in Army (West Point) and Marist (Poughkeepsie), they're in the northern fringes of the New York City "tri-state" area in Dutchess and Orange Counties, well north of New York City.
@steveborrero2416 truthfulfully anything would be better than Tristate as that label doesn't fit. Top of my head Northern Atlantic Conference or maybe like Old Colony Conference. But you can't have a Tri-State Conference with the majority of teams not being in the Tristate area.
4:36 I hate to be *that guy* but there's no way you can take the name of an existing HBCU-centered conference and just tack it on to a bunch of non-HBCU schools. I have a legit problem with that. Also, 10:42, the CAA is now known as the *Coastal* Athletic Association, having changed their name within the last year or so.
Specifically mentions that Tri-State refers to New York/New Jersey/Connecticut… then puts in schools from 4 states, half from Massachusetts and Rhode Island and none from New Jersey. Oof. University of New Hampshire was nowhere to be found. R.I.P. Wildcats.
I understand that this is just a fantasy but there are more things than just geography and relative team strength to consider Harvard and Yale will join a transatlantic international conference with Oxford and Cambridge before they join one with Stonehill and Central Connecticut State.
1. Because Penn-Princeton plus the the remainder of Big five and local School within public transit distance from Philadelphia is one conference 2. Columbia is suburban/City bus league from eleven other schools. 3. The Beanpot conference hmmm plausible.
@@412jace It is a deep rivalry between Sam Houston and Stephen F Austin. I live in the Houston area and I've talked to a lot of people who are from Sam Houston. They did not like the fact that SHSU and SFA were going to be separated.
Like the video but feel like three things feels wrong 1.Keep the ivy League 2.HBCU in their own conference 3.more than an nitpick having UAB in Dixie conference would kill the conference due to their history in the NCAA Tournament especially during the early 2000
@@sportsmanlikemisconduct thanks this was a great video. I have a idea for a future video. The worst football team. The York University Lions have not won a game in 6 years except when a opponent played an illegal player. What amazing is there cross town rival uni of Torontoblues are almost as bad.
I disagree with putting Milwaukee in the Summit. They belong in your MAC with all the Chicago schools. I can understand the impulse to keep the two Wisconsin schools together. But Milwaukee is actually quite a bit closer to Chicago both geographically and culturally.
