One problem I’m seeing is lack of talented teams in Great Plains Kansas state would arguably be the best team in that conference and the lack of talent would get less recognition and less attraction from recruits regardless of a cfp spot
I had this kind of Idea as well but with a few changes. I said basically 64 teams in, let's call it D1, and the rest are in D2. I was arranging them in 4-16 team conferences with an east/west division or north/south. Where the winner of a division would play the other side of their conference for a shot at an auto bid in the playoff. So 4 auto bids and 8 at Large bids. But having more auto bids may be the way to go. As for the schools that may feel left out of the D1 I think a relegation system, like English football, were the worst of a D1 division and the best of the D2 would switch places in the following year. So maybe 4 teams would loose their place in a year if they were the worst in their conference. IF you wanna be in D1 you gotta win. It could be something a bit different but I really like the idea of a D2 team playing really well replacing a bad D1 team. Maybe they have to play for the spot.
After WW2, Henry Morgenthau proposed what would later be known as the Morgenthau Plan. To prevent Germany from become a major power again after the war, they were going to cut it up into smaller pieces--divide it against itself, and give important pieces away to rival powers. Looking at you map, I can't help but wonder who the SEC invaded to deserve getting Morgenthau'd. Putting Alabama, Georgia, Tennessee and Kentucky in separate conferences is insane. Regional conferences are important, I agree--which is why breaking up what it probably the most important and most cross-linked regional conference is crazy. People care because of shared history, because families are split between schools--not because bus tickets are cheap. Not because of sheer proximity. E.g., Kansas has no history with Minnesota. Kansas has a long and rich history with OU. Why aren't they in the same conference? And even then, you managed to avoid re-creating some of the great lost rivalries. Where is the Backyard Brawl? Where's Nebraska-Kansas? And I'm not even sure that there would be more wins to go around in smaller conferences. Texas + A&M won half of the SWC championships between them. Nebraska and Oklahoma won a full 70 percent of all Big Eight championships. Blue bloods are blue bloods because they were the mid-sized fish in small ponds for most of the 20th century. And even then, this entire plan completely ignores all the other considerations schools have when choosing conferences. E.g., NDSU is a relatively poor school with a narrow athletic budget, and they probably can't afford the much increased travel expenses. Because it's not just football that now has to travel to all those other schools, but also baseball, and basketball, and swimming, and cross country, and all the rest. Or how the Big 10 is also an academic and research-sharing alliance. All in all: good idea and I look forward to seeing your second draft.
This just got bumped into my feed, excited to see if your thoughts have changed at all. I think there’s a lot of good ideas here, but also some of conferences feel wildly lopsided. Like this basically canonizes the B1G east and west into separate conferences but the west has been dying on the vine with Michigan, MSU, OSU, and PSU all in the East. I do think keeping the historical conferences in mind to help maintain some rivalries would be good. So like in our home conference example, the B1G teams from before the expansion began with Penn State are pretty geographically centered. Not sure what’s in your edit but my idea that would maybe be possible would be expand back out to six major conferences (ten teams each) and they get bids to the new 8 team playoff with two at larges. The 8 team playoff is already set so we’re halfway there. So schools like Penn State, Notre Dame, Maryland, Rutgers can hop in with some of those New England schools they have played a lot historically, I think the southwest and Northwoods ones are solid ideas, maybe some of the NorCal ones join the Northwoods and the southwest grabs some more teams that are slightly eastward. I won’t go through the whole map but I think something like that would be a halfway point that conferences might actually go for.
As *wildly* unrealistic as it would be, I would love to see some sort of formal year-to-year promotion and relegation between "Power Five" conferences, "Group of Five" conferences, and "FCS" conferences
Solution for this is not every year but every five years. Any team with a losing record that hasn't won a conference title in those 5 years is demoted for the closest G5 team with the highest winning percentage over that time frame. You could also realign the G5 and Div 2 and Div 3 schools so that you could fall to a Div 3 football program if you're not performing over a 20-year stretch.
@@JR-ub2wt were they to be controlled by the NCAA, the conferences wouldn't be making money on their own anymore. So, something like that could happen in a world where that is the case.
@@blueredlover1060 that’s never gonna happen. The entire point of why independent conferences were made was to break away from NCAA controlled broadcasting rights in the 80s. The supreme court ruled this was legal and the NCAA can do nothing about it. This will never be possible and it’s a good thing for schools.
The only issue I have with this is that teams in the group conferences would never really have a chance at making the playoff. If the playoff is 3 weeks anyways, you could expand it to 16 teams, 1 from each conference, and then 2 at large. This allows the smaller schools to still get exposure. There’s a reason march madness works so well, and it’s because ANYONE has a shot.
Yeah, I think having a tournament of all the conference champs plus some wildcards would make it more entertaining. You could relatively easily remove a few of the cupcake games from almost everyone's schedules and reserve those for the post season tournament. If you're school doesn't make it, maybe they can do some non-tournament postseason games
Well the main reason is, is that they would lose right away. in March madness the 1 seed has only lost to the 64 seed once. Bama still crushes 3 and 4 seeds so they’d practically 64-0 a 15 or 16 seed
16 is too much. 12 would be the most ideal. You are far more likely to get at least one Group 5 Team in every year than the current system, and it encourages teams to crack the top 4 for a Bye Week.
@@joshlien2118 Any number can work so long as you know how to eliminate properly. Any odd or even number not divisible by 2^x... can be utilized simply by reducing the proper amount of teams to 2^x. In other words, 5-8 teams gets reduced to 4, 9-16 teams gets reduced to 8, 17-24 teams gets reduced to 16. This is done by giving the top teams byes according to the number of odd teams in. 7 teams would give 1 team a bye while the other 6 duke it out. 5 teams gives team 1, 2, and 3 byes while 4 and 5 duke it out. 12 teams is the same way. 1-4 have byes and 5-12 face off until only eight teams remain.
A simple solution was keeping the single National Championship BUT save it for AFTER all of the Bowl Games. That way results matter for everybody while supporting parity
Are you saying that the 2 best teams after all the bowls are going to play? That's barely going to change anything. Maybe you'll have #5 and #6 competing for a NCG spot with the bowl game instead of just 1-4, and if polls are any indication, that's going to be hard for #5 or #6 to break into a Top 2 spot.
The only issue with your conference breakdown is missing out on some of the rivalry games. Georgia would have to spend 2/3 of out of conference schedule to play South Carolina and Auburn, leading to no new challenges or anything different year over year. Alabama would spend one week of the three allotted every year to play Tennessee. I think there’s a way to manage the conferences to keep all the historical rivals together while still being regional and competitive. I like the breakdown just missing the rivals.
@@ericfolmar7338 I saw the map of his conferences and I just thought wtf with wvu being added to the Carolina conferences. Pinning wvu against Pitt not only makes sense for rivalry’s sake, but for the sake of region too
Back in the 1980s and 1990s, the hopes of every school, outside of the independents, was to win your conference. USC, Michigan, Ohio State, their goal was to make it to the Rose Bowl. Florida, Georgia, Alabama, all wanted to make it to the Sugar Bowl. Texas was the Cotton Bowl. Oklahoma or Nebraska, the Orange Bowl. BYU wanted to make it to the Holiday Bowl. Fresno State and Central Michigan wanted to make it to the California Raisin Bowl. If you happened to be voted a national champion at the end of the year, that was even better. But the goal was to win your conference. The game was so much more interesting back then. Also, I know that today, outside of Notre Dame, Independence seems like a killer. But it was kind of fun when you had a bunch of very high profile independent schools. Back in the 1980s and early 1990s, and even earlier, Penn State, Florida State, Miami, West Virginia, Virginia Tech, Syracuse, Louisville, and many others, were all independent. Because these schools were independent, you could end up with some great intersectional matchups, even late in the season. Yeah, college football is just boring now.
You nailed it jsmith, college football is increasingly just an NFL clone and the NFL has *NEVER* had the spirit and rivalry to compare to old time college football.
I wouldn't go as far to say college football is boring now, at least if you're an actual college student. Rivalry games still hold weight with the fanbases. However, I agree that revisions need to be made to make it interesting to people who aren't students/alumni.
@Andre Jarboe I'm in between. The magic of College Football comes from 2 losses basically ending your season, 3 for sure. The 12 teams would ruin that, I think 6 largely keeps that intact. There's rarely if ever been a non top 6 team where you feel they were robbed. Also this allows for a bie week that keeps 1 and 2 important and gives an incentive to go undefeated. Baseball gave up the whole "every game matters" thing in favor of a large playoff and it ruined the sport. CF is different more teams so there should be a larger playoff. But the new plan will ruin the sport IMO. Too many teams.
@J Smith I know I am in the minority (and a very small one at that) but I would love for college football to go back to the pre-BCS days. Maybe it's a product of age (I was born in '84) so I remember the game before the BCS and CFP, but I am worried that one of the most unique thing about the sport, and one of the things that make it the best sport by far, is how meaningful and important the regular season is. Bow, schools consider any season where they don't make the CFP a total failure. It may seem counterintuitive since I'd like a pre-BCS set up but since the CFP is going nowhere, I think it must be expanded. 4 teams is just the worst of both worlds. A 16 team playoff (with games on campus until the semis and final) would help with parity so much. More elite layers will be willing to go to schools that are traditionally in the #10-25 range now because they know they have a shot at the title. The 4 team playoff hurt parity so much because players know only those 4-6 teams are likely to make it. And since success is now viewed strictly through the CFP the elite only went there. Anyway, like I said most people probably disagree with my first point, maybe a few more agree with the second. Either way, I love College Football and and both sad and excited that November games are here!
@@Jon.A.Scholt - I agree with you 100%. The sport was far more appealing pre-BCS. While most businesses and organizations are focused on making the sport as appealing as possible to as many people as possible, college football is focused on reducing the appeal to just five or six schools.
@@universenerdd Yeah, maybe, maybe not. Statistically it's looking like a coinflip, but I'd be very happy either way. I only want UT to go to the CFP for recruiting exposure lol
Greed is a lesson that EVERY function, group, or culture needs to experience to disastrous levels before they reawaken to the stupidity of allowing only a few to succeed at the penalty of the masses.
@@sarahmccoy1941 Well, then expect the NCAA to die within 20 years. There's no reason for those of us who are fans of "lesser" schools to pay attention anymore.
College football has the worst parity in all of American sports. That distinction used to belong to women's college basketball, but parity in that sport has improved in recent years, while it's gone in the opposite direction with college football. And most discouraging of all is that the powers that be in college football seem to be hell-bent on killing off whatever parity that still remains.
I think this season has more parity than the previous 3-4 but yeah it's still the worst hands down, but there are signs of improvement with Alabama and Clemson essentially being out. NIL deals and the transfer portal and 12 team playoff will go a long way in helping to make things more interesting.
Low key one of the greatest videos I have EVER seen!!! It's been a while since the PAC12 has been to the playoffs and this system would be so cool!!! Conference of Champs needs another chance!!!
I might actually be interested in college football if it was structured this way. My biggest gripes with it is that there is not a good structure for determining who is the best team and most games don't seem to hold very much importance.
He is too young to remember all of the controversies surrounding the BCS Title games and who should or should not be in. It was far from a perfect system, and the future expanded playoff will fix the current system even more. And actually improve on what he thought was good about the old BCS system which was "letting more teams in to big bowls". The biggest issue with CFB is the lack of money being properly spread around. That's why the NFL is "any given sunday". Salary Cap. Teams like Alabama, LSU, Georgia, Ohio State, Michigan, Florida, etc etc have absolutely MASSIVE budgets in comparison to 95% of other schools out there, including ones in their own conferences. They are on TV during prime time every weekend, so yeah.... kids growing up want to play for these big schools who they are currently seeing every weekend and in every playoff game. You can't really fault the kids for that, and I don't know how to fix that issue, you probably can't. Because if kids coming out of college were able to pick which Pro Team they played for, there would be like 4-5 amazingly talented teams with the rest getting the "scraps" and it just wouldn't be fair. That's CFB in a nutshell right there.
@@horatiohornblower3757 Yeah i feel like people are forgetting how shitty the BCS was. Also these new rules with paying players just made the problem you brought up in the second paragraph magnitudes worse. As an oregon fan, i don't mind it cuz we got money, But as a college football fan, i hate it, as I realize that not every school has a phil nite.
I love this idea, the conference and playoff system reminds on nfl Divisions. As an Eagles fan, there have been a couple times where despite not being very good we could still make the playoff by winning our division. This structure kept me interested even though my team probably wouldn't have made very high on power rankings. The college football structure has caused me to completely stop being a fan of a team and rather just watch the sport as a neutral observer. As much as I'd love to have a favorite team the truth is that only around 10% of teams have a real shot at making the playoff, so I'd either feel like a bandwagon or have to try and make myself interested in games that are essentially pointless.
I'd love that as well, but that would require decoupling sports from conferences and potentially the university itself. Duke may get relegated in football but that doesn't mean their basketball team should also get relegated to a G5 equivalent. Conferences also aren't just about sports, there are also academics and research benefits which is why the Pac 12 requires schools to be a Tier 1 research institutes and an AAU member.
As much as I’m a fan of promotion/relegation schemes, I don’t think it’s fair to penalize incoming freshmen for what the previous season’s seniors were responsible for. If there was a way to do it mid season, that could work, but you’re dealing with small sample sizes AND finalizing your schedule on the fly.
always used to do this in NCAA football games legacy mode, go into custom conferences at the end of the season and promote the best mountain west team to the pac-12, worst sec team down to c-usa, was fun
I realize that logistically and financially it’s be hard, but I don’t know that it would be unfair to freshmen, unless you argue that it was unfair to Idaho’s freshmen when they dropped back down plus you can prove your team is good now by bouncing back up immediately. You can also have different divisions (for lack of a better word) for each sport, basically your demoting/promoting the program, not the school. Appreciate the counter arguments, breeds nice conversation
I proposed something along these lines before. Creation of eight conferences of 16 teams with two sub-conferences with 8 teams each for a total of 128 teams. No independent schools in the system. You can play 3 or 4 games outside of conference but they have no bearing on conference standings. Winner of each sub-conference plays for the conference championship, essentially the first round of the playoff. Then conference champions compete in the round of 8. Then a round of 4, then a championship game as normal. No polls, no cigar smoke filled room with "experts" choosing the participants like a Miss America contest. The champion is determined on the field of play like, oh I don't know, the NFL for example. I like the idea of relegation to give up and coming teams a chance and to provide perennial doormats the incentive to invest in their programs.
I love how you have a conference called the New England conference when only 1 team in that conference is even in New England. Might as well call it the east coast conference
I like your idea of CFB realignment. Imo, it's a good thing for recruitment when the university in your area can attract local top tier talent instead of having them head elsewhere. Case in point is San Diego county (and nearby Imperial co.) where HS standouts leave for the Power Five conferences. If San Diego State were in the PAC-12 or BIG-12 they'd be able attract not only local top tier talent but other top talent as well. For years, San Diego in the past has been raided by USC, UCLA and other major PAC-12 schools. Now with PAC-12 dominance waning, our HS standout players are heading for greener pastures in the BIG1O, BIG-12 and SEC.
I love the conference layout! I think that for the teams that don’t really quite fit in anywhere they could be an independent kinda like what we have right now so if teams need filler games before conference play they can schedule them
I think right now the biggest issue is, like you said, the fact that every school/conference is more independent. I think the CFP should have more control over how games are scheduled…. Like it doesn’t make sense to me that it’s nearly impossible for both Michigan and Ohio state to make the playoffs bc one of them is guaranteed to loose the last game, whereas Alabama and Georgia can both make the playoffs because they don’t always play, and if they do it’s earlier in the season
this reminds me of when the big 12 always got f'd over cuz they didn't play a conference championship game, leaving the schools that won their conference with a 1 win advantage
Freakin' brilliant, kid! Add a relegation system to move teams up and down between the top-tier Regional conferences and the "Group" conferences and you make college football more rational and more attractive to more fans than ever. Schools in the Power 5, particularly those in the middle or bottom, would resist relegation, but it would be better for them in the end to drop down in certain eras and have fun winning their way upward. That's an experience that TCU actually had after the old SWC broke up and they were left out of the Big XII, but your plan, plus relegation would make that an opportunity (and a risk) for every school playing at the current Power Five and Group of Five levels (and maybe even those below).
Virginia (all schools) should not be in a New England conference, they should be in a Mid-Atlantic or Upper South conference. They have far more in common traditionally with rivals in the Carolinas and West Virginia than they do with schools as far north as Boston. Also, you completely forgot James Madison, who are new to FBS this year and in the Sun Belt. If you mention NDSU, JMU has been right on their heels in FCS for the past 10-15 years and has two national championships of their own (2004, 2016) and they have finally moved up whereas NDSU hasn't yet. (But should.)
I think this is a great idea. It would be awesome if this were implemented. Just an idea to add onto that, I noticed that there were a handful of teams that missed out being in the power 9 conferences but are still quite good. It could be a good idea that the bottom one or two teams in the power 9 conferences gets demoted to the conference below it, and the top one or two teams in the lower conference get boosted up to the better conference. That would give schools that aren't as big a goal to shoot for.
Wish this would happen. As a Pitt fan, we could still have the OOC game against WVU and play other teams. This idea also helps with traveling fans, more people going to games also means more money. Too bad this will never happen with the current deals every conference has 😕
These are some interesting ideas. I don't think it will fix the issues with college football though. A lot of people want the playoff to be expanded. Currently the college football semi final games have been almost always non-competitive. Adding more teams won't fix this issue, it just creates more blowouts that we have to watch. It will in theory give more teams hope/motivation to go for it, but this isn't necessarily a good thing. Right now with the 4 team structure. Teams outside of the SEC and Big 10 know that they need to rack up a strong strength of schedule to get into the playoff. This leads to more aggressive scheduling. If there are 12 teams in the playoff, and conference champions are automatic bids, there is literally no incentive to schedule any difficult out of conference games. This cheapens the regular season, which is the heart of college football. if Oregon knew that they could get in as a top 12 team, no way they would've taken on Kirby Smart's bull dogs. They would have just dusted their way through the barely power 5 PAC 12 and found out in January just how much worse they are than a team that can actually win a championship for the whole world to see.
Analysts are actually saying that Oregon should not have scheduled the Dawgs anyways… that they would be ranked higher and in better position to make the playoff. I’m a fan of ‘be the best by beating the best’ and don’t mind that Oregon scheduled Georgia. They learned where they had to go and it probably helped them be the team they are now.
technically GSU is the largest school in GA now since it absorbed a lot of it's perimeter college students. Georgia State definitely doesn't deserve to be in a power conference just yet, but it's for sure hard to get 9 teams from just Georgia and Florida. There would definitely need to be some shifting of all the different conferences, but this would be a very neat idea.
I think they would do just find i live in atl and i believe that if they were pushed up they would in turn get more recruits and they already are a big school
I tend to agree with your points. I've actually worked on something similar to this, but took a slightly different approach. 1. Rather than permanent conferences, I proposed that every team be paired with a dedicated travel team - Ohio State & Michigan, for example. 2. These pairs then would be grouped with geographic rivals as well as pairs of teams from very different geographies. 3. Each team would play a total of 10 games a season & since everyone is playing everyone else in your alignment, you've got a 'conference' champion. 4. Those champs then head into a 32 team playoff. 5. Finally, and most important, every 4 years the alignment of your conference shifts - one pair of teams is shifted out & a new pair is shifted in. The only team you always play is your dedicated rival - So Ohio State would always play Michigan.
Expanding the playoffs is a great idea. I have thought for years that an 8 team playoff would be much better. It would eliminate the need for an undefeated regular season as a prerequisite for the playoffs, and the short straw situations of decided which one-loss team is better than the multiple others, or choosing a one-loss larger school over an undefeated smaller school, for a 4 team playoff. The politics of rankings being decided off the field needs to be curtailed so the players and coaches can decide who’s the best on the field. A lot of benefit by adding only 1 more week to the playoffs. Your video has me reconsidering the first round bye, I initially dismissed, with your suggestion of a 12 team playoff. Four first round byes will reward undefeated regular season teams. A 12 team playoff would reinvigorate the importance of a conference championship. How great would it be to have the potential of the greatest rivalries to meet twice in a season, once in the regular and the other in the playoffs? Then we could potential see the likes of Mich. and OSU twice, where one team wins the regular season game and the other extracts revenge in the playoffs. The bowl games don’t have the luster and excitement that they used to have. Making the bowls a part of a larger playoff structure could change that. And end the 3-5 week downtime that exists now. Let the regular season play into the first week of Dec. Then have a conference championship round as part of the first week of the playoffs. Conference championship is an automatic bid into the rest of the playoffs; and still give the top four ranked teams a bye in the next round. With this set up, there’s even a potential for a third rivalry meetup (which is something to consider altogether). For example, Mich. and OSU meet in the regular season undefeated. After that game, they are still the top 2 teams in the B1G, so they play for the conference championship. The regular season losing team extracts revenge and gets the automatic bid into the next round; and the other continues in the playoffs based upon ranking. This is a controversial scenario that would result, and need for consideration. But, it would allow for conference title games to be played the holiday weekend around Christmas. Then have bowl games as the next phase of the playoffs on Jan. 1; which would be the bye week for the top four teams. Then the next two rounds follow to decide the national champion. Expanding the playoffs is the smart idea. I don’t think implementing a new conference structure will be welcomed by the existing conferences. But, improving balance among the conferences can be achieved by expanding the playoffs and giving automatic playoff bids to the champions. You have some good ideas in the video that I think many college football fans would like to see.
This would be a great idea. I approve of this. You should show this video to the NCAA headquarters in Indianapolis. Those are the people who run college football and control the sport. I say do it man.
It's very simple. 8 conferences with 16 teams each. If you win your conference, you go to an 8 team playoff. People say "that's not fair, SEC is so much better than any other conference" Well, if they want a better chance of making the playoffs, then your school will switch conferences. Then we wouldn't have a discussion of "well, (unknown) college is undefeated and deserves to be there!" Well, if you can't win your own conference, you don't deserve to be in the playoffs.
Loved changing conferences in the old NCAA video game. Liked these conferences but it’ll never happen lol I think 12 teams will help a lot with getting more teams engaged longer
CFB needs something like the NFL has where the season champ drafts last. It's not a penalty per se, but something that forces parity. Maybe prohibit Natty game participants from accepting transfers that year.
@@ektran4205 didn't say it was. I was just making a comparison to how Super Bowl teams draft last outside of a trade as a way to make it harder for the better teams to get better players every year.
@@martintabora127 what makes you think I am suggesting this? I just suggested limiting incoming transfers. This would prevent the top teams from poaching top talent from other schools year after year. They would still recruit out of high school
Border War is a 115-year rivalry (Colorado State- University of Wyoming), and you want to break it up. Also, we, as Wyoming, could not afford to compete with pack 12 schools. Oregon Ducks just got a new $350 million FOOTBALL-ONLY facility. Wyoming JUST got a new $40 Million ALL SPORTS facility.
That was my main problem with his realignment. All of the Pac schools have way more money than MW schools. Apart from maybe Boise, none of the MW schools would consistently compete for a conference title.
I don’t hate these solutions but splitting up the traditional sec schools is a big mistake. Auburn, Georgia, Alabama, Florida, Tennessee, Kentucky, ole miss, and Mississippi state need to stick together.
That was my main issue too. It's difficult to create parity in the southeast because so many power players are rivals with each other. UGA's rivalries would get eviscerated by this plan
Eight conferences with 12 teams, two divisions. Play each team in your conference. Division winners go to conference championship. Conference winners go into playoff.
My solution for college football: Extend the boundaries of field along the heading of each stadium until the 53 1/3 yard wide line touches the sea or a national border. Stepping out of bounds results in disqualification. Teams can move along their own field (which is now arbitrarily long but 53 1/3 yards wide) and onto any intersecting field at the point of intersection. Remove time limits, quarters and downs. All colleges in America play one game, indefinitely. Each school begins the game with one football. The game ends when one team possesses every football. I think this will solve every problem mentioned in the video, which I have yet to watch. Please enjoy and most importantly, have fun!
Great idea, great video, well done. Add in a relegation system between the 9 regional conferences and the 5 group conferences and I think it's perfect. Still a good system but with the added chaos of some teams getting relegated and some teams getting promoted. I found it really cool that an Ohio State fan, a team that has benefitted from the current system, is proposing this kind of change. Shows you care more about the integrity of the sport. P.S. Good luck on the 26th, it'll be a hell of a game. GO BLUE!
Paterno proposed an Eastern conference in the early 80's similar to what you have with Penn State, Pitt, SU, West Virginia, Maryland, BC, Temple, and Rutgers. Size wise PSU is a better fit in the Big Ten so might have been poached eventually but imagine if they stayed long enough to go to the ACC instead of the Big Ten.
The issue with that was that the proposal called for teams splitting basketball money while keeping all of their football money. It was a big deal back then because football wasn't the financial powerhouse it is now compared to basketball, and the other teams in the proposal saw it as a grift that would benefit Penn State, who didn't make much money from basketball, by allowing them to keep all of their football money while sharing in the basketball revenue they weren't seeing. Had the proposal been for a true all-sports conference it may have worked, but the biased financial structure was a deal-breaker for any school with sizeable basketball revenue.
CF needed a commissioner. The independence has always kept college football at the bottom of favorite sports. Forced realignment would fix CF, however the schools would balk. UCLA and USC need to go back to the PAC12. OU and Texas dont need to join the SEC. 6 conferences of 16 teams each. 2 division winners. The 2 division winners play in the CCG. The winners go to a 6 team playoff where the top 2 teams get byes.
This is a really good point. For the majority of college football programs there is really no chance to reach the playoffs. The conference championships are pretty much meaningless. We all know the Bowl games are worthless. I wonder how much longer fans will remain interested in the sport?
I still play NCAA Football 14 on my PS3 and every time I start a new dynasty, I always make these regional conferences. All in-state teams in same conference and some neighbors too. All Florida teams in one, All 12 Texas teams in one, All California teams in one and so on. Turns out great.
Created something similar awhile ago, with 8 conferences. But recently updated it to where they would turn into pods and the big conferences would be over the pods. Great vid man!
I live in Texas and I do not like your Red River Conference. Lots of these conferences would be woefully weak, while others would be super tough. No parity, because many conferences are much stronger than others. This is not basketball. It is football. THIS IS NOT THE ANSWER!!!
Haha I’ll fully acknowledge that some conferences are weaker than others (Southwest vs Midwest for instance), but it’s for the greater good. College football would see the BEST parity since the pre-BCS era because there would be more opportunities for success around the country. People in Southern California would stay there because there’s local opportunity to get to the playoff. That would happen around the country and we would see things are start to balance out again. Consequently, that means some schools would see their power reduced, and others would be given greater opportunities. Far more of the latter, however.
@@josephp2109 I could care less about parity. What I care about is good football. Determining who the top four teams are in the country is not always easy, but faux parity is a waste of time.
Craziest part is, is that this 9 conference system already exists in the NCAA, in track and XC. There are 9 “regions” that have nothing to do with conferences, and the top 2 teams from each regional championship advance to nationals. This system spreads the power and has allowed smaller schools to become top contenders such as NAU, BYU, Tulsa, Villanova, Montana State, Georgetown, and Butler. All of these schools are ranked in the top 30 as I’m writing this, and sure XC is much like basketball in which you only need a handful of players to be successful, but the proof is still there.
Love it. This is more to my liking. Another benefit of the regional conferences is save the schools and fans money on travel. And it make the environment knobs happy. Win win win.
I'm curious, past history and the like indicates that this would generate controversy because your "group" conferences don't have a playoff bid. Would you support giving them a playoff bid in this system?
As a Kentucky fan. This destroys us as a football program. It would make more logical sense to fold. Your putting us up with the other teams in our recruiting area.
As a UCF fan, we have better chances getting to the playoffs being in the big 12 than we do beating out Georgia Florida Florida state and Miami in a year. The sunpeach conference is no joke
Sounds reasonable. Every division aside from '1-A' or BCS level has a functioning playoff system and has for decades. I'd like to see what you would do, should the 'Power Five' split from the NCAA. How would '1-A NCAA' rebalance itself?
I think the best and easiest solution right now in college football is just expanding the playoffs. If they expand the playoffs to 16 teams, the 10 conference winners and then have 6 at large bids it fixes the issues you mentioned. It gives all of these other schools and conferences something to play for and causes the recruits to spread out. It will also appease the big schools because they can get a few extra teams in through at large spots. Have a committee made up of officials from every conference rank the team 1-16 and the first round the higher seed gets to host a playoff game. This format would be fun and exciting and give a lot of teams something to play for.
Worst 3 words ever: "Expand the Playoffs." Let's just shorten the season to 10 games and have a 64 team field. Nobody's hope gets eliminated until their 4th loss. (Gag!) 😝
@@mikebronicki8264 you do realize the playoff system submitted to the NCAA in 2009 was for an 8 team playoff. And yet in 2014 we went with a 4 team playoff. The idea that everyone wanted 4 is really not true
This is kinda coming to fruition with the 12 team playoff having auto bids for the conference champions, and allowing the best GO5 team to have an autobid as well, with 6 at Larges. Makes things better
Bring this back out of politics, computers aren’t prefect. They don’t take into account weather for a major example, I’m sure I could think of more if I wanted to think of it more
Texas A&M, Mizzou, Nebraska, Colorado all used to be Big 12 teams. How’s that working out for them? It benefits no one but the title contenders to have 16+ teams in a conference. Texas and OU want to go to the SEC? They’ll be lucky to win half their games and will lose any relevance on the national stage. People forget that Nebraska was once a powerhouse. Now they’re another W that OSU can tally on their way to curb-stomping whoever wins the Big 10 West.
honestly this is one of the reasons i like watching the fcs. every conference winner makes the playoffs (plus a few at-large bids). that means more chances for teams to make a run. last year the 8 seed made it all the way to the final
Love the video, and a lot of it’s valid! But the #1 cause for a lack of parody is that some schools are simply more invested and have a better head coach at the helm. We can change the playoff and realign conferences all we want, but at the end of the day the cream still rises to the top. Resources and potential between the top 20-30 programs are all very even. Some programs are just more invested and better run than others, that won’t change until the Miami’s, USC’s, and Auburn’s of the world start stepping-up (which they’re starting too)
16 teams, no bye week, 7 at-large. Makes for a slower progression but eventual participation in playoffs becomes more representative and, structurally, better able to withstand future challenge. Cinderella comes to The Dance.
I am NOT a Buckeye fan. I am a Duck fan. The first playoff, Oregon was knocked out by you in the Rose Bowl. In reality, it was a fantastic game. I just wish we could find a perfect season, at least in the conference. SOMEONE always gives us a loss in the conference, usually knocking us out of the playoff. Ohio State is always dominating in the Big Ten.
I love all your proposed conferences, but splitting up the SEC like that would be an abomination. Tennessee, Bama, Florida, Georgia, Auburn, and LSU have to be in the same conference together
Since there are 10 conferences that play D1 football, expand the playoffs to 8, but they all have to be conference champions. I would drop independents, if you want to get into the dance, you have to join a conference. I think this would bring some entertaining results.
I understand what you're getting at but you would never be able to separate Tennessee, Georgia, Florida, Alabama, and Auburn into 3 different conferences.
The bigger problem at hand is the devide between the power and Group conferences, something you don’t address at all. When only the power 5 or 9 schools are getting national attention and going to the cfp it just ends up hurting the group teams
It’s also kinda nonsense because there’s a lot of G5 schools that either weren’t historically G5 schools or shouldn’t be G5 schools. A great example of this is SMU. From 1912 to 1994 SMU played in a conference with A&M, Arkansas, Texas, Houston, Texas Tech, Baylor, TCU. They won this conference 3rd most times behind Texas and Arkansas. Then they got the death penalty (which really the NCAA owes them compensation now), Texas didn’t want them in their conference, the B12 didn’t want a destroyed team anymore. So for the last 27 years they’ve been G5. Yet what’s insane to me is when SMu was competing in the AAC the media had the idea to say SMU is trying to show they are as good as the P5. What? SMU played in the power conference for 82 YEARS……
2022 is promising to unseat those common teams. Alabama is out. Auburn is out. Still need to do something to check OSU up. The transfer portal caused the seasons this year. Alabama wasn't able to keep a hold on players they never intended to play, for example.
You’re not going to top down change the conferences but you can change the playoff. And by giving 9 conferences an automatic seed the parity will naturally work itself out as powerful teams move to weaker conferences to take advantage.
@@josephp2109, that would happen too. The point is that you don’t need to change conferences at all. You can still achieve your goals with only making the playoff change.
I've been watching Japanese college football cause I was kinda curious (hey the quality's pretty good, but it kinda varies between NAIA and D1 FCS) and I gotta say they're doing it right. The biggest conferences, namely the Kanto and Kansai leagues, have promotion and relegation. The top Kansai tier is divided into two divisions, Top 8 and Big 8 while the top Kanto tier only has one division. Kanto and Kansai are like the SEC and Big 10 of Japanese college football. The teams with the lowest record in the division go down one tier, and replaced by the below tier's winners.
"I was in elementary school sorry if that makes you feel old." I wasn't even in school then. Also Utah in 2021 we were happy to win the conference and go to the rose bowl. And it's the same this year. Not all teams expect to make the playoffs. Some hope to make a high renown bowl.
Yes and you know what happened around the time it got broken, we switched to a 4 team playoff, we lost the beautiful crystal ball to Florida St, and Dr. Pepper changed to the stupid fansville commercials.
I think wvu fits in the new england conference because you would have the rivalys of pitt vs wvu. Vt vs wvu Maryland vs wvu and we would be a lot closer to those schools then we would be if we were in the Appalachian conference.
Your solution breaks up a LOT of longstanding rivalries. And I'm not even sure it's a thought out solution as much as it is "here I drew some lines through the college football map and here are the schools within those lines". The core of the Big Ten has been together for over 120 years, and you'd just cavalierly throw all that aside over a realignment based on geography? I realize that the Pac-12 has been disintegrating a little bit, but Washington, Oregon, Cal, and Stanford have all been together since 1915. I'm sorry, but anyone is free to take Rutgers, Maryland, Nebraska, and Penn State out of the Big Ten and I won't grumble at all. But anyone messing with the ten in the Big Ten might as well try to break up the Ivy League.
Teams are too scared of Boise State's dominance, so that's why there is not a real playoff. SEC teams have manipulated the system by playing the cupcake week while the other conferences play 9 games.
My only knock on these Regional conferences is that the TV dollars will not make sense, some of these schools have different academic acceptance rates, and some of these schools are limited to Talent acquisition due to their High School football.
Look Hog Fans. I know we all expected more but we still got 3 games left. Why didn't Malik get a play in the last game bc KJ is clearly hurt and that game looked like the movie Varsity blues where no one cared about what was going on because they all partied the night before
I love the out of the box thinking but you have to remember there are sports at these schools other than football. I feel like doing a big realignment for one sport is a little short sighted for the other sports.
The first thing to do to "fix" college football is to cut the FBS down by at least half. There is zero competitive reason for 130+ football teams to be at the highest level of competition. I would argue that you could look at the teams currently ranked 61-130, and none of them will sniff a championship in the next 50 years. Those teams are non-competitive, and their combination of culture and financial situation mean that they will never meaningfully compete with the current top teams (with very few exceptions). UMASS, UCONN, FIU, Akron, Rice, Ball State, Bowling Green, Eastern Michigan, Central Michigan, Middle Tennessee, Georgia Southern, Charlotte, Western Michigan, FAU, UTEP, James Madison, Old Dominion, etc., etc. Not only do these teams not really have the capacity to compete at the highest level of football, they do not even have a fan base to drive any financial benefit to having them in the FBS. I'd like a system of four 16-team, two division conferences. Each division plays everyone in their division, two cross division, and three non-conference teams. Each conference has a two-game conference playoff (1 in each division plays 2 in the opposite division in the first round). Four conference winners play in a two-team national championship playoff. The 57 current FBS teams that don't make this system could go pound sand. They're irrelevant, anyway. And, honestly, you could probably make the top tier even smaller, but 64 teams would piss off the fewest borderline teams that were good a long time ago and might sniff being good again sometime. The proposed idea in this video still doesn't address the problem that there are entirely too many teams in the FBS from a competition standpoint. I don't think there is really any benefit (from a fan perspective) to having more "parity" spread out among 80 teams. If we want "parity," have that parity among 30-odd teams. This makes for a better, more entertaining, and competitive product on the field.
Most people will disagree but I'd like to see the playoffs expanded to 16 teams. Maybe even shave a regular season game off of the schedule. The Tournament could start in early december. This would not only generate tremendous interest but it would lead to some spectacular upsets. I'm not sure why College Football fans are such traditionalists.
Most high school players couldn't care less about winning a national championship in college. The 4 and 5 star players are going where they think they can be best developed for the NFL. There's only a few elite coaching staffs.
It's all about teams building dynasties. They win, they get the best recruits, and continue to be good. Another reason is that there isn't nearly any competition outside the SEC. Clemson is alright and sometimes is championship level, ohio state is consistently overrated. Why? The teams outside the SEC barely play anybody good, and don't earn the right to play in big games, then lose to big schools like Bama and Georgia. The college football ranking voters claim to be objective, but if they really were, teams like OSU wouldn't be in the top 4 at the start of every year. They should also expand the playoff (which they're doing) to give more teams a shot at winning and getting more recruits.
Honestly it would be better if the cfp didn't select its playoff teams until after bowl season. That way the focus is still on winning your conference and your respective bowl game. After that, the top 4 or 6 ranked teams could square off against each other. In last year's case, Georgia in the Sugar Bowl, Michigan vs Utah in the Rose Bowl, etc. The winners of those games would surely remove all doubt whether they deserved a shot at a National Championship, especially teams like Cincinnati. The CFP was hesitant to put Cincy in it and they had the right to be. Cincy "proved" themselves against Notre Dame who has been hysterically known for choking come bowl time so it's understandable that putting Cincy in would have to be a last resort. But... If Cincy meets Baylor in the Cotton Bowl or Oklahoma State in the Fiesta Bowl and wins, does that strengthen their chances to land a number 6 spot? Absolutely yes. This route would be way simpler than a mega realignment that even Northwestern wouldn't agree to... like it or not, having Ohio State in your conference is financially smarter than just Wisconsin Iowa and Minnesota... teams that could handily win their conference at 9-3. Nobody wants to hand a number 5 Oregon a bye because you were "top dog" in a weak conference.
