A Bad Take on Expansion
Come on, do you really think a good take matters? Up until a few days ago, nobody really thought Texas would leave the Big 12 for anything other than the Texas Conference, containing only Texas and giving all TV money and rights to Texas. Now they seem all but certain to head to the SEC and produce a rights package that should challenge the Big Somenumber when it’s next up for bid.
Instead, I thought I’d see what it’d be like if we could set aside what’s likely to happen and try to do something that might make a little more sense than cornering the biggest US market that doesn’t care about college sports in a viewing format that is dying off.
Rules
As much as possible, schools in the same state should be in the same conference
As much as possible, conferences should have a contiguous, reasonable footprint
Where possible, put rivals in the same conference
4 x 16
ACC
East Coast states belong in the ACC. Yes, you too, Pennsylvania. So Maryland and Rutgers are shipped east, and Penn State is sent over as well for reasons to be shown shortly, plus Pitt-Penn State is an annual thing again.
Send South Carolina over to stay with Clemson, and we’ve got 15; West Virginia is the lucky 16th. They could go either way but they do touch both Virginia and Pennsylvania, and that also puts Pitt-WVU back on an annual schedule.
Big 16
With the mistakes gone and Penn State also missing, there’s plenty of room to pull in half of the Big 12-2; Iowa State-Iowa is a thing now, plus OU-Nebraska and Kansas fans schooling Indiana fans on what it means to be a basketball elite. Missouri is really a better fit here, but there isn’t anyone else who can be easily peeled off and sent elsewhere.
SEC
We sent South Carolina away and need to do some additional housekeeping: A&M should stay with Texas. That gives us room for FSU and Miami, since Florida is definitely SEC country, and … an open spot. Hmm. Can we think of a school that recruits like there are no rules? Do they have a great deal of success in one sport? Wouldn’t you love Kentucky-Memphis as a twice-annual hoops rivalry, with the loser on probation for 100 years? DONE.
Western 16
If we stop pretending this conference has anything to do with the coast, we have a lot of options, especially for later. Yes, the Big Not12 should definitely merge with the Pac-12; A&M joins the four other Texas schools. That would make 17, so sorry, Utah, you are the odd folks out. You ought to be over with BYU anyway.
Notes
Remember, this is totally unrealistic. You can’t really boot a school because that costs a ton of money and conferences only want to collect it, otherwise Rutgers would have been gone years ago.
There are several schools that could probably make the jump; pick your favorites if you don’t like these.
Army, Navy, and Air Force really belong in their own conference. Or the Patriot League, yes that’s I-AA.
No, I didn’t forget Notre Dame. They always wanted a special place reserved for them. So I did that.
4 x 18
Marshall to the ACC. Marshall-WVU should be worth it. Let’s add East Carolina as well, although I could be convinced to push Charlotte instead.
The Big 16 gets … uh. Cincinnati is the obvious choice. Fortunately, we pulled in Oklahoma, so that makes Tulsa available. Beyond that, it gets kind of tricky.
Now we can welcome Utah back to the Western 16, along with BYU. If you’d rather make BYU sit in a corner with Notre Dame, that’s fine. You could take just about anyone else out of the Mountain West and be fine, as you’ll see in the next section.
The SEC has a lot of choices, but not a lot of appealing ones. Central Florida should probably go, since that will quiet their fans down, and let’s send South Florida as well, for that longtime UCF-USF rivalry that dates back to … you get the idea.
4 x 20
Charlotte to the ACC, as mentioned above. Then we’re about out of options. Temple, I guess?
For the Big 18, let’s grab Colorado from the Western 18 and add Colorado State, because after that it’s basically MAC teams or teams in other footprints. (The downside of having Nebraska and Minnesota.)
The Western 17 now needs three teams, but has a bunch to choose from. Boise State and … how about San Diego State and Nevada?
The SEC also has a bunch to choose from, but none of them are particularly appealing, except that Saban and some other guys will love to have in-conference lopsided matchups in place of the I-AA games they wouldn’t get in this configuration. Western Kentucky and Tulane? Good enough.
Notes
In this format, it doesn’t really make sense to try for 5 x 16 instead of 4 x 20 because one of my main points was footprint, and why would I have four conferences dividing things up and one of them taking schools from everywhere?
None of this is really taking into consideration actual factors like athletic strength, size of facilities, etc. You might point out that past expansion did not necessarily do this either. Fair point!
Still didn’t forget Notre Dame. They know what they did.
Final thoughts
I would expect conferences to eventually reach this size. At 4x20, each conference can split into two actual conferences, although if Warren brings back Leaders and Legends we’re gonna have to talk about that.
I’m undecided as to whether this would help other sports or hurt them - it would definitely affect scheduling, but it’s potentially much easier to send teams out on a four-school trip to, say, Iowa, Iowa State, Kansas, Kansas State and then home, than to send them to Penn State, Maryland, Ohio State, and Minnesota or something like that.
Yes, the battle for the 15-16 spots, 17-18, and 19-20 would be significant. There really would be a stark contrast between the Big Four and everyone else. I doubt it would make a I-A and a I-A.5 or whatever, though. In theory an 80-team subset of current I-A could stand on its own, but in practice those schools are gonna want to kick some other ones around, and I-A.5 teams wouldn’t be real keen on helping out the folks who booted them down a rung.
Anyway, none of this is going to happen, right? Texas isn’t heading to the Pac-12 no matter what, not if an SEC offer is on the table. There are plenty of folks who have never known Florida State and Miami as anything but ACC teams. Penn State has been in the Big Tenteen even longer than Miami has been in the ACC (they and FSU joined conferences the same year, back when I was in college, yes that long ago).
(googles “Iowa State to the Big Tenteen”)
