By Thad Williamson
No, the seven continents are not breaking apart and re-forming.
But the nation’s big-time college sports conferences are, wrecking to shreds the Pac-12 and putting into doubt the long-term future of the Atlantic Coast Conference.
Football is driving the change, as conferences chase the television dollar and schools seek to get on the right side of the revenue divide.
But what if football were to break away entirely, and become literally its own thing, with its own organizational and competitive structure?
That might be best, if it allows basketball and nonrevenue sports to stay in traditional regional conferences with reasonable travel times for athletes. (Especially if at least some of the football revenue can continue to support nonrevenue sports.)
But what would it look like?
Here’s my idea: create a 96-school nationwide league, called the National College Football League. The league would borrow some ideas from the (92 team!) English soccer pyramid, such as promotion and relegation between competitive tiers. But it would also guarantee local rivalries, as well embrace the very American (and very romantic) idea that any team in any given year could, if things go just right, win the whole thing.
Here’s the specific plan: have three mega-conferences of 32 teams. Each of those Conferences in turn would have four regional divisions: South, East, Central and West, each with eight teams.
Each team would play a 12-game regular-season schedule, to include the other seven teams in the division; up to two games against “permanent rivals” that are played no matter what, every year; up to four games against “secondary rivals” that are played at least every other year; and finally “wild card” games against teams from outside one’s division. (Most teams would have one or two of these, but theoretically could have zero in a given season, or as many as five.)
Every game matters, for two reasons. First, all division winners in all conferences qualify for a 24-team postseason tournament. Second, if you don’t perform well, you might get relegated, and have your spot taken by a strong-performing team from a lower division.
Here’s how the 24 playoff teams would be picked:
— Conference Three division champions (South, East, Central and West): Seeds 21–24
— Conference Two division champions (South, East, Central and West): Seeds 17–20
— Wild-card teams: four strongest at-large teams, regardless of conference or division: Seeds 13–16
— Conference One 3rd-place teams (South, East, Central and West): Seeds 9–12
— Conference One 2nd-place teams (South, East, Central and West): Seeds 5–8
— Conference One 1st-place teams (South, East, Central and West): Seeds 1–4
This structure is designed so that every team has a chance, every year. If your team finds itself in Conference Two or Conference Three in a given year, you can still make the playoffs by winning your division to earn your shot at the big boys.
But it’s also advantageous to be in the top conference: you can make the playoffs out of the top conference by finishing as low as 3rd in your eight-team division, or by grabbing a wild-card spot if you are a good team in a particularly loaded division.
It’s good to be at the top, then, but your stay there is not guaranteed. There would be a system of relegation and promotion to allow year-to-year movement between the conferences, as follows:
- If you finish 7th or 8th in Conference One, you are relegated to Conference Two, and your places are taken the following year by the top two teams in Conference Two in your respective regional division. (Example: the 7th- and 8th-place teams in Conference One South go to Conference Two South the following year, to be replaced by two teams promoted from Conference Two South.)
- If you finish 7th or 8th in Conference Two, you are relegated to Conference Three, replaced by the top two teams in Conference Three in your respective regional division.
This system would add some drama to the regular season as teams fight for promotion or to avoid relegation, in addition to the chase for playoff spots. It also would keep schedules fresh — every season would bring a new configuration of teams in each division. And, it would reward teams for strong performances and punish teams that don’t play well.
Importantly, qualification for the playoffs, as well as promotion and relegation, would be based on divisional records only, with head-to-head outcomes used to break ties.
So that’s the structure: who now are the 96 teams to be included, and in what division?
Answering those questions in advance is impossible, but here’s a possible starting configuration including 96 decent quality FBS schools, each placed into one of four regions. A key feature of the configuration is to keep schools in the same state in the same division.
In bold, for laughs, are teams that would likely be initial Conference One selections from each region.
South: Florida, Central Florida, Miami, Florida State, Georgia, Georgia Tech, Alabama, Auburn, Mississippi, Mississippi State, Arkansas, LSU, Tennessee, Vanderbilt, Tulane, UAB, South Alabama, Louisiana-Lafayette, Memphis, Louisiana Tech, Florida Atlantic, Georgia State, Georgia Southern and South Florida.
East: North Carolina, Duke, Wake Forest, N.C. State, Appalachian State, Virginia, Virginia Tech, Liberty, East Carolina, Maryland, Pittsburgh, Penn State, Navy, Army, Rutgers, Connecticut, Boston College, West Virginia, Syracuse, Charlotte, Marshall, South Carolina, Clemson and Coastal Carolina.
Central: Ohio State, Cincinnati, Indiana, Notre Dame, Purdue, Michigan, Michigan State, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa, Iowa State, Northwestern, Illinois, Kansas, Kansas State, Nebraska, Oklahoma, Oklahoma State, Tulsa, Ohio, Missouri, Louisville, Western Kentucky and Kentucky.
West: Colorado, Colorado State, Arizona, Arizona State, BYU, UNLV, Washington, Washington State, Oregon, Oregon State, Stanford, California, UCLA, USC, Texas Christian, Baylor, Texas Tech, Texas A&M, Texas, Houston, SMU, Utah, Utah State and Air Force.
Of course, these initial selections (and the regional designations) are not written in stone. Despite deliberately placing the South Carolina schools in the East to promote competitive balance, the East is still probably weaker overall. But an advantage of this system is that no matter where you start, you have a chance to make it to the top with good play.
What would the schedule look like for a team like UNC? Let’s say UNC designated Duke and N.C. State as its permanent rivals and Wake Forest, Appalachian State, South Carolina, and Virginia as its secondary rivals.
In this particular season, this might be the schedule:
Conference One East divisional games: Wake Forest, N.C. State, Virginia Tech, Maryland, Penn State, South Carolina and Clemson.
Permanent rival game: Duke
Secondary rival games: Virginia and Appalachian State.
Wild card games: Any other two teams in the National College Football League
One last question: Perhaps you think this is great, but are upset your favorite team is not in. (I see you, Temple Owl football fans!) How do we decide who’s in and who’s out?
Tough question; there could be minimum requirements based on things like stadium size or other measures of institutional commitment, including willingness to share revenue with other schools in the league. But if it turns out that more than 96 teams want in, this basic structure could be expanded easily to 108 or 120 teams just by adding one or two more teams per division. (At 120 teams, you would have nine-game division schedules.)
Could this ever happen? The short answer is, yes it could, if enough people wanted for it to happen.
The main case for it? This is more logical, fairer and more interesting than whatever is going to finally come out of the conference meltdown now under way. It might make the schools more money. And it might create true, fair national competition without sacrificing either traditional rivalries or the notion of genuine regional competition of the kind long associated with geographic conferences.
In my book, it would be worth a punt!
Thad Williamson is a professor at the University of Richmond, a lifelong UNC and ACC fan, and author of More Than a Game: Why North Carolina Basketball Means So Much To So Many.
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