M Club wrote:notre dame, otoh, would join a conference that resembles the big 12 of ten years ago. ohio states crazy run these past five or so years has more to do with mediocre competition than it does being absolutely dominant. so winning the shite half of the conference wouldn't necessarily earn you a game against an absolute behemoth.
You'll note that I put ND in the East, not the West. And that's the way it should be. No way on earth should ND play the likes of Iowa, Minnesota and Wisconsin on an annual basis. Those games have less than zero interest for ND's fanbase, at least if they were annuals.
Of the Indiana schools, I put Purdue in the West. And the only swapout I suggested was Indiana going to the West, which would allow Purdue to play both schools (ND as a division rival, Indiana as an inter-divisional crossover game). No way would I have put ND in the West. Michigan, Michigan State, Ohio State, hell, even Cincinnati, all make more sense for ND to play than do Iowa, Minnesota and Wisconsin.
Van wrote:I would never do that. No way in hell I'd ever separate Michigan and Ohio St. They're Texas and OU, or Bama and Auburn. They play each other every year, but only once per year, in conference. Period. Can't have them playing twice, which is what would happen if they were in separate divisions. They have to be in the same division.
Michigan and Ohio State disagree with you, apparently. That may surprise you, or not. The most frequent alignment I hear about, if ND were to join the Big Ten, is as follows:
North: Michigan, Michigan State, Minnesota, Northwestern, ND, Wisconsin
South: Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, Ohio State, Penn State, Purdue
Which is one (not the only by any means, but definitely one) reason why ND has no interest in joining the Big Ten. Why should they have annual series with Wisconsin (last played in 1964) and Minnesota (last played in 1938) when there are a number of teams in the other division who would make more sense as annual rivals and who ND couldn't possibly play every year?
And while I've been advocating playing Minnesota in recent years, there's a huge difference between a two-year season-opening home-and-home, on the one hand, and an annual conference matchup, on the other. Not even comparable.
Fwiw, and against my better judgment, my proposed conference alignments, placing every FBS team into a conference and using King Crimson's rule of no more than ten teams to a conference . . .
Pac-10
Cal
Fresno State
Hawai'i
Oregon
Oregon State
Stanford
UCLA
USC
Washington
Washington State
Arizona and Arizona State leave to make the jump to a BCS-caliber MWC (see below) and are replaced by Fresno State and Hawai'i, the two Pacific region teams most capable of playing at this level.
Mountain West
Air Force
Arizona
Arizona State
Boise State
BYU
Colorado
Colorado State
New Mexico
Texas Tech
Utah
This conference drops TCU (a bad geographic fit), as well as San Diego State, UNLV and Wyoming (traditional bottom-feeders) and gets four teams from two BCS conferences (Arizona and Arizona State from the Pac-10; Colorado and Texas Tech from the Big XII) as well as Boise State. That's a pretty tough conference.
WAC
Idaho
Nevada
New Mexico State
San Diego State
San Jose State
UNLV
Utah State
UTEP
Wyoming
Pretty much the leftovers from the West region.
Big X
Arkansas
Kansas
Kansas State
Missouri
Nebraska
Oklahoma
Oklahoma State
Texas
Texas A&M
TCU
In addition to the departure of Colorado and Texas Tech, TCU replaces Baylor (wouldn't happen in real life, given the number of prominent Texas pols who are Baylor alums) and Arkansas (sort of mismatched in the Meatgrinder) replaces Iowa State.
SEC
Alabama
Auburn
Florida
Florida State
Georgia
Georgia Tech
LSU
Miami
Mississippi
Tennessee
This conference actually might live up to its self-given nickname. On the downside, two of JSC's three favorite teams are now in the same conference.
Big Ten
Illinois
Indiana
Iowa
Michigan
Michigan State
Northwestern
Notre Dame
Ohio State
Purdue
Wisconsin
I dropped the two geographic outliers (Penn State and Minnesota) and added ND. Before this gets terribly misconstrued, I'm placing ND in the Big Ten for purposes of this exercise only. I'm in no way suggesting that ND should join the Big Ten in the real world.
Big East
Army
Boston College
Buffalo
Connecticut
Navy
Penn State
Pittsburgh
Rutgers
Syracuse
Temple
West Virginia
I cheated a little and put an eleventh team in this conference. Based on geography and rivalries, though, I didn't have much of a choice.
ACC
Clemson
Duke
East Carolina
Maryland
North Carolina
North Carolina State
South Carolina
Virginia
Virginia Tech
Wake Forest
Cut the northernmost school (Boston College) as well as the three southernmost schools (Florida State, Georgia Tech and Miami) from this conference, and replace them with two schools (East Carolina and South Carolina) well within the ACC's footprint.
C-USA
Baylor
Central Florida
Houston
Rice
SMU
Southern Mississippi
South Florida
Tulane
Tulsa
UAB
Baylor gets demoted from the Big XII. USF may have outgrown this conference, athletically speaking, but the forced realignment exercise takes them out of the Big East and they won't get into the Meatgrinder, so that leaves C-USA by default.
MAC
Akron
Ball State
Bowling Green
Central Michigan
Eastern Michigan
Kent State
Miami (Ohio)
Ohio
Toledo
Western Michigan
Buffalo and Temple are the obvious geographic outliers to cut. That leaves one school still to cut. Northern Illinois is the outlier of those remaining, also the most recent member of this conference, so they get the boot.
"Two rivers run through it" Conference
Cincinnati
Iowa State
Kentucky
Louisville
Marshall
Memphis
Minnesota
Mississippi State
Northern Illinois
Vanderbilt
This is where King Crimson's rule gets a little tricky. There are 120 teams at the FBS level, and only 11 conferences. If you're going to place every FBS team into a conference and limit each conference to no more than 10 teams, simple rules of math dictate that you'll have to add a new conference. This admittedly is a mismash (these ten schools come from six existing conferences, so it's bound to be a mess), but unless you're willing to radically alter existing conference structure (I wasn't), you'll wind up with something similar. Btw, the two rivers are the Ohio and the Mississippi.
Sun Belt Conference
Arkansas State
Florida Atlantic
Florida International
Louisiana-Lafayette
Louisiana-Monroe
Louisiana Tech
Middle Tennessee State
North Texas
Troy
Western Kentucky
This is the existing Sun Belt Conference plus Western Kentucky (should be joining soon, as they're a member of this conference in most other sports), and Louisiana Tech (odd man out in C-USA, and a bad geographic fit in their current conference, the WAC). Yes, there is a lot of geographic overlap with C-USA, but athletically speaking, there is a difference between the two conferences. For that reason, those two conferences neither can nor should be interchanged.
