Since the NCAA is considering dropping 1AA status and some teams are currently left out of the BCS conferences with automatic BCS bids, the BCS will determine or separate teams that play at the highest level of college football. Factor in the current issues with having 11 1A conferences trying to via for future 10 BCS spots, AP poll dropping out of selection of BCS teams, something has to give?

The current 6 BCS conferences could resolve the current BCS issues with teams trying to move to major level, add more fairness to teams that deserve to be in a BCS conference, and help eliminate a lot of the issues driving a playoff at the same time.

Proposal: Each BCS conference must have 12 members with six teams each. Allow a seventh BCS conference to accommodate the remaining teams that may compete at the highest level of college football.

Each of the seven conferences would have a championship game that is now folded into the BCS and used to market BCS TV contracts. If this is an issue the individual conferences could continue market their conference championship game with conference TV contracts. I think more money could be made using the BCS.

One at large bid would be available to accommodate a Texas team that never can beat Oklahoma in its division or for the MAC, Sun Belt, Atlantic 10, Big Sky that have an outstanding team such as Utah this year and to keep the legal issues out of the BCS.

The BCS would go back to a manageable four BCS bowls and forget using the same bowl for week latter championship game.

A committee would select the at large team.

The championship BCS game would be played after the four BCS bowls in Indianapolis each year home of the NCAA. With Indianapolis building a new retractable dome stadium, all four BCS winners could advance to a city that will have two dome stadiums in the future (playoff?). Oh well too far into the future. Back to 7 BCS conferences.

12 team Big East plays 12 team ACC in Orange Bowl (a.k orginial Blockbuster idea and made for TV with true Eastern Seaboard championship)

12 MWC plays 12 team Big 12 in Fiesta Bowl
(nice regional BCS championship game)

12 team SEC plays at large team
(since SEC is considered the top football conference at large must beat SEC to have and chance of title game)

12 team Big 10 plays 12 team Pac 10 in Rose Bowl
(Rose tradition continues each year)

Until all four advance to Indianapolis (not an employee of the chamber of commerce of that fair city), the plus one game could be used for the title using committee. Committee could use coaches poll, computer polls, and fan poll to help make the decision.

Now first cut proposal of teams in each conference.

ACC will have 12 teams starting next year, however, since Va Tech is champion of 2004 will align by region over trying to keep Miami and FSU in different regions.

ACC North: Va Tech (top billing), VA, BC, MD, NC, Duke
ACC South: Miami, FSU, Ga Tech, Clem, NC state, Wake
BCS conference championship as planned in Jacksonville

BE North: Syr, UConn, Rut, Pitt, WV, Marshall
BE South: Lou, Cincy, Memphis, East Car, S Miss, S Fla
BCS conference championship in Meadowlands

Big 10 E: Ohio St, Mich, Mich S, Penn S, Ind, Purdue
Big 10 W: Notre Dame, Ill, NW, Wis, Minn, Iowa
BCS conference championship in Chicago

SEC set the 12 team standard and continues with east/west and championship game in Atlanta

Big 12 ditto and continues with north south and BCS conference championship game in Kansas City

Pac 10 N: Wash, Wash S, Oregon, Org St, Boise State, Hawaii (travel reduced by keeping other teams close)
Pac 10 S: Cal, Stan, UCLA, USC, Arz, Arz ST
BCS Conference championship game in LA

MWC W: Utah, BYU, Wy, UNLV, Fresno St, San D St
MWC E: Col St, Air F, New Mex, UTEP, TCU, Houston
BCS conference championship game in Salt Lake

Summary: 14 conference division champions playing for one of the major bowls and chance to move to title game reducing the need to have all the polls selecting the two teams to play for the title (not a complete fix as seven winners will advance).
One and only one at large team reducing the complaining of many teams wanting the current two at large bids. If Florida State or Miami would have been up to par, there would have been more fire with Cal, Texas, and Miami all wanting at large bids. This puts college football more inline with the NFL without having a playoff. Keeps the minor bowls in tact. Adds more balance with each conference having a conference championship game, for now does not extend the season at the same time provides the image of a playoff using conference games with winners advancing, adds more fairness and for the most part puts an end to teams trying to play big time football with limited resources, add more interest to the four major BCS bowls especially if a plus one game was added.

Interesting and well organized, Lash. Too well organized for the CFB powers that be. You could argue some of the alignments, (e.g. a north-south split in the Big Ten has commonly discussed, Wyoming should be aligned with CSU, and Utah is more likely in the Pac-10 than Hawaii or BSU) but it's a good plan.

I greatly favor putting the conference seasons and championships at a premium as long as all teams have a chance at them, as they would with round robin divisional schedules and a championship game.

Of course the squeaky wheel down at Tulane won't like it.

I like it. It has structure. All conferences have the same number of teams. And I think you promoted the strongest teams into the 7 conferences.

The MAC, Sun Belt, remainders of CUSA and WAC should then conform to the rules of 1-AA and be eligible to compete within their playoff system. Of course, members of those conferences would complain about exclusion, but you have elevated the few strong teams in the WAC and CUSA to The PAC, MWC and BE. The Sun-Belt members are really not-competitive in 1-A football. A few MAC teams could compete once in a blue moon, but seem happier to play at a mid-major level right now. The at-large is there as a hedge against legal hassles about somehow excluding a team outside the 7 conferences, on the off-chance they can make an argument for being bowl-worthy once in a while.

The days of eastern football are dead.

I await a future where we have the traditional Pac-10 vs Big Ten matchup, and the new superfight, the SEC vs ACC.

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dead ?

Dead is pretty final ! Certainly weak at the moment.
What has to happen for a resurrection ? Some of the schools have to be into football enough to invest in it. higher the best coaches / recruiters... of course the attraction may be for them to go elsewhere, so $ would be required.

With western PA and Ohio cranking out very competitive high school players, there remain the seeds that COULD produce football excellence, but a number of other things have to happen. Time will tell, but I think we are far from reading last rites.

Certainly for years the face of eastern football was Penn State. Joe had a fantastic run of 35 years or so, but it's beyond me why he is hanging on while approaching 80. His age and indeterminant future has to be driving recruits away from PSU, and will continue to do so, until the next regime is unveiled and potential recruits are able to assess what the suituation will be for their upcoming 4 years. Even if Joe wants to hang around for some last hurrah, it would behoove him to announce a replacement and get the "transition team" going...

Quinn, I think not on eastern college football being dead. Maybe an all eastern all sports conference idea is dead if that is your reference in the previous post.

Penn State draws 100 thousand plus and is eastern football regardless of which conference the school schedules its games.

UConn spending 100 million dollar plus is certainly not a sign of death in my balance books.

College football can not exclude eastern markets regardless if they do not have the same per centage of fans support as the markets in the SEC. There are many college football fans in the large eastern markets. The NFL is a good example of ensuring the small towns have the same interest as the city of the NFL team. If college football wants to grow and compete with the NFL for TV rights as it should the entire country has to be brought into the marketing process. Just having certain regions is not going to help you grow your markets on a national level and two or three super college conferences are not going to cut it either.

As for the SEC and ACC starting a tradition similiar to Big10/ Pac 10?

If those schools wanted to do that it would have occured many many years ago. In fact the Orange Bowl host team used to come from the old Big 8 and Sugar always had the SEC versis at large.

Blockbuster was not trying to stage a game with the champion of the SEC and ACC and there must be reasons for that like TV interest.

The ACC has more often had cross over games with eastern teams over southern teams.

I do think the Big East will expand more into the south due to south having teams with more football interest and support, however, the Big East is not going away as a major player in football. One season does not a BCS conference make. The BCS deseperatly needs the east to survive.

If the Big East expands with my idea of taking Memphis, East Carolina, Southern Miss, and possibly Marshall, it would be every bit as good as the SEC and ACC in few years. Southern Miss and Memphis are SEC teams just without membership and access to millions of dollars there brothers get.

Westwolf, this was a first cut of the breakdown of teams and you could reconfigure the Big 10 in north versis south, etc as well as moving some of MWC proposal to divsions that best serve the interest of the schools.

I am a national type college football fan and would very much like to see college football organized into balanced group of schools in each region of the country simliar to the NFL. Otherwise many of us will be switching camps to the NFL if the BCS does not get its act together by try to control and exclude areas with self interest. If fans stop supporting college football as you are starting to see by TV ratings, even the old established SEC will fill the pinch. CBS is banking on it.

Exactly. My point is that I'd be more interested in an annual Big East vs MWC matchup since both conferences are on about the same level. Compared to the ACC which has only improved itself drastically with UM and VPI.

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I like the rotational aspect of bowl (playoff)games. ACC vs BE each year would be too static. Who wouldn't want to see ACC vs Big 12 in the first round? The schools have hardly ever played. When I was a kid Maryland played Oklahoma twice in 3 years in the Orange Bowl. Since then???

Same with SEC vs MWC, BE vs Pac-10, Big 12 vs anyone with more than a JV.

Ok having all conferences play in the same bowl each year is probably not a good idea. It does not change the objective of this post of having 7 12 conferences for BCS membership to help fix many of the current BCS issues and 1A membership issues.

There are lots of reasons why Big 10 and Pac 10 play in the Rose such as Route 66 that went from Chicago to LA added to the tradition of fans making the trip out west.

Quinn, with Va Tech championship in the ACC would not be too quick to put the ACC on par with the SEC.

As for MWC and Big East, we really need to compare both in a couple years to see progress. Will Utah continue to perform with a new coach and can another MWC step up. Will Syracuse and Pitt improve with new coaches and get back to levels of the 70s and 80s. Will Louisville continue to improve and will TCU make improvements in the new conference.

I think if both the MWC and Big East expanded to 12 and took over any close competation would probably eventually make both conference similiar to other BCS conferences and if MWC can get BCS membership would help as well.

Otherwise, the new Big East just appears to have more potential and is positioned to improve back to previous levels much faster than the MWC.

The issues with the Big East will have a lot to do with flexability to expand for football and if the basketball alignment of 16 actually works, could impact BE ability to get to same levels of other BCS conferences for football.

The Big East needs a 9th football member very soon and will become very important with the 12 regular season game is approved.

Many coaches are starting to worry about 12 games and having a championship game on top of that may be the only thing to get in the way of my suggestion of this thread.

Would it be ironic if the SEC and Big 12 decided to not play conference championship game in the future as 12 games are approved. This was the primary reason the ACC expanded to 12. Would the ACC continue to be the only conference to play a championship game for football.

One more point on eastern football being dead, why did the ACC work so hard to expand into NY and NE if football was dead in the east. No one of your better post Quinn?

Westwolf, forgot to comment on the Tulane issue. Just include Tulane in the east or west 12 team BCS alignment and the noise would quickly go away.

BCS keeps stating there will be 7 or 5 BCS conferences. One can take this as the MWC will join or the Big East will lose membership in the BCS?

What if this to imply there will be 7 12 team conferences or 5 16 team conferences with 8 team divisions.

Since a 12 regular game is going to get approved, the winner of the 8 division champions would be a BCS bid and eliminate the need for a football championship game? 8 teams would be great for basketball.

The SEC and Big 10 could lead the way again for expansion.

Big 10 N: Mich, Mich St, Penn St, Pitt, UConn, Syr, Rut, Notre Dame
Big 10 S: Ohio St, Ind, Pur, Ill, NW, Wis, Minn, Iowa

SEC E: Fla, Ga, SC, Tenn, Van, Ken, Lou, WV
SEC W: Ala, Aub, Miss, Miss St, LSU, Ark, Memphis, Houston

ACC: NC, NC St, Duke, Wake, Va, Va Tech, MD, BC
ACC: Miami, FSU, Ga Tech, Clem, ?????

This scenerio could get interesting if the SEC wanted to get the jump on the ACC for future expansion?

Lash -

Where are you getting this "BCS sys there will be 5 or 7 conferences" stuff ?

Usually BCS proclamations rigidly adhere to the status quo, unless absolutely forced to change.

Changes I am aware of:
next year there will be 10 teams going to 5 BCS bowls, and there are qualifying rules that supposedly increase the opportunity for teams outside the 6 BCS conferences to earn an at-large, but it'll be 6 auto-bids + 4 (instead of 2) at-large.

The MWC Conf. Commisssioner attended a meeting where the BCS folks were, planned to plead for a MWC auto-bid, and expected to be denied.

Changes to BCS rating system thrown into a ringer, since the AP poll withdrew from participation.

Other than that, I have heard no OFFICIAL mention of change regarding the status of Big East Auto-bid, and no OFFICIAL mention of granting any other confrence an Auto-bid.

If you have something DEFINITIVE, please post !

Thanks.

Good one Wolf!
Now that's funny. (and true)
:D 8-)

Dave, the quotes are from the current Big 12 commissioner and current chair or spoke person of the 6 BCS conferences. It has been reported in USA Today.

It was stated one time that there would be four or seven BCS conferences in the future which lead me to beleive the Pac 10 and Big 10 were considering pulling out of the BCS.

The new quotes are for either 7 BCS conferences or 5 in the future.

I am not sure any of the commissioners as a group has a grip on what the BCS needs to do for the future?

Of course they are being dictated by the Presidents of the BCS schools and we all can guess what they are up to.

Quotes like we are concerned with extending the season with a plus 1 game will hurt academics yet we all know the 12 regular season game will be approved because the Michigans can schedule another 100 thousand plus home game.

I do like the 12 team regular season game. It may lead to dropping the useless conference championship game and let that be a play in to the big four BCS games would at least be a start.

If the coaches get their way, the championship game would be dropped in favor of a 12 regular season game.

The Big 12 or SEC could continue to schedule important games in place of the championship game and the season would extend out with a 12 game into time slots the championship game was taking.

This leads to my theory of having the big conferences just expand to 16. No one could argue with the SEC getting two BCS bids with two 8 team divisions.

5 BCS conferences with 16 members with 8 team divisiions may just be what is needed to bring major college football in line.

Just trying to second guess the guys running the BCS!

16 is too many for traditional conferences. An ACC/BE combination might work with 16, but there are too many ties within the SEC, Big 10 and Pac 10. 16 is essentially 2 separate conferences.

10 is the new 12.