The SEC could set off a new realignment of BCS conferences if they expand to 16 members and take Florida State, Georgia Tech, Clemson and Louisville. The current Big East has proven that 16 member conference work for basketball with 18 regular game schedule with all 16 members playing one regular season game and three round robin games.

This proposal would align the SEC into two 8 team divisions and the four members of each division that have 3 cross over games are grouped together.

SEC East

Florida
Florida State
Georgia
Georgia Tech
.................................
South Carolina
Clemson
Kentucky
Louisville

SEC West

Alabama
Auburn
Tennessee
Vanderbilt
............................
Mississippi
Miss State
LSU
Arkansas

ACC follows SEC lead and expands to 16 by taking South Florida, WVU, Pitt, Syracuse, Rutgers, UConn, and convinces Penn State to leave the Big Ten.

ACC South

Miami
South Florida
Virginia
Virginia Tech
.............................
North Carolina
NC State
Duke
Wake Forest

ACC North

Penn State
Pitt
WVU
Maryland
.......................
Syracuse
Rutgers
UConn
Boston College

The Big Ten is back to ten members and works with the Pac 10 to expand and take the north division of the Big 12 for the Big Ten and finally changes the name to Big Sixteen and the south division of the Big 12 to Pac 10 creating the new Pac 16.

Big Sixteen East

Michigan
Michigan State
Ohio State
Wisconsin
......................
Indiana
Purdue
Illinois
Northwestern

Big Sixteen West

Iowa
Iowa State
Minnesota
Missouri
.....................
Kansas
Kansas State
Nebraska
Colorado

Pac 16 East

Texas
Texas A&M
Texas Tech
Baylor
.......................
Oklahoma
Oklahoma State
Arizona
Arizona State

Pac 16 West

USC
UCLA
California
Stanford
......................
Oregon
Oregon State
Washington
Washington State

Big Sixteen division winners play on championship Saturday in December in St Louis and the Pac 16 division winners play in Phoenix. Both winners advance to Rose Bowl

ACC division winnsers play off in Miami and SEC division winners play in Atlanta with both advancing to Sugar Bowl

Winners of Sugar and Rose advance to play in BCS championship game.

Interesting alignments -- what is the rationale for the SEC to add four more schools and thereby split their huge revenues 16-ways?

Very creative, Lash. Nice orderly divisions and structure toward a champion. But it doesn't do anything for the Boise St/Utah problem.

Cybercat, it could come down to survival of the fittest in college sports. The new SEC contract makes it more likely the conference could afford expansion of more teams than any other time in the past. The current 6 team division alignment of the SEC would be somewhat of a disadvantage if a play-off were to replace the BCS. Like or not, this is a possibility after the 2012 season a play-off will replace the current BCS system. A play-off would almost certainty reduce the benefit of a conference championship game or force the limitation of a conference championship game all together to allow for a shorter regular season. If the SEC had two eight team divisions, it would provide a much better odds of getting both winners in the play-off each year.

There is no question the new TV contract puts the SEC in a big advantage to cherry pick any conference it wants when the time is right should the SEC want to expand. The ACC may finally see what it feels like when the Big East had the same perceived disadvantages and lost teams to a conference with more revenue potential.

In the long run, this proposal just realignes conferences into 16 members to promote a play-off. The current 12 member conferences just add barriers to any play-off proposals. Assuming many in the SEC favor a play-off, then expansion is better with 16 if you can afford.

It just the way evolution is working in today's big time college sports world.

I can not see Florida State, Clemson, Georgia Tech, or Louisville turning down any offers from the SEC should the opportunity come up. This is factored into the new massive SEC contract makes this proposal much more possible than any time in the past.

Westwolf, basically this proposal is a take on the plus one game. The BCS plus one championship game would be open to any one school outside of the four 16 member conferences including TV star Notre Dame, however, to make it past the winners of those four conferences, the team would almost have to be ranked 1 or 2 in any final BCS polls.

In other words it would almost be impossible to make the championship game if the team was not one of the four 16 conference members.

The Big Ten may want to support this proposal because it does not change the history of the Rose Bowl, does not promote a longer season and most of all would finally force Notre Dame into one of the 16 team member conferences. I do not see how Notre Dame could or would want to remain independenent if this proposal were to occur. If Notre Dame wanted to join, the Big Sixteen could replace a Kansas State or Iowa State to make room.

I do like the basic idea...with a few twists:

What I'd like to see would be a fairly simple move by the NCAA and the government (since they fund the universities): even playing field.

The conferences get funding by the US taxpayers, yet it's not an even playing ground. The SEC has 12 teams so it's unlikely that Vanderbilt will ever get into a BCS game. But the Big East has 8 teams, so a few lucky wins and you can get in the game.

While I'd love to see the system implode, I do see some changes that could resolve the problems we see.

* If each conference was forced to have 12 teams and a championship game with that game winner gaining BCS status/Playoff automatic bid, it would make many teams happy.

SEC: remains at 12
Big 12: remains at 12
ACC: remains at 12


Hypotheticals:
Big Ten (11): Adds (1)...say Notre Dame
Pac 10 (10): Adds (2) say Utah and BYU
Big East (8): Adds (4) say Army, Navy, Memphis, UCF

New BCS Bids (top rated from two of these 12 team conferences):
Mountain West (9-2): adds 5...Boise St., Fresno St., Nevada, UTEP, Houston
CUSA (12 - 4): adds FAU, FIU, Troy, WKU
WAC (9 - 3): adds 6...say North Texas, ULL, ULM, Arkansas St, Troy, Mid Ten St
MAC: remains at 13
(sunbelt would have zero teams and fold)

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Oddly, the problems I have with the BCS are bigger than the ones most discuss. I think if you have a system with a numerical ranking to select teams, that it should be just that: numbers, free of conference affiliation.

For example, people are quick to look at Boise St. being passed over at #9 for Ohio St. at #10. But Texas Tech was at #7 and was left out ONLY because the numbers were better for #2 Oklahoma and #3 Texas.

So the BCS games in my eyes should have been this simple IFFFFFFFFFF it were numbers:

BCS final: #1 Florida vs #2 Oklahoma
Rose Bowl: #5 USC vs #8 Penn St
Fiesta Bowl: #3 Texas vs #6 Utah
Orange Bowl: #9 Boise St vs #10 Ohio St.
Sugar Bowl: #4 Alabama vs #7 Texas Tech

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Quinn, it would be a start to have every conference on even level and membership size. I just do not see the NCAA taking the initiative to change the FBS division member requirement from 8 to 12 schools. Unless forced to expand, the Big East will remain in the unhealthy format of 8 football and 16 basketball schools, the Big Ten will wait forever for Notre Dame and the Pac 10 will not expand without the Big Ten making some moves. It basically a stalemate.

The other issue that will never happen is the big conferences giving up the at large bids. This is one of my biggest grips with the current BCS system. The Conference Commissioners and Athletic Directors are so hypocritical. Out of one side of there mouth that do not want to take anything away from the regular season with a play-off and the other side begs for at large BCS bids. It was disgraceful for the Big Ten to get the at large big to the Rose bowl last year and likewise this year for Ohio State getting the Fiesta bowl bid.

I could live with your suggestion if there were no at large bids to the BCS and you had to win your conference to get the BCS bid. Then there would be a neat 8 teams after the 12 team championship games to play for the BCS title.

We all know the above scenario is not going to happen without some force by the US Government or by my proposal of having the SEC take the lead again as before and expand to 16 members. This would set off a trend that would finally change college football for the betterment of the fans.

Unless a major BCS conference makes so moves, we are stuck with same lousy system for college football.

In this year of hope, we can look to the SEC to start the ball rolling to reach 16 members and cause a chain reaction to bring us closer to a college play-off system..

Quinn,

The problem is that it would essentially be a non-starter for the BCS conferences. As it has been discussed many times on this board and elsewhere, the BCS conferences would never agree to such a plan in which their champions would be excluded from a playoff. While the chances of a BCS conference having a champion lower than #10 are small, it is certainly possible considering the fact that three of the 6 BCS conferences have championship games were one division winner may have 3 or 4 losses and even with a win would not be able to get to the #10 ranking.

Imagine the outrage by the public if say Ole Miss - at 9-4 - won the SEC Championship game over a 12-0 Florida but Florida (now at 12-1) got to goto the BCS bowl over Ole Miss?

The following teams would have been excluded from your scenerio (since 2002). The years listed are the year of the BOWL GAME not the SEASON:
2002 - LSU #13
2003 - FSU #14
2005 - Pitt #21, Michigan #13
2006 - WVu #11, FSU #24
2007 - WF #14, ND #11
2008 - Illinois #13
2009 - Cincy #12, VT #19

Lash,

That is a very interesting idea to get all conferences to 16. I hope someday it will happen.

I still think it would have been better at the time of the ACC raid in 2003 for the Big 10, ACC, and SEC to split the remnants of the BE + ND into those three conferences (expansion to 14). BE FB would have died and now there would only have been 5 BCS conferences. It would also setup the Big 12 and Pac 10 to expand to 14 (or 12 for the Pac 10) by taking the powers from the WAC/MWC when the time had come too. Of course, the money wasn't there to do this type of expansion back then (in 2003).

The biggest problem with the move towards a playoff is that currently, the BCS is still profitable. ESPN just paid a huge amount of money to get the games until Jan 2014. It is going to be essentially the same until that point (maybe the MWC gets a BCS autobid before then).

The BCS is a method to do several things:

1 - to create a situation where a FB champion is crowned using the 'BCS methodology'
2 - to keep the bowl system intact and to make sure those 'bcs' bowls are 'in general' profitable
3 - to keep the majority of the 'post-season' money in the hands of the 'power' or 'bcs' conferences

If the BE was forced to goto 12, I agree they would add Memphis and UCF. But I also think they would take Temple and ECU for #11 and #12 instead of Army and Navy.

Davids,

I don't disagree with what you say but where is the incentive for the system to change? What compelling argument can you make to the presidents of the BCS conferences to change the BCS and bowl system when TV ratings are 'ok' - they are up from last year - and people continue to goto the bowl games themselves. ESPN just paid $125 million per year to broadcast the BCS games up from the $80 million FOX paid.

If people stopped watching and going to the games, that hurts the bottom line and that's when they look at changes.

BTW - I think the MWC did a lot for themselves this year in that at least BYU, Utah, and TCU *should* get more respect in the polls and I guess we'll find out when the first preseason polls come out. It's up to those schools to make sure they don't fumble that new found respect away. It's MUCH MUCH easier for a team to stay in the public eye when they start the season in the Top-15 or so because even a loss will still mean that team in still in the polls. It's much harder for a team to get the respect they deserve if they start outside the top-25 and continue to win.