I am sure SOMEWHERE on this thread there is a similar thread, but heck if I know where.

I am making a proposal. It is not what I WANT to see, but is what I could see happening.

We know that there are 6 BCS conferences that control the purse strings.

Big 10 = 11 fb members
Pac 10 = 10 FB members
Big 12 = 12 FB members
SEC = 12 FB members
ACC = 12 FB members
Big East = 8 FB members

a total of 65 members.

Now certainly there are about 5-10 members the BCS would love to vote out and another 5-10 they'd love to vote in.

I thought I'd propose that the BCS conference power brokers start their own NCAA and create 4 16 team regional superconferences, but 4 18 team superconferences work better, allowing each division to be it's own autonomous unit if they chose. If ND wants in they have to join one of these conferences. Otherwise they stay behind in a gutted NCAA Div 1. Enough of their BS. They aren't Michigan, they aren't USC, they aren't Texas, they aren't even Stanford (no Knock on stanford).

Anyhow

how it might lay out.

(I have done my best to preserve rivalries, but that last conference is admittedly shaky....)

Big North
East
1 Michigan
3 Penn State
4 Ohio State
12 Notre Dame
19 Michigan State
42 Syracuse
50 Pittsburgh
84 Rutgers
104 Connecticut

West
14 Wisconsin
15 Nebraska
21 Iowa
26 Purdue
35 Illinois
44 Minnesota
51 Iowa State
63 Indiana
65 Northwestern

Pacific Southwest
Pacific
20 Washington
22 UCLA
25 Southern Cal
40 Oregon
47 Stanford
52 California
64 Oregon State
69 Washington State
58 Hawaii

Southwest
24 BYU
30 Arizona State
36 Colorado
39 Arizona
56 Utah
70 Colorado State
79 UNLV
91 Nevada
100 Wyoming

Southern
Southeast
2 Tennessee
5 Georgia
7 Florida
8 Auburn
10 Alabama
11 Florida State
13 South Carolina
23 Kentucky
37 Mississippi

Southwest
6 LSU
9 Texas
17 Texas A&M
18 Oklahoma
27 Arkansas
28 Missouri
43 Texas Tech
49 Oklahoma State
74 New Mexico

Big East/Atlantic
Atlantic
16 Clemson
29 Virginia Tech
31 Virginia
32 Miami, FL
33 North Carolina
41 North Carolina State
46 Georgia Tech
53 Boston College
57 Maryland

Eastern (last one is a total hodgepodge.)
34 West Virginia
38 Kansas State
55 Louisville
61 Kansas
76 USF
86 UCF
90 Ohio
98 Houston
103 Miami, Oxford

Essentially each division would play an 8 game division schedule and the division champs would have a title game. Once the title games are over, bowl season goes as usual for those not involved. The winner of the Big North and Pacific Southwest would play in the Rose Bowl. The champs of the Big East/Atlantic & Southern would play in the Sugar Bowl. The winner of those matchups would play in the revamped Cotton Bowl for the title.

Every school would play 12 games: 8 divisional, 2 IAA schools (home and home), and 2 against either the remaining IA schools or other BCS schools. In essence it would force the other schools to move down to IAA to play the big schools.

Schools left out:

Duke, Vandy, Baylor, TCU, Rice, Wake Forest, Tulsa, SMU, Tulane are all small school privates who cannot generate more than 35K attendance. They'd make powerhouse IAA football schools and might lead the Ivy league to start issueing scholarships.

Army, Navy, and Airforce would still be coveted IAA teams to play and they'd be powers in IAA. They would probably be higher profile schools in this setup and might remain as independents playing nearly as full schedule as a defacto IA.

Idaho was narrowly taken out by Wyoming, but if they ever get their stadium squared away, I'd switch them in a second.

Memphis would suffer as flagship Ole Miss prospered in the same market. Most schools who pull 15-30K would out of neccessity retreat to IAA where they'd be hugely profitable drawing 15 - 20K a game.

Schools left in:

Ohio and Miami (oxford) are too good acedemically to leave out. Houston, USF, and UCF aren't and would not be welcome by the BCS breathren, but if you leave great markets like that in IAA, people start to get ideas.

West Region
Pacific - UCLA, USC, California, Boise State, Washington, Washington State, Oregon, Oregon State, Mountain - Arizona, Arizona State, Colorado, Kansas, Kansas State, Utah, BYU, Texas Tech

South:
West - Texas, Texas A&M, TCU, LSU, Arkansas, Mississippi, Oklahoma, Oklahoma State
East - Alabama, Auburn, Tennessee, South Florida, Miami-FL, Florida, Kentucky, Louisville

East:
South - North Carolina, Wake Forest, NC State, Clemson, South Carolina, Georgia, Georgia Tech, Florida State
Atlantic - Virginia, Maryland, Rutgers, Syracuse, Connecticut, Boston College, Virginia Tech, West Virginia

North:
West - Missouri, Iowa State, Iowa, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Illinois, Northwestern, Nebraska
East - Purdue, Notre Dame, Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, Ohio State, Penn State, Michigan, Michigan State

Left behind: Baylor, Vanderbilt, Duke, Indiana, Stanford, Mississippi State

I would rather go to 18-team conferences with the following teams being added:
Indiana (North Region, East Division)
Mississippi State (South Region, East Division)
Hawaii (West Region, Pacific Division)
Colorado State (West Region, Mountain Division)
New Mexico (West Region, Mountain Division - move Texas Tech to South Region, West Division)
Miami-OH (North Region, East Division - move Notre Dame to North Region, West Division)
Marshall (East Region, Atlantic Division)
Navy (East Region, Atlantic Division - move Virginia Tech to East Region, South Division)

... ???


I love how people come up with this stuff (about conference realignment and such) giving no regard to how other sports affect conference alignment and allegience, not to mention tradition...statements like, "Duke sucks, the ACC should kick them out." Ummmm....think about that one.

I agree. Some of these cats decide to look at stadium sizes, sizes of nearby towns, won-loss records the prior year or two, etc., and suggest tosses and additions, based on their perceptions of mega membership. Tradition, long-term rivalries, geography, logistics, cross-sports considerations, etc. get conveniently overlooked.

Mississippi State, Vanderbilt, and South Carolina should have just as much say who is and who isn't, to be in the SEC, just as much as LSU, Tennessee, and Alabama.

Some of these power schools have cheated, and perhaps continued to cheat, to get and/or stay where they are at. That does not mean some of the more modest ones haven't.

To push for adjusting conferences predominantly based on population demographics is best left to reside with the pros'; otherwise, quite non-collegiate and nonacademic.

Please let me know who said, "Duke sucks." I'll be the first to join you in condemning them.

Duke has frequently in the past bemoaned the fact that the ACC is trying to get too football heavy. They had more control of the conference when it's focus was basketball. Duke doesn't care about football, beyond the fact it gives them a fat check and keeps them in the same conference as UNC. DUke has drawn between 17-19K for the last 3 seasons. The NCAA minimum for IA is 17K+ paid attendance.

What I am talking about is a football only classification and in football, duke is both non-competitive and a minimal draw, just like TCU, SMU, Rice and the other privates were in the last days of the SWC. If a legendary conference like the SWC (f. 1914) can implode, so can a relative newcomer like the ACC (f. 1953). Heck, the entire reason the ACC expanded and almost killed the Big East was because they were scared the Big East would raid their football powers and render them an impotent non-BCS caliber conference.

Under the above scenario, nothing would prevent Duke and UNC from being in the same basketball conference.

I am going to call it like I see it. Your criticism is not a criticism at all. It is a fallacy. You don't want to consider the fact that Duke on it's football merits may not be the kind of school the football powers who effectively direct the BCS (UT, Michigan, USC, Florida, and a few others) want to play. That is the reasoning behind the BCS. It is an effort to force lower tier athletic programs to a lower level.

I think people like you are scared to look at possiblities you don't like.

I struggled with Duke. I really did. They are a phenominal academic school. But on those lines, so are the Ivy League schools and they were forced out of IA. At the end of the day, Duke is a small scale football program, and everything that is going on in college football is about eliminating small scale programs from the face of IA. I think the fall of SMU,TCU, Tulane, and other privates is a precursor for what will happen to Duke when Coach K hangs it up.

I encourage you to put together a coherent arguement about either why I am wrong to think private schools are not in the long term BCS picture (call it the "haves") or why in the big picture Duke should be playing football against schools with fanatical fanbases that draw 100K per game.

I left very few privates still in the final process, because financially, most of them don't make a ton of sense when it comes to IA football. The few noteworthy ones have reasons behind them.

Notre Dame draws enormous numbers and is coveted by Michigan, leader of the #1 conference in America. They are in. USC is a private that dominates the southern half of california & the US's #2 market in addition to being a member of the other dominant conference in America. They are not only in, they help determine who is in. Stanford, has drawn 41-43K over that same time period and is a member of the Pac 10, the #2 conference in America. They are in. BYU drew 58k-61K over that period and is a very large private school that dominates a REGION (more than a state) and historically draws pretty well for football. They are in.

I look at the landscape and I'd say that the Pac 10, Big 10, UT, A&M, Oklahoma, Alabama, Auburn, Georgia, Florida, LSU, and possibly Nebraska pretty much controll the direction of college football.

With very few exceptions, I think these schools would prefer that IA football was the exclusive domain of flagships and top level academic secondary (State, A&M, or Tech) schools only. Where in that group would the votes for a private school that cannot generate football income come from? Presumeably Duke could count on votes from most of the ACC members, but a strong arguement can be made that none of those teams are power brokers anymore. Beyond that?

Pushing Duke down to a subclassification helps the haves financially. Consider this, how much better would UNC and Virginia's recruiting be if Duke and Wake Forest weren't in IA sucking up highbrow football talent in the region? The possibility of very lukewarm support exists. This is the kind of thought that ripped apart the SWC.

Again, you are doing the same thing. I have never said that dog athletic schools in the SEC don't get to vote for who should be a member of the current SEC.

I am saying that I see a day where the Elite schools feel that the NCAA is not doing what they perceive as it's job in keeping IAA schools in that lower tier. When that day arrives, I could see them setting up their own classification for football and leaving the struggling schools behind.

If and when something like that were to happen, who votes for who in the SEC won't come into play. It will be about flagships, academic excellence, football program development (attendance and support), and media markets. It won't be just alabama voting on this, it will be Ohio State, Michigan, UT, and others. The criteria would dictate the results. SC and Ole' Miss in; Miss St. and Vandy out.

Finite Man -

Your point about the big boys keeping the NCAA at bay is well -taken.

The NCAA has to take the political posture of "being inclusive". The big boys want to protect the revenue (that they are largely responsible for generating) from being over-generously distributed to other schools that would move up to FBS, just to get a share.

So you see them try to slow the movement by throwing some type of "program size" criteria out there (although it is somewhat arbitrary where the cut-off should be)....
Stadium Size ? Around 30,000
Attendance ? No Less than 15,000 (every year, and on average, to allow for a few permissible excursions)
When that doesn't work.... effect a "moratorium" on movement.

Teams that really don't belong (I don't want to moralize and side with the big boys, but some of there concerns are truly valid) continue to move up, and the only apparent driver in many cases would appear to the the egos of the college president / A.D., and a desire for a chunk of each conference's share of NCAA basketball tourney money that each D-1 conference gets by having an automatic qualifier for their conference champion.

The big boys see the NCAA B-Ball tourney as the model for where an FBS playoff system would go, should the NCAA be in charge of setting it up. You have no farther to look, than the Division I - FCS Playoff structure to see this.

Back in the day, the NCAA did all the negotiating for the national TV rights. The 61 ? big boys of the power conferences knew they could do a lot better by selling the rights to televise more games on more networks, and control that revenue distribution, but creating the "CFA" and negotiation their own deals. They went to court vs. the NCAA and won, and did an end run around the NCAA.... flexing their muscles, and showing the NCAA that the power conferences must be appeased, because they have the leverage to get what they want, and if the NCAA doesn't listen to them, they can side-step the NCAA and set up their own entities.... which brings us to the BCS !

The CFA (not sure if that entity exists anymore, or if each conference and the consortium of BCS conferences have superseded that) is a demonstration of the big boys "seceeding from the NCAA". So the NCAA office knows that it has to tread lightly on managing D-1 and the FBS, in particular.

I do NOT see the SEC booting out Vandy, or the Big XII booting out Baylor. Not sure if there is a mechanism for that... It'd be more trouble that it's worth, in terms of political fall-out. The other thing often overlooked is that each power conference needs to have a bottom dweller or two, that affords the top teams some easy wins. Vandy and Miss. State DID NOT stink this year, and the SEC was a murderous gauntlet. If you load up your conference with too many powerhouses, you champ will have NO CHANCE of going undefeated and getting into the championship game.

I do see that perhaps C-USA and the Big East MAY undergo make-overs to stengthen themselves and / or tighten geography, and the mechanism for this happening is more likely to be the HAVE's seceeding to form a new conference (a la the Mountain West), rather than booting out any weak sisters.

Mississippi State and Vanderbilt are not leaving the SEC. Actually, Ole Miss has fewer students than Miss. State if that is part of your criteria.

One can make a super-conference of schools such as Texas, UCLA, Florida, Michigan, Penn State, Oklahoma, etc. and a range of discrepancy will develop, and whose in and whose out shall be a perennial argument.

As Westwolf said, the SEC and ACC have who they want. If it isn't broke, don't fix it.

Again, I am not talking about the SEC. If this status quo stays in place, the SEC is making good money and is happy with the status quo.

But what if UCF, USF, Miami, FIA and FAU all get to be pretty good? Considering the talent in Florida and that most of them play in differrent conferences, what does that do to Florida's hold on the state's TV audiences, and what does that do to the ACC and SEC's financials? If you cut the money flow conferences change.

Ol' miss is a flagship and has a good TV market. Miss State does not.

Obviously you know quite little about north central Mississippi and the towns of Starkville and Oxford. There might be even TV set in nearby Columbus or Tupelo. Maybe even Elvis' distant cousins watch TV?

While you at it about all the fabulous flagships in Florida, perhaps don't overlook Miami-Dade Community College.

The population of both Starkville and Oxford is cut in half from late May to late August! ;D

Both Ole Miss and State are in small, small towns in North-Central and North-East-Central Mississippi respectively and about one hundred miles apart. Both schools are less than 3 hrs from Memphis. What possible market could we be referring to here. Memphis? Ole Miss doesn't carry the Memphis market any better than State carries west Alabama. Ever hear of the Tide and the Vols? Food for thought...Why is the Liberty Bowl attendence record held by State, NOT Ole Miss?

Gawd, please don't put me in the role of having to DEFEND Ole' miss, lol!

Sigh, I guess I have to. Ole' Miss is the Miss flagship and is TECHNICALLY in the Memphis Market. I think that if it boiled down to memphis or Ole' miss, the flagship would get the nod over the regional school especially as the SEC power schools would play a big part in the criteria for selection.

DMA would decide this, IMO.

(I do want to say I really don't have a problem with the Miss Schools. Demographically they have been dealt a poor hand and all 3 IA schools have done VERY well with their attendance and fan support and leveraged that into as good a football conference position as they could possibly hope for. If IAA schools making the jump focused on attendance they might have much better chances in IA.)