Oh, if only I knew

I'm nervous...the game's in Morgantown, after all.

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College Football: Three hours and change until tonight's game. I already dealt with this yesterday, so I won't do so again.

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In the wake of all of this conference jumping, I have given a wee bit of thought as to what I would do regarding conference alignment were I king. Right now there are 117 teams in Division I-A, with Florida A&M scheduled to play in I-A next year. I would probably create 12-team, 2-division conferences - and assuming 2 more teams made the jump to I-A, this would set the number of teams at an even 120. I have, therefore, realigned the teams in Division I-A into ten conferences. In this example I assume Georgia Southern and Montana make the jump. I chose these because of their geographic diversity; if, indeed, they are not the next two, it becomes easier to realign, because there is a greater likelihood that one of the two teams is (relatively) close to whichever teams jump. Inasmuch as college football is a regional game, I strive to institute geographic sanity. I also completely ignore any non-football issue, such as the fact that the Big East and Conference USA are hybrid conferences, and I ignore the academic concerns of leagues like the Big Ten. Having given you that caveat, here is my alignment.

ACC	Big East	Big Ten	Big XII	Conference USA	Mid-American	Mountain West	Pacific 10	Southeastern	Southwestern
Duke	Connecticut	Notre Dame	Colorado	Troy State	Miami	Nevada	Washington	Florida	Tulsa
North Carolina	Boston College	Ohio State	Colorado St	UAB	Ohio	UNLV	Wash St	Georgia	Rice
Wake Forest	Buffalo	Michigan	Kansas	Memphis	Kent	Arizona	Oregon	Tennessee	Houston
NC St	Syracuse	Michigan St	Kansas State	Tulane	Akron	Arizona State	Oregon St	Vanderbilt	UL-Lafayette
Clemson	Temple	Indiana	Nebraska	East Carolina	Cincinnati	Air Force	California	Kentucky	UL-Monroe
South Carolina	Rutgers	Purdue	Missouri	Southern Miss	Central Michigan	BYU	Stanford	Louisville	La Tech
Maryland	West Virginia	Illinois	Oklahoma	Middle Tennessee	Eastern Michigan	Boise State	Southern Cal	Alabama	SMU
Georgia Tech	Marshall	Northwestern	Oklahoma St	Arkansas St.	Western Michigan	Idaho	UCLA	Auburn	TCU
Virginia	Pittsburgh	Wisconsin	Texas	Central Florida	Bowling Green	Utah	Fresno St	Ole Miss	North Texas
Va Tech	Penn State	Minnesota	Texas A&M	South Florida	Toledo	Utah State	San Diego St	Miss St	UTEP
Miami	Army	Iowa	Texas Tech	Florida A&M	Ball State	Wyoming	San Jose St	Arkansas	New Mexico
Florida State	Navy	Iowa State	Baylor	Georgia Southern	Northern Illinois	Montana	Hawaii	LSU	NM St

Some thoughts:

• Align the divisions in each conference as you like. In many conferences, I toyed with the idea of pairing teams off, putting one of each pair in each division, and having the paired teams play each other every season (sort of a rivalry game). I know that one interdivisional rival is designated for each team in the real-life SEC and in the ACC.


• I would schedule 8 intraconference games: 5 intradivisional games, and 3 interdivisional games.


• I ignored BC in the ACC simply for geographic sanity, and for the fact that, for the first 16 years of the conference, South Carolina was a member.


• I tried to preserve conference integrity, to some extent. Probably the teams I least wanted to remove from their conference were Arizona and Ariz. St. If I were to keep them in the Pac 10, I would simply swap them for San Jose St. and Fresno.


• You could easily swap Baylor out of the Big XII for any number of teams in the Southwestern Conf.


• You can easily swap Vanderbilt out of the SEC, doing so for Tulane most likely.


• I pulled Penn State out of the Big Ten because, let's face facts, Penn State is an eastern school, not a midwestern one, and this resumes rivalries with BC, Syracuse, Pitt and West Virginia.

More later. Off to eat, then watch the Hokies. - Ryan