By: Kerrance James
Realignment is inevitable. Long-standing rivalries are
100% expendable. The almighty dollar is king. The sooner you come to grips with
those facts, the less angry this completely hypothetical article will make you.
Moves and rumors of impending moves are scrolling along
the bottom line on a nearly daily basis, but where is it all going, and will it
ever end? For a while it seemed like the Big 12 would be the Power Six
conference to go under at the expense of a new Fab Five, but that may no longer
be the case. Football afterthoughts like Tulane and East Carolina are helping
keep the major conferences afloat in their journey to field 16 teams. The whole thing leaves me asking (at least) two key questions:
1.
If all this posturing is based on football
revenue, why does it look like we’re headed for 4-5 super conferences? What’s
the point in 16 team conferences if you only play 7-9 conference games per
season? Wouldn’t the ideal situation be 8 10 team conferences rather than 5 16
team conferences?
2.
Where does this leave the basketball powerhouses
without FBS football programs?
The second of those questions appears to be getting
addressed, with the recent rumors of the Big East and A-10 leftovers joining
forces as a non-football conference. Charlie and I actually started discussing
this idea via twitter two weeks ago while Florida was busy taking its latest
victim (Marquette) behind the woodshed:
@Kerrancejames: Newsflash: Florida is good…but why aren’t
they playing Cuse or L’Ville? This SEC/Big East “challenge” ain’t got shit on
ACC/Big Ten.
@ChScaturro: You think the ACC/Big Ten challenge is bad
now, just wait a few years…
@KJ: I love the ACC/Big Ten, and it’ll stay good. But if
they keep doing SEC/Big East, I’m not watching Tulane/LSU.
@CS: Yeah…just one of the many disappointments that Big
East basketball will become in the next few years.
@KJ: On the bright side, St. John’s might just own the Big
East for years to come, like Memphis when Marquette/Cincy/LVille left CUSA
@CS: Yeah pretty much just them, Georgetown, and Nova will
be left standing. Honestly think they should just form their own league.
@KJ: They should go to the C-USA, and just rename it the “we
don’t give a damn about football” conference.
@CS: Amen. Really hoping every good basketball school that
has no football program does that. It would be amazing.
@KJ: Butler, SJU, Gtown, Nova, Marquette, Seton Hall,
Providence, VCU, George Mason, St. Joe’s, Creighton, and Wichita St. Done.
@CS: College basketball fans would rally around that conf.
Sounds like we’ve got an article of some kind for SIIJ here.
@KJ: By the time I finished writing it, there’d be another
3 announcements of realignment anyway.
Two weeks have passed since then, and I finally decided
to dust off that idea for an article. Rather than just letting the conference
realignments catch me off guard, I decided to come up with something of a final
solution – 5 FBS Super-Conferences and 2 SFB (Screw Football)
Super-Conferences. Keep in mind that your perceived rivalries don’t mean a
thing to the people who ultimately make these decisions, and that this is a purely
geographical proposition. Perhaps the picture isn’t painted perfectly (I know
some of the SFB schools have football teams), but I think we can all agree that
we’re headed in this general direction.
FBS
Super-Conference #1: The Upper East Side
Boston College,
Cincinnati, Connecticut, Maryland, Michigan, Michigan State, Ohio, Ohio State,
Penn State, Pitt, Rutgers, Syracuse, Temple, Virginia, Virginia Tech, West
Virginia
Most intriguing: Watching Bristol try to play this off as
the best conference in both football and basketball year after year despite not
winning a championship for the first 10 years.
Least intriguing: Any game between Boston College and
Rutgers.
FBS
Super-Conference #2: Fight Club
Alabama, Auburn, Central
Florida, Clemson, Duke, East Carolina, Florida, Florida State, Georgia, Georgia
Tech, Miami, North Carolina, North Carolina State, South Carolina, South
Florida, Wake Forest
Most intriguing: Finally (re)uniting schools like Georgia
and Georgia Tech; Florida, Florida State, and Miami; and South Carolina and
Clemson. Coupled with Duke/UNC and Alabama/Auburn, you’ve either got a rivalry
every week, or 3 hellacious weekends per year when all the rivalries take
place.
Least intriguing: Those other Floridas and Carolinas.
Geographically, this conference makes the most sense for Central Florida, South
Florida, and East Carolina, but they’ll compete in this conference about as
well as the Houston Astros in the AL West.
FBS
Super-Conference #3: The Bread Basket
Arkansas, Illinois,
Indiana, Iowa, Iowa State, Kent State, Kentucky, Louisville, Louisiana State,
Memphis, Missouri, Northern Illinois, Northwestern, Notre Dame, Tennessee,
Vanderbilt
Most intriguing: Finding out how well Memphis competes in
an actual conference of hoops teams.
Least intriguing: Kentucky vs. Louisville. Just kidding.
From top to bottom, this is my favorite conference.
FBS
Super-Conference #4: The Continental Divide
Baylor, Houston,
Kansas, Kansas State, Minnesota, Mississippi, Mississippi State, Nebraska,
Oklahoma, Oklahoma State, Purdue, Texas Christian, Texas, Texas A&M, Texas
Tech, Wisconsin
Most intriguing: Would Wisconsin and Minnesota conform to
the Big 12 style of play or vice versa? And would there be any sort of bad
blood with Nebraska re-joining a predominantly Big 12 conference?
Least intriguing: Purdue in general. Aren’t the
Boilermakers the most forgettable BCS team? Maybe you remember the rest of the
Big Ten by feeling bad for Northwestern and just naming states bordering a
great lake, but I have a tendency to forget that Purdue exists. Sorry Purdue
fans, if you exist.
FBS
Super-Conference #5: The Wild West
Arizona, Arizona
State, Boise State, Brigham Young, California, Colorado, Fresno State, Oregon,
Oregon State, San Diego State, Stanford, UCLA, USC, Utah, Washington,
Washington State
Most intriguing: Finding out how well Boise State
competes in an actual conference of football teams.
Least intriguing: People who will still complain about an
East Coast bias.
SFB East Super-Conference
Butler, Creighton,
Davidson, Dayton, George Mason, Georgetown, Marquette, Providence, Seton Hall,
Saint Joseph’s, Saint Louis, St. John’s, Villanova, Virginia Commonwealth,
Wichita State, Xavier
Most intriguing: The entire basketball season. Oh you’ll
get your share of duds the same way you already do in the Big East, but if we
formed this conference today, isn’t the worst conference game (Villanova @
Creighton?) better than 90% of the games that’ll be played in the Missouri
Valley?
Least intriguing: The fact that 6-7 of these teams would
miss out on the tournament every year. I don’t want to live in a world without
Butler and VCU in my bracket.
SFB West
Super-Conference
Air Force, Belmont,
Colorado State, Gonzaga, Marshall, Murray State, Nevada, New Mexico, New Mexico
State, Northern Iowa, Saint Mary’s, San Francisco, Southern Methodist, UNLV,
Utah State, Wyoming
Most intriguing: Gonzaga, Murray State, UNLV, and New
Mexico having to play at each other’s home courts. Everyone says they have home
court advantages because of their fans or the location or just the gym itself,
but are they just good teams who annually play even better at home, or is there
something magical about those courts?
Least intriguing: Games like Air Force vs. Marshall. This
was definitely the most difficult conference to put together, both
competitively and geographically. Had to travel as far east as Tennessee to find
formidable opponents. But yes, the east coast bias is totally propagated by the
media, not the actual quality of play west of Texas.
Richmond?
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