New age of college football can be structured in orderly fashion to benefit a lot of teams

How about a SEC where Kentucky might face Oregon, Stanford, Colorado or Appalachian State. (Vicky Graff Photo)

By MAC YOCUM, Contributing Writer

With all of the current buzz about UCLA and USC jumping from the PAC 12 to the BIG 10, coupled with the Texas and Oklahoma move to the SEC, the college conferences are in a state of upheaval. All of the “experts” are speculating on this team and that team. They are obsessed with which conference will one up another.  In reality, the new age of college football can be ushered in via an orderly fashion and in a way that can benefit more teams.  

To start the PAC 12 would need to be dissolved, which is essentially underway now. We would go from a Power 5 to a Power 4 — the ACC, the Big 12, the Big 10 and the SEC. We know that media dollars are the driving force behind the current trend so let’s make sure that the big four are hitting all of the major TV markets. 

Let’s start with the SEC. Phil Knight would love for Oregon to go to the SEC where many of Nike’s crown jewels already reside. The SEC bills itself as the conference of champions, so send Stanford over.  The Cardinal has won more NCAA titles than any other school. Those two schools will give the SEC the Pacific time zone so the TV sales reps can more easily sell those late night basketball games. You know Cat fans would stay up for a midnight tip between the Ducks and UK. 

Let’s make sure the league hits the mountain time zone so add Colorado. Fans are clamoring for the Carolina schools but the ACC has too many conditions and clauses in their media package to make that work so let’s go get Appalachian State. Athletically they have proven to be able to more than hold their own with the big boys and there is no more pretty campus in America. The conference would  get four quality schools and programs.

We already know the Big 10 is adding USC and UCLA, giving them the Pacific time zone. So while we are at it, let’s add Washington State and Arizona State for them from the PAC 12. And let’s give them what they really want, Notre Dame to cut their affiliation with the ACC and go all in with the Big 10. So the Big 10 gets the West coast and the vast Notre Dame empire but they need a foothold into one more fertile recruiting area, Florida. So we will add South Florida to their ranks.

Now we have to do something with the Big 12 and the ACC.  This gets a little more dicey but we are looking at more than just football expansion. The Big 12 will get their share of the spoils of the PAC 12 demise. We will give them Washington, Oregon State, and Utah.  They will make nice additions with the teams already slated to join the league, Cincinnati, Central Florida, BYU and Houston. We will give them the last major Texas school on the board, SMU and we will give them a quality San Diego State team.

The other three teams to go to the Big 12 fit other criteria. Colorado State and Boise State would give the conference a presence in a new area. The last new addition would be Marshall. The Thundering Herd helps give the league a nice east side threesome with Cincy and WVU to make those minor sports trips a little easier to schedule.

The ACC is a different animal. They will keep their current setup due to financial reasons. Of course, Maryland and Rutgers would make more sense in the ACC but neither of those would want to get away from the 100 million dollar per team payout to the Big 10 schools. So we have to get a little more creative.

First, let’s make sure that they get their piece of the PAC 12 pie, so let’s give them Arizona and California. Both will fit in nicely athletically and academically. We will give them East Carolina which is a quality program and is one that plays many ACC teams already. The conference can expand its recruiting footprint into talent-rich Alabama by adding up and coming UAB. From a basketball standpoint, we will give them Memphis and coming off multiple bowl games and a  rich basketball tradition, we will add Western Kentucky to the league.

So we get four power leagues with 20 teams each. That leaves Conference USA, the MAC, the Mountain West and the Sunbelt as the other FBS leagues.  Now here is where we start helping everyone else. These new power conferences and the other four FBS leagues will still need to pad the schedules with some FCS teams. So we align certain FCS conferences with each of the new Power 4 leagues to help these schools boost their budgets with some nice guaranteed money games. And these FCS leagues would be geographically close so travel would cut for them.

We will align the Big Sky, the Missouri Valley and the Southland with the Big 12. The Big 10 will get aligned with the Northeast conference and the Colonial. The ACC will get the ASUN, the Patriot and the MEAC. And the SEC will align with the Big South, the OVC and the SoCon. The Big South and the OVC are merging their football leagues anyway in 2023 so this makes a good situation.

We will help out the other four FBS leagues too. We will put the SWAC with CUSA; the Pioneer with the MAC; the WAC with the Mountain West; and the IVY with the Sunbelt. And of course, Army and Navy can do their own thing.

Granted there are eight non-football conferences, but those leagues don’t really need to be aligned with a Power 4 league for basketball scheduling purposes.

But back to my proposed alignment, how about an SEC track season with Oregon, Stanford, Texas, LSU, UK, Florida, Alabama, and Tennessee? WOW!