Take College Football To The Next Level

You love college football, it perhaps might be your favorite level of football to watch.
Fans across the country screamed for a playoff for decades and finally got a limited version in 2014.

The next obvious step is to increase the playoff field to eight teams from the current four.However there is more that can be done to improve the game we love.

First we must identify what issues are impacting the quality of the sport.

1. Conference Alignment

2. Uniform Governing Body

3. Scheduling Inconsistencies

4. Unknown Criteria to Rankings

There are currently five major conferences with two in jeopardy of collapsing. Both the Big 12 and Pac 12 are not stable with the Big 12 the more likely of the two to fall apart thanks to Texas' non uniform revenue sharing and the controversial Longhorn Network.

Assuming the Big 12 is the likely conference to collapse that leaves four remaining.  It has widely speculated that these four conferences will expand to 16 teams each creating the super conferences.

What happens to the teams from the Big 12?

The ACC, Big 10 and SEC all have 14 teams currently with the PAC 12 pulling in shockingly 12.  This means potentially the 10 teams in the Big 12 could be absorbed into the other conferences.  Unfortunately not all teams in the Big 12 deserve to be promoted into these super conferences and there are other more logical fits who do deserve that opportunity.In addition, there are teams currently in one of the super conferences that geographically need to be realigned or moved to another conference all together.

Lets have some fun and visualize what four super conferences made of 16 teams looks like.  The priority is to get the best 64 teams in these super conferences and resume many of the classic rivalries college football fans love.

ACC
 Atlantic Division Boston College Vanderbilt Florida State Louisville NC State North Carolina Syracuse Wake Forest 

Coastal Division Duke Georgia Tech Miami (FL) Notre Dame (The Irish play in the ACC for other sports) Pittsburgh Virginia Virginia Tech West Virginia 

Big 10 

East Division Indiana Maryland Michigan Michigan State Penn State Purdue Ohio State Rutgers 

West Division Illinois Iowa Kansas Minnesota Nebraska Northwestern Missouri Wisconsin 

Pac 16 North Division Cal Colorado Oregon Oregon State Stanford Washington BYU Utah 

South DivisionArizona Arizona State Baylor Houston Texas Tech TCU UCLA USC 

SEC 

East Division Alabama Auburn Florida Georgia Kentucky South Carolina Tennessee Clemson (Moved to resume Clemson/South Carolina rivalry) 

West Division Arkansas LSU Mississippi State Oklahoma Oklahoma State Ole Miss TexasTexas A&M 

Yes many teams change divisions and even conferences with some leaving the major conferences all together. There could be legal issues making that unlikely but that is for another day.

Now that all the conferences are identical in their size and relative geography, it is imperative that these conferences agree to a uniform governing body to oversee the operation of all things football. This is not a replacement to the NCAA but currently the playoff committee oversees and decides how to rank teams and crown the league's champion without input from the NCAA. In addition, the conferences are free to act independent of each other and decide how to determine the conference champion.

The super conferences will need to agree to adopt a federation which will act as a uniform governing body to ensure all major conferences are aligned and uniform.  This governing body also presents a single opponent in the future when student athletes organize in their attempt to receive just compensation for their work as athletes representing universities across the country.  This same body can also implement requirements for scheduling and remove the ridiculous current process of opponents selected years in advance and the multiple low level competition games that occur during the season.

This brings us to scheduling.  Teams are wildly inconsistent in who they play in terms of strength of schedule on a year to year basis and while it does generally benefit teams to play a strong strength of schedule, it also creates massive inconsistencies from team to team which can hurt their ability to compete for championships.  To address this, every team in the super conferences will have a uniform number schedule.  All teams will play 7 divisional games of every opponent within the division.  Everyone will have 4 non divisional games from another division within the federation.  Finally all federation teams will schedule a home non federation game per season.

Similar to the NFL, the non divisional games within the federation are automatically determined.  Every division is matched with another division within the federation rotating around every six years. The teams that finish the prior season in the top half of the division will play the other division's top half teams and so forth.  The best teams will play the more difficult non divisional schedule to give lesser teams a better chance to compete.  For example, the SEC west division could be matched next season to play the ACC Atlantic division but they would not see them again until 2023.  Each team is guaranteed two of the non divisional, the non federation and at least 3 divisional games will be played at home.  The teams will have to alternate between three and four divisional home games per season.The non federation game remains in this format as all coaches want to pad their stats with the most wins possible by any means possible.  The schools want to host the games for ticket sales and non federation teams want to play to help recruit prospects get a chance to face off against the big teams that may have overlooked them and not to mention the huge payouts they receive to assist their budget.

Now that the super conferences are aligned, a single governing body oversees the sport and the schedules are uniform, how is the league champion determined?

Fans screamed for a playoff for decades and they got it, next they want the playoff expanded to eight teams and reward teams that win their conferences while avoiding rematches.Every division winner plays in a conference championship game played at a neutral site for each super conference, this acts like the first round of a eight team playoff.  The conference champions move on to a final four which are ranked by the overall record then head to head record, home field record and finally least points allowed to prevent teams from running up the score.

No more polls, worthless rankings and unclear rules that put teams in the playoff.No longer is it up to teams to make their own schedule and arrange opponents years in advance.  Points scored is no longer used as a tie breaking criteria as no one wants to see teams score 70 on a non federation team.  Teams will need to protect their home field and every game matters to determine who wins the division but can survive one or even two losses.

Sports Illustrated has already mentioned the four 16 team super conferences and federation idea.  The non divisional scheduling idea adopted by the NFL was introduced by Fox's Joel Klatt.

I admit this plan is unlikely as it requires massive reconstruction at almost every level of the sport but go back 25 years and look how much the game and sport has changed.  Anything is possible and I sincerely hope this plan could someday happen to take the game we love to the next level.