New NCAA football conference alignment

OK, all this talk about the Big 10 adding a twelfth member got me thinking about how the conferences should really be set up. Here's my take on the way things should be in the major conferences, including a dose of reality of course. This gets everybody to 12 teams and a conference championship game, which also sets up nicely for an 8-team playoff system with six automatics and two at-large bids instead of the lousy BCS:

Big 10: Just do what we've all been waiting for and add Notre Dame. All this talk about Texas is just silly. If anything, Penn State is already too far out of their geographic footprint and should really be in the Big East instead. And why would Missouri jump? They can already suck just fine in their existing conference. ND is dead in the middle of Big 10 country, and would fit perfectly. The only challenge is balancing the divisions, since they would now have 5 power programs (ND, Mich, OSU, Penn State, Wisconsin).

Big 12: Placate Texas by booting Baylor. Bring in Boise State, whose team is ready for the big time, even if the facilities could use a little sprucing up. (Smurf turf, c'mon...) BYU could fit here as well, even CSU or Air Force could theoretically survive in the current North division.

SEC, ACC: Leave well enough alone, especially in the SEC. Although, the BC move was just stupid, really. Unfortunately, what's done is done and I don't anticipate a reversal anytime soon.

Big East: As strong as the top of this conference is, we need major reaches to fill the rest of the openings in football. Marshall and Army both have incredibly long and storied football traditions, and at least one is on the rise right now. Temple and UMass (who is expected to jump to D1-A, or D1-FBS as we're supposed to call it now, soon) are more basketball schools, but this is a pretty strong basketball conference. This conference would make a lot more sense with PSU and BC in it, and not USF, but Tampa is sort of like an extreme southern suburb of NYC anyway. As I've set it up, the Big East still dominates college football in the sports radio heaven that is the Northeast. UCF or Navy are also candidates here.

Pac-10: Add SDSU and Hawaii. SDSU has flirted with the big time before (see Faulk, Marshall) and might have kept their momentum had the WAC not imploded and the MWC been forced to split off. June Jones has Hawaii on the way to the upper echelon, and Chuck Long is puching for the same at SDSU. Both play in NFL-ready facilities and have strong piplines to top-level recruits, and boast more than a dozen current NFL players. Hawaii in particular only makes sense in the Pac-10 due to the brutal travel situation. Fresno State would work here as well.

We'll address the remaining conferences in my next post.

Secret Origins

So, I finally decided to start a blog after much internal disucssion and inevitable procrastination. Chances are this will be just like everything else I do - it will serve as a timewaster helping me to avoid work for a while, then I'll lose interest. The following true exchange from my distant past illustrates the general theme of this blog:

Me: Let's rent a movie and get baked - don't you have a Blockbuster card?

B: Yeah, but I can't rent there any more.

Me: Why not?

B: I rented a movie like 3 months ago and never returned it, so they say I owe them like $80. They've been sending me nasty letters and bills and stuff.

Me: What movie?

B: "Slacker"



Enjoy the silence until I remember to post again.