An Attempt To Predict College Football’s Landscape, Circa 2012

Nebraska is just one of the latest universities to switch athletic conferences

Colorado is going to the Pac-10 to make it 11.

Nebraska is going to the Big Ten to make it 12.

Boise State is staying in the West, but moving from the Coast to the Mountain

The Big 12 could hold no more than five teams after this weekend.

And Notre Dame is just twiddling its thumbs.

It’s an amazing time in college athletics. The ground hasn’t never been more unstable., but his isn’t just a large earthquake. This is rapid continental drift. This is Pangaea in the span of mere days.

Still, that’s too long. We complete reconstruction now. At least, a friend of mine named Jeff Riley does. On Thursday, he tried to envision how Division I-FBS college football and its 120 teams will be existing in a couple of years. He agrees with the popular notion that we are approaching the birth of four 16-team super conferences — SEC, Big East, Big Ten and what is for known as the Pac-10.

I would never attempt such a task because I would constantly get in my own way, coming up for reasons why my own arguments are wrong and trying to be too perfect with each of the 120

So, no matter how much I disagree with what Jeff put together, at least he did it. And be clear that he’s not some sort of official college football historian. He’s just a big fan and it’s always fun to try to predict the future.

Here is what he thinks with some random comments from me thrown in along the way:

So I set out with the task: I was going to expand the conferences for them.

The news is all a flutter about how Nebraska and Colorado are ditching the Big 12, and with Texas, Oklahoma and gang looking to leave too, the days of that conference are limited.

I started off with just making a list of who would go where, but then I thought: Why not go more? Why not revise the whole system.

Because, as I discussed with some friends of mine today, if this 16-team power conference thing works it will be the way of the future. Mediocre conferences like ACC are doomed to be ripped apart by rich and geographically secure giants like the ACC and Big East (Except for USF).

Ok, so here is what I ended up with.

I kept the idea of BCS and non-BCS intact. I know everyone wants a playoff, and this system will adapt to a playoff pretty well if one eventually comes about. But for now we have the bowls, so this is designed to have bowls in mind.

There are four 16-team “super conferences.” These 64 teams are your BCS teams.

I tried to reflect modern changes and switches with some semblance of realism. I kept in-tact the big rumors that Texas and Oklahoma are going to the Pac-10, even though it makes no sense historically or geographically. When creating the Big East and Big Ten I tried to think about the teams they liked taking in their conference and who plays whom.

Consequently, I did away with the minor conferences. I took the 56 other teams, the non-BCS teams, and I made seven different geographical and team-ability conferences consisting of eight teams.

Only a few teams dropped from BCS status into non-BCS status. Those were Kansas State and Iowa State. Which, hey, really, reflects reality as it is unfolding today.

With the non-BCS conferences I kinda went a little crazy with the adjusting. It, in no way, is realistic in today’s big-conference mentality to think that a bunch of eight-team groups could exist.

That and I forced all non-conference schools to get in one.

But in my mind it sounded cool.

Even though the conferences themselves vary in size, because the regionals on the bigger ones split the same as the smaller ones, all teams play seven in-conference foes, and then play five out-of-conference games of their choice.

They can sign up to play cupcakes or partake in the Boise St. method.

OK, so here it goes. I might pause every now and again to explain what I was thinking.

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