Gridironstuds.com Blog

What a sneaky title this is.  While the main premise of this article is to propose a more logical realignment of the current college football conferences,  it is also a sneaky way to slip in yet another Division I playoff format.  This way we can do something logical in this sport like crown a champion by what happens on the field.

My conference realignments serves to group college football programs into regional areas (another thing that makes sense but isn’t done).  It also serves to include all college football teams in the quest for the championship and not eliminate programs by lumping all the 2nd tier schools into one conference.

With 120 Division I-A teams,  this is the perfect time and perfect number for something like this to be done.  With 120 teams,  it is now possible to have 10 college conference consisting of 12 teams.   This allows every conference to have a championship game.  Just the very thought of that should excite every college football fan as well as the teams, players and coaches.

Grouping the teams by region creates awesome rivalries that will mean something.  Of course some previous conference rivalries will be lost but provisions can be made for every program’s biggest rivalry to remain in tact.  Also the regional conference groupings set up a great situation for a playoff system that makes sense.

My proposal calls for a West Region and an East Region with five conferences in each region.  Each conference will have six teams on one side and six on the other.  Initially,  the split can be done to have balance of program strength between each side.  A realignment of the conference splits can be done every three to four years to maintain the balance between both sides of each conference.  The realignment will be based by the performance of each team over the previous three to four years.

So before I dive headlong into the intricacies of this realignment along with offering rebuttals to arguments people may have,  allow me to reveal to you the proposed conferences and their teams.   Of course,  the names of the conferences can be tinkered with but I went with made most sense at the time I put them together.

I placed teams in each sides of the conference based on my recollection of their recent historical performance in college football.  I will continue this article after the tables showing the realigned conferences with the meat and potatoes of how this proposal will improve college football to levels never before seen.

Here they are:

East Region			West Region
Southern Conference			Southwest Conference
Miami	Alabama		LSU	Tex A&M
FSU	Florida		TCU	Texas
Georgia Tech	Georgia		Baylor	Houston
FAU	USF		Louisiana Tech	SMU
UCF	Troy St.		Rice	N. Texas
FIU	UAB		ULL	Arkansas St.
Southeast Conference			Mid-American Conference
Auburn	South Carolina		Iowa	Pittsburgh
Tennessee	Clemson		Purdue	Illinois
Miss. St.	Ole Miss.		Notre Dame	Missouri
Memphis	Vanderbilt		Iowa St.	Indiana
S. Miss.	Tulane		Ball St.	Miami Ohio
Mid. Ten. St.	Lou. Monroe		Bowling Green	Marshall
Northeastern Conference			Midwestern Conference
Penn St.	Ohio St.		Oklahoma	Nebraska
Boston College	U.Conn		Oklahoma St.	Arkansas
Syracuse	Cincinnati		Colorado	Kansas
Navy	Rutgers		Colorado St.	Kansas St.
Army	Temple		Tulsa	Wyoming
Buffalo	Kent. St.		Air Force	Idaho
Mideastern Conference			Mountain West Conference
Virginia Tech	North Carolina		Texas Tech	Boise St.
Virginia	Wake Forest		Arizona	BYU
West Virginia	NC State		Arizona St.	Utah
Louisville	Maryland		UNLV	Nevada
Kentucky	East Carolina		New Mexico	Utah St.
W. Kentucky	Duke		New Mexico St.	Utep
Northern Lakes Conference			Western Conference
Wiconsin	Michigan		Oregon	California
Minnesota	Michigan St.		Oregon St.	Stanford
Toledo	Northwestern		Washington	USC
W. Michigan	Eastern Michigan		Washington St.	UCLA
C. Michigan	N. Illinois		San Jose St.	Hawaii
Akron	Ohio		Fresno St.	San Diego St.

Now let’s talk about the realignments, scheduling, competition and the all important playoff system.

No more independents

Enough with the flying solo.  The NCAA puts their foot down on a lot of things when it comes to college football but continue to get pushed around on other very important things.  Tell Notre Dame the gig is up and that if you want any shot at playing for a national title,  you have to take your conference assignment.  Yes,  I propose that the NCAA become Nazis with regard to this.  They also need to say the same to Army and Navy.  Everyone’s in a conference.  That’s as fair as fair can get.

Conference strengths

There’s no way to make every conference have equal strength but this is as close as you can get.  At first glance it looks like Wisconsin would have an easy path to the conference title game each year but who knows if one or more of the other teams in their conference don’t improve dramatically when the prize of a national title becomes real.  There is no more MAC conference or Conference USA or WAC where we lump in all of the weaker programs and have the king of that conference crying about how they don’t have a chance for a title.  Those smaller programs are spread throughout the conferences.   I am sure someone will come with the argument that putting those programs in with bigger programs will keep them away from ever winning a conference title.  My reply is that these teams are winning conference titles now and the ones who are winning titles should welcome the chance to step it up against the big boys.  In looking at the alignments,  there is a tremendous amount of balance between them.

Regional Bragging Rights

Setting these conferences up soley by geographical location sets up a situation where each region can develop a sense of pride about the way they play football. Also a  program can take pride in knowing that they reign supreme over a conference that is comprised entirely of teams within a small radius of their location.  No more Lousiana Tech battling Hawaii in a Western Athletic Conference game.

But What About the Loss of Conference Rivalries?

What about it?  When college football programs bolt from one conference to another in search of better television deals or revenue sharing,  no one seems to care about destruction of conference rivalries.  I was watching the 30 for 30 special on ESPN about “The Death of SMU” and remembered that there was once a conference called the SWAC. There was also a Metro-Conference.  Conferences come and go and new rivalries get formed.  I think rivalries are more powerful when they occur between teams in close proximity to each other.  There’s the chance that every week will be emotional in these conferences.

Scheduling

With six teams on each side of each conference,  every team will have five conference division games.  I am then proposing that we take a page out of the NFL book and make the out of conference games pit one conference against another.  So, for instance,  Florida St. would play conference division members Miami, Georgia Tech, FAU, UCF and FIU equaling five games and then have another six games against the members of one side of the Southwest Conference.   So for example they would play Texas A&M, Texas, Houston, SMU, N. Texas and Arkansas St..  That would give them 11 and everyone else 11 games.  Every program will also have a 12th game which would be used for rivalry games, historical games, interesting matchups etc.   So for example,  Texas Tech,  who is no longer in a conference with Texas can have their last game be against Texas if the two schools want to preserve some type of rivalry.

Now the Playoffs

To have a playoff system under this alignment,  we would need either 14 or 16 teams from each region to enter the playoffs.  I am proposing 14 teams from each region and issue bye weeks in the first round to a team from each region.  Before we get to the playoffs though,  every conference would have their championship game.  The winner of each division within a conference would meet at the end of the year to determine a champion.   Once that has been done we then issue a first round bye in the East Region to the highest ranked conference champion and then also do the same for the highest ranked conference champion in the West Region.   We would then also have the need to select two wild card playoff participants from each region.  I propose that the two highest ranking conference runner ups from each region be selected as playoff wildcards.  So you now see two ways in which the ranking system remains relevant in how we arrive at a champion.  After the teams with byes,  the next two highest ranked conference champs would face the two wild cards.  The other game would pit a conference champ against another conference champ.  So let’s see what that would look like.  I am going to use the 2010 season as an example and make some hypothetical assumptions about who would win the conference title games:

Conference Title games:

East Region

Southern Conference: #16 Alabama defeats #23 Florida St.
Southeast Conference: #1 Auburn defeats #20 South Carolina
Northeast Conference: #6 Ohio St. defeats Boston College
Mideastern Conference: #11 Virginia Tech defeats North Carolina
Northern Lakes Conference: #4 Wisconsin defeats #7 Michigan St.

West Region

Southwest Conference: #3 TCU defeats #18 Texas A&M
Mid-American Conference: #14 Missouri defeats Iowa
Midwestern Conference: #8 Oklahoma defeats #9 Arkanasas
Mountain West Conference: #10 Boise St. defeats Arizona
Western Conference: #2 Oregon defeats #4 Stanford

So here’s what the playoff brackets would look like.  Some quick notes, in seeding the regions for playoffs,  the two top teams would be split between the upper and lower part of the regional brackets.  The rest will be paired high rank vs low rank.  So highest ranking team will play lowest ranked team, etc.  EXCEPT in cases in which the pairing would result in an immediate rematch of a conference title game.

Here’s what the playoff bracket would look like based on my hypothetical conference championship winners:

	Eastern Region
	Auburn		Auburn
	Bye			Auburn
			vs
	Alabama		Michigan St.
wc	Michigan St.					Auburn
	Ohio St.		Ohio St..	vs
	Virginia Tech			Wisconsin
			vs
	Wisconsin		Wisconsin
wc	South Carolina
	Western Region
	Oregon		Oregon
	Bye			Oregon
			vs
	Boise St.		Stanford
wc	Stanford					Oregon
	TCU		TCU	vs
wc	Missouri			Oklahoma
			vs
	Oklahoma		Oklahoma
	Arkansas

wc stands for wildcard…

Before anyone says anything like,  after all that we still have the same two teams playing for the championship.  Well,  that only happened because I did the simple thing of having the higher ranked team win each matchup so of course we would end up with the same matchup the BCS has produced.  However,  I think we all know that there would undoubtedly be upsets especially with the potential of a lower ranked team being better than a higher ranked team with the faulty measures used to do rankings.

But What About the Bowls?

The Bowls still remain and there would be a ton of good matchups amongst bowl eligible teams that did not make the playoffs.  For instance:  Miami v. LSU or Oklahoma St. v BYU or Michigan v. Texas Tech and many more.  The bowl committees can set up parameters centered around what conference seed would face what other conference seed in the bowls.  Plenty of awesome matchups would still be available.

A Playoff Would Make the Regular Season Irrelevant

Don’t need to spend much time on this.  Under a system like this,  that would be false.  Each game in each conference has meaning as there is a division and conference race going on every week.  Also,  the rankings have a meaning so teams must play at a high level every week in and week out.

The Perks of this System

Personally,  I would be glued to my television set each week if a system like this were in place.  I would be able to see the playoff and national title picture unfold on the field and not necessarily have to just wait till Sunday evening to see where we are at.  The playoffs would also be riveting.  Every other level of football has playoffs (pop warner, high school and pro football).   This set up is much like the NFL’s which is the best run sport in this country.

What could also happen under this realignment is under performing programs of the past who have wallowed in mediocrity in conferences full of other mediocre teams may now feel the pressure to improve and stay relevant.  This could lend itself to more parity as programs try to avoid embarrassment.

Feedback

I would love to hear from those of you who love college football and have read this proposal.  What could go wrong?  Where would we have a problem with this?  What do you like about it?  Comment away.  I want to hear from you.

General auburn, bcs, college bowls, college conferences, college football, lsu, miami, Notre Dame football, ohio st., oklahoma, oregon, usc

The recent rash of NCAA violations and alleged violations at major schools like USC, Ohio St., Auburn, LSU, Oregon, etc have ramped up the talk of the need to pay college football players.  I am going to take an unpopular position on this topic and say don’t give them a dime.

It is no secret that I played major college football.  It is a lesser known fact that I also played major college football for a not so major team.  Before I played for the Miami Hurricanes,  I played for the now defunct Long Beach St. 49ers football program.  Playing for two college football programs will give anyone in that position perspective.  When you play for two programs on the opposite ends of the spectrum,  your perspective gets even greater.

One would be surprised to know that there were violations at Long Beach St. like there were violations at Miami.  There are violations on every college football campus by players on the team.  You are sitting there now thinking that it was all about survival with regards to these violations and I am here to tell you that it wasn’t.  95% of the violations were about the character and choices of the young men that made them.  Were there times on both campuses when we as players were hungry? Of course!  Guess what?  There were times before myself and the other players arrived on campus that we were hungry too.  It never led to me starving to death.  Did I want a pair of shoes I saw someone else wearing,  a pair of jeans that all the “cool” people seem to be sporting?   Was there that girl I wanted to take to the movies or the car I wanted to drive?  You bet.

You know what each and everyone of those situations did for me?  Made me want to ‘make’ some money one day.  How was I going to do that?  I was going to get my education, meet the right people and train hard to take advantage of the football opportunity in front of me.  Now,  had I reached out and taken the regular stream of payments from the “friend of the program”  or even picked up a paycheck from the university,  my motivation to achieve those goals would have been diminished to some degree.  The fact that as an athlete,  you are being afforded an opportunity to get an education that costs 100′s of 1,000′s of dollars should be enough.  Often times,  the athletes are being admitted into the school when they would not otherwise be allowed because of their athletic prowess.  Along with the costs that you are being relieved of to get that education,  the value of it also exceeds several 10′s to 100′s of thousands.  It gives you earning power. What else could you want?

How much should we pay theses athletes that are already getting so much?  $100 per week? $500 per week? $1,000 per week? What’s a good figure?  Can Miami pay more to their athletes than the Long Beach St.’s of the World?  Will $200 per week paid to an athlete make them tell the local dealer no when he offers them a car worth $1,000′s for nothing?  You really need your head examined if you think the answer to that is yes.  Offering the athletes ‘pay checks’ will only make them more money thirsty.  How many violations have you ever heard of where a guy was popped for getting a bunch of free meals at a restaurant or free food from the grocery store?  Think about that.   It’s always free cars, jewelry, expensive clothes, luxury items.   Never deodorant, underwear, shaving gel.  It’s not about needs it’s about wants.  These players want to be ‘ballers’ like they see on TV before they have done a damned thing to be one.  They want to look like the entertainment idols they see in the media.  It’s the trap of the adolescent mind and there is always the misguided adult around the program ready to feed into that beast for their own selfish purposes.

The universities are providing the athletes with a fishing rod so that they can learn how to fish and feed themselves for the rest of their lives.  Do the programs take a lot of their time trying to make them great athletes and produce a great product on the field?  Yes but it only helps the student athlete to learn how manage their time and become a success.  One day when they make it,  they will already have the tools to manage the time it takes to continue to be a success.  That is what college is teaching them.  These athletes that are hungry in their college dorm have been hungry all their life.  They should be motivated to learn what it takes to change that situation for not only themselves but for their families born and unborn.  Collecting a check from the university or NCAA will not help.  It will more than likely hurt that.

I want someone to get out there and preach to the young student athletes that taking a hand out does not set you up for life,  it makes you dependent for the rest of your life.  It puts you right back into the situation that you have been in before you got on campus.  Accept the scholarship,  accept the educational Pell Grant from the government,  manage your money,  manage your time and the rewards four or five years later will far exceed the pair of jeans, the diamond earrings, the Nike kicks or even the check the university could give you for being a guy who can run fast or jump high.

General auburn, lsu, ncaa, ohio st., oregon, paying athletes, usc

November 13th

Thibodaux H.S. (Louisiana) WR Trovon Reed has committed to Auburn. Reed is also being recruited by Florida, LSU, Oregon and Tennessee.

Corona H.S. running back Jordon James chooses UCLA. James is also being recruited by Arizona, California, Notre Dame and Washington.

Palm Beach Central H.S. cornerback Peniel Jean has selected Wisconsin as his school. He is also being recruited by Buffalo, Bowling Green, Connecticut, Central Michigan and Maryland.

November 12th

Fomer Pahokee WR Nu’keese Richardson is among three Tennessee football players arrested Thursday morning in Knoxville on attempted armed robbery charges. Policy Richardson along with safety Janzen Jackson and another Vols player attempted to rob some patrons outside of convenience story while donning hooded sweat shirts and carrying a powered pellet gun. More.

Carol City H.S. (Florida) WR Allen Hurns has committed to the University of Miami. Hurns is also being recruited by West Virginia, Pittsburgh, Ole Miss, FIU and Central Florida.

Hollywood Hills H.S. (Florida) CB Tony Grimes has narrowed his list down to Michigan, Ole Miss, Maryland, West Virginia and Oregon. Click here to view Grimes’ highlight video.

November 11th

University School (Florida) athlete Brice Hawkes has committed to Syracuse University.

November 10th

Edna Karr H.S. (Louisiana) QB and Gridironstuds.com Member Munchie Legaux has committed to the University of Colorado. Legaux is also being recruited by Michigan, West Virginia, Oregon, Baylor and Ole Miss.

November 9th

The University of Miami continues to be on a roll with the latest commitment from St. Thomas Aquinas (Florida) cornerback Keion Payne. Payne is also being recruited by Tennessee, Ohio St., Florida and Florida St.

DeMatha Catholic H.S. (Maryland) safety and Gridironstuds.com member Lorenzo Waters has announced his Final Five as Miami, Rutgers, Wake Forest, Michigan and Virginia Tech.

Millenium H.S. (Arizona) safety Marquis Flowers has named a final five of Arizona, Arizona St., Notre Dame, UCLA and USC.

---

Rumors and Wires arizona, arizona st., florida, florida st., keion payne, lorenzo waters, marquis flowers, miami, munchie legaux, top 2010 recruits, ucla, usc

With an offer from Stanford already in hand, Treasure Coast Linebacker Jeff Luc has now been reached by the king of West Coast football. USC came calling to Luc on Thursday Night becoming the latest school to offer the bone crushing linebacker a full ride. North Carolina also threw an offer Luc’s way Thursday Night adding to the now long list of schools bidding for his services. Luc now has over 16 major Division I offers including Miami, FSU, Florida, Notre Dame, Georgia, WVU and USC. No doubt they will continue to pour in. You can view Luc’s impressive video, click on the link: Jeff Luc’s highlight video at Gridironstuds.com.

---

High School Football gridironstuds.com, high school recruiting video, jeff luc, southern california, top 2010 recruits, top prep linebackers in the nation, usc