My Conference Realignment Plan

I'll give a little bit of context on this one. I'd been discussing the conference realignment possibility with our newest contributor to the blog (you know, the guy who geniusly identified Rally Cat as a threat to out precious freedoms?) for quite some time, mostly through April and early May until finals and papers began to take their inevitable toll.

I was doing a lot of talking on the matter, going in depth on a lot of the possibilities, so it was wisely asked that I shoot him an e-mail detailing my big idea on the matter.

With topics at a minimum (watch out for an NBA Finals preview tomorrow, courtesy of Rene and myself), I figured now would be an appropriate time to whip it out, the
e-mail that is.

Below is the e-mail copied and pasted onto the blog. Not a violation of the Freedom of Information Act. Hey, the hippies got something right.



Here's what's up: conference realignment is going to happen whether we think it's right or not. The Big Ten is going to expand, possibly upwards to 16 teams. We can all acknowledge that they're not going to get Notre Dame for anything, especially football- too rich of a TV contract that they've got with NBC, plus their boosters have expressed an intense desire to remain independent. This means the Big East is going to get raided to the point where it's no longer going to exist. The teams that it would be losing couldn't possibly be made up by getting the likes of Memphis and Central Florida.

Make no mistakes about it, this is all happening for football. Basketball, popular as it may be, doesn't generate a fraction of the revenue that football does. Even the best regular season college hoops game can't even match a mediocre Saturday game in the fall with TV ratings and what not.

Anyhow, unless the Big Ten expands by only one school (highly unlikely), the Big East football will cease to exist and the Catholic, non-football schools will break off and form their own conference. This has been talked about for some time.

What will ensue out of all of this will be the formation of four "superconferences", with about 16 teams a piece. This has been written about extensively on a national level and is a very plausable option should things transpire as expected. Below, I've set up what these four conferences will look like, trying my best to maintain a level of geographic integrity. New additions are bolded.

New Big Ten- Midwest and Northeast



Illinois
Indiana
Penn State
Michigan
Michigan State
Purdue
Ohio State
Northwestern
Minnesota
Wisconsin
Iowa
Pittsburgh
Rutgers
Syracuse
UConn
Boston College


The New ACC- Lower Midwest and Southeast Coast



Maryland
Duke
North Carolina
NC State
Wake Forest
Clemson
Miami
Georgia Tech
Virginia
Virginia Tech
Florida State
South Carolina
Louisville
Cincinnati
South Florida
West Virginia


New SEC- Southeast and Southwest (Basically the Current Big 12 South)



Florida (Go Gata!)
Georgia
Vanderbilt
Tennessee
Alabama
Auburn
Mississippi
Mississippi State
LSU
Arkansas
Kentucky
Texas
Texas A&M
Texas Tech
Baylor
Oklahoma
Oklahoma State


New Pac-10- West Coast, Rocky Mntns, and Great Plains



Arizona
Arizona State
USC
UCLA
California
Stanford
Oregon
Oregon State
Washington
Washington State
Colorado
Nebraska
Missouri
Kansas
Kansas State
Iowa State



The previously alluded to basketball-only conference of Big East remnants would look something like this:

Georgetown
Villanova
Seton Hall
St. John's
DePaul
Marquette
Providence
Notre Dame
Xavier
Dayton
Butler
Virginia Commonwealth or George Mason


A few explanations:

-BC goes to the Big Ten, firstly because it's the most profitable league out there, with their own TV network and all. Also, geographically to the ACC, they don't match. The closest team to them is Maryland. This way they have UConn, Cuse and Rutgers all fairly nearby

-South Carolina to the ACC because of the natural rivalry that exists with Clemson. They're on a coastal state and they haven't been in the SEC so long that they're indispensible or anything.

-Big 12 North to Pac-10 and Big 12 South to the SEC for geographic reasons. As a side note, the new SEC would be a beyond unreal football league.

-Added in some non-Catholic schools to the equation for bball. Ten teams really isn't much for a conference like that, and who would pass on the chance to get a program like Butler who doesn't have DI football?

My twosense anyway, hope you enjoyed it and that your mind's not too, too boggled.



Granted, a lot of this conference expansion will be dictated by who makes the first move and when, but look for an entry on how all this might affect BU.