Instead of the Big Ten raiding the Pac-12. Merge the conferences. Pac-12 adds 4 teams or Pac-12 adds 2 and Big Ten drops 2 (and there are a couple weak teams that could go from the Big Ten). Pac-12 has the 2 western divisions. Big Ten has the 2 eastern divisions. Maybe play 11 game season with east and west championship games in week 12 (along with consolation games for other members) followed by the overall conference championship in week 13 between the champion of the old Pac-12 teams from the west and the champion of the old Big 10 teams from the east. So two championship weekends. There'd be very little long-distance travel as the east and west teams would be playing each other with little to no crossover games.
A 32 team super conference on both coasts. Make the SEC's 16 team conference look small. Have the media markets on the east and west coasts and have a single TV network to cover all of it. Payouts would be massive.
How else to compete? You can't try to keep up because you never will. You have to try to completely outflank them or do something out of the box that one-ups them. That's my idea. Wouldn't have to be the Big Ten either, could be the ACC that merges with the Pac-12.
It could be 16 teams with four divisions. You play each team in your division plus 2 from each of the other divisions. That's 9 games allowing for 3 OOC games every year.
Northern Division:
Notre Dame
Michigan
Ohio State
Penn State
Southern Division:
Clemson
Georgia Tech
Miami
Florida State
Central Division:
Texas
Oklahoma
Nebraska
Wisconsin
Western Division:
USC
Stanford
Washington
Colorado
Maybe too late to grab Texas and Oklahoma but, you could substitute A&M and Oklahoma State. With this alignment you could keep the travel reasonable. You would only have to travel to 3 games "out of your region". The conference would blanket the country and have a heavy presence in all of the recruiting hotbeds. Hell, why not steal LSU from the SEC to replace Oklahoma State?
The Big10, Big12, ACC and PAC12 could remain in place for all other sports. Basketball and March Madness is another consideration and big money maker for a lot of these schools and conferences.
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No thank you.
But, feel free to tweak the alignment. The list of teams is intriguing to me though. Also, splitting up by region seems very attractive. Cover Texas, Georgia, Ohio, Pennsylvania, California and Florida. You would get all the major TV markets and reach into all of the recruiting hotbeds. What's not to like?
education benefits.
Anticompetitive behavior by conferences like you propose would be ripe for challenge also.
Perhaps mergers of conferences should be reviewed and approved by the FTC like other industries?
This league could have student athletes in some sense like it always has been, but with NIL. 85 scholarship limit, academic expectations. A separate National Championship game from the mini NFL SEC which is only apporiate since they are completely different animals.
Perhaps OSU and Clemson jump ship. The revenue will stil be there. The quality players will still come, and they will still get their shot at the NFL after college.
ADs have one job… make money. Of course this can backfire if they kill the goose that lays the golden eggs. I mean… how profitable is minor league baseball? College football may make itself irrelevant
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