Back in the 1980s and early 1990s, college football and basketball seen conferences of 8-10 teams each where most conferences played round robin in football and double round robin in basketball. Conference championships were won on the field or on the court during the regular season. Then starting in the mid-1990s, the major conferences and mid-majors started expanding to 10-12 teams and some added a conference championship game in football while conferences already had or added conference tournaments in basketball by the mid-1990s. During that time (pre-Playoff), a conference championship game with 12 teams, conference championship games added a unique element to the postseason of college football in addition to the bowl games. Even though in football, you didn’t get to play everyone, you still had regional rivalries with divisions while you could still play opponents from the other division generally every other year, and conference play was balanced most years in football. In basketball, you wouldn’t be able to play all opponents twice with 11-12 teams in a conference, but you were able to play most of them and have a good idea of who’s better and who’s weaker, plus the conference tournaments in basketball I believe improved as the top teams earned a bye and were rewarded without the tournament being too big.
Of course 5 years ago, we seen the ACC (plus ND), Big Ten, and SEC expand to 14 teams. Although we’d seen the WAC and Big East expand to 16 teams prior, the WAC was spread from Texas to Hawaii to Idaho and were smaller schools, and the Big East became Basketball vs. Football. The Power 5 + AAC and Big East schools have the money to travel long distances unlike the other D1 schools, but from those conferences expanding and adding teams from other power conferences or regions in the country, that's impacted traditional rivalries and with larger divisions, teams aren’t able to play each other as much in football. Divisions have also became imbalanced, which have hurt conferences in football come postseason time as most championship games are meaningless for playoff spots outside of the Big Ten and SEC. Even then, we’ve seen twice that a team that didn’t win their division (OSU and Bama) made the playoffs. In basketball, it’s tougher to get a balanced schedule as teams have had to expand their conference schedule to 20 games to try to play half their conference twice minus rivals. That makes it tougher to gauge teams on truly how well they are in their conferences and nationally.
With the future right now looking towards the Power 5 conferences picking apart the Big 12 potentially in 5 years or so creating the Power 4, I feel like it would hurt college sports more as more traditional rivalries will be removed and conference teams play each other less in football and basketball, but I think it is my hope that in order to improve college sports and bring back tradition lost from realignment, the Power conferences will expand to as many as 18 or 20 teams (possibly 5 conferences of 16 if the Big 12 survives or 4 conferences of 22 with 7 divisions of 11 teams + an 11 Team Big East Division), but reorganized to where divisions can act as separate geographical conferences just like the 1980s and early 1990s while the larger conferences could still dominate the money battle. With divisions of 8-10 teams, football would see 7-9 division games in a round robin format and with so many teams in a conference in football, I feel it’d be better to not do crossover games unless teams want to schedule each other, but division games would only matter; even in 8 team divisions. Then there’s more emphasis on winning your division as it’s just the teams in your division and crossover games couldn’t impact the division championship race. As for 11 team divisions or conferences, it’s possibly to do round robin, but 9 conference games would probably be better (similar to the Big Ten from 1993-2010 along with ACC in 2004 and the AAC in 2014) since there’s only 12 games in a regular season with 2-4 protected rivalry games, and 9 games, ties are less likely to happen where the previous examples did 8 games and had ties with 2-3 teams at times and a 9th game would make ties less likely. 11 teams also appears to be the best format to unite
https://www.seccountry.com/sec/we-creat ... -beautiful
Side Note: My idea for 5 16-Team Conferences
1. Put in San Diego St. instead of Rice, and switch San Diego St. and Texas Tech
1.5. Realign the PAC-16 to East and West Divisions with the original PAC-8 in the West (North and South Divisions could remain)
2. Put in Tulsa instead of Tulane, and switch Tulsa and SMU (Tulsa is better in basketball than Tulane while football is slightly better, also better for Big 12 when making divisions geographically)
2.5. Consider switching Memphis and LSU in conferences, and then swap Arkansas and Memphis in divisions
3. Put in Temple instead of Army (Temple has a better market, better teams)
4. Switch Penn State and Pittsburgh (keeps ties to their original conferences and tradition)
4.5. Maybe switch Notre Dame and Indiana in divisions
5. Keep the remaining 50 FBS teams and place them 5 geographical conferences of 10 teams (3 conferences of 16 made travel tough for most conferences, plus 1990s WAC)
MWC is the remaining 9 teams plus New Mexico State or UTEP
MAC is the same minus either Northern Illinois and Buffalo or Miami (OH) and Ohio
Remaining 3 Conferences realigned based on geography
Although a conference championship game could still be possible, since the Power conferences would be 2 divisions of 8-10 teams (possibly 11), I’d expand the playoff to 8 teams and eliminate conference championship games with an emphasis on winning your division to get into the playoff, but not make it automatic like in the BCS; much like how the committee does with conference championships, but for the top 8 teams. The quarterfinals (hosted by the top 4 teams) could be held the weekend the Army-Navy game currently is and move Army-Navy to the weekend before when conference championship games are currently played. Finals weeks for students could be an issue from some universities though, but I feel giving teams a week to prepare for a quarterfinal wouldn’t be fair either. The only other option would be the following week, but students would still have to mix practicing and finals the week before, so I think 2 weeks after would be best. An idea I found online that I like, which wouldn’t dilute the bowl season is have the losers of the quarterfinals go to a New Years 6 bowl game to play the first 4 teams out. That way, the bowl season wouldn’t be effected from playoff expansion, and the rotation of the 6 New Years Bowl games hosting the semis can continue. I feel we can all agree there are too many bowl games though, so I’d make it 7 wins to become bowl eligible so there aren’t as many bowl games, but still plenty to watch (using last season as an example with the expanded playoff, there would be 35 games, 11 being playoffs/New Years Bowls, where there’s currently 40 games with 7 being playoffs/New Years Bowls).
https://www.forbes.com/sites/briangoff/ ... d30cec61ae
http://www.sportsonearth.com/article/20 ... ight-teams
Whether all of the above happens or not is unknown, but I feel like it would be a great idea for the future. In the meantime (before expansion returns), one other idea (based on the SEC basketball conference scheduling I believe) I think can bring the ACC, Big Ten, and SEC should consider (and even the PAC-12) is removing divisions and add 3 protected rivals to play annually, and then play non-rivals. The way it works for the SEC is you’d play your 3 rivals and then 5 of the 10 non-rivals resulting in playing teams twice every 4 years (currently: SEC teams play non-division opponents twice every 12 years). For the ACC and Big Ten, you’d play your 3 rivals and then 6 non-rivals of the 10 resulting in playing non-rivals 3 times every 5 years. The Big Ten sees non-division opponents 6 times every 14 years (Indiana and Purdue twice every 12 years), and the ACC sees non-division opponents twice every 12 years. There’s even a proposal including ND for their 4 games in the ACC that involves all 15 teams getting 4 protected rivals and then 14 conference teams would play non-rivals 5 times every 9 years (6 times every 12 years if ND joins in football). It’s also been shown that with the right protected rivalries (from a link I found the idea from), the schedules balance out more for most teams in these conferences when done right based off rankings from the last 10 years so that it would be slighter easier for SEC West, Big Ten East, and ACC Coastal teams who have multiple teams that could be in the conference championship from the same division most years, especially the last 2-3 years. Come time for conference championship game, the top 2 teams overall would make the conference championship game. If there’s a tie, head-to-head would be the tiebreaker, but if it’s 3 teams or more, then you can pick the top 2 teams based off the playoff rankings.
https://www.sbnation.com/college-footba ... scheduling
In college basketball, it could be a little more trickier with conference scheduling, but I feel continuing with not requiring crossover games would be best with divisions playing double round robin and then teams can schedule crossover games as they wish as if they’re non-conference games. As for the conference tournament, I feel like conferences of 18-20 teams (maybe 22) ought to have 2 separate tournaments awarding 2 champions qualifying for the NCAA Tournament. Most non-major conferences have 8-11 teams in their conference so why award 1 team in a 18-22 team conference tournament? Round robin scheduling could be an option plus an additional rivalry game for an 18-20 game conference schedule, but the conference would be spread out far causing travel concerns in non-football sports so I feel playing double round robin in geographical divisions would be a better option in terms of tradition and travel. 16 team conferences are tough scheduling-wise as you could play double round robin, but that’s only 14 division games in a 30 game regular season (I would drop the 31st regular season game for a reason in the next paragraph) so you could play cross division teams once to make 22 conference games, but I feel that’s too many games. An alternative could be determining every team’s 3 protected rivalry games in a 16 team conference where you play 3 teams twice and the other 12 teams once resulting in 18 conference games. Then have a Big East or ACC style conference tournament (9-16 play first, the winners play 5-8, then those winner play 1-4, semis, championship game).
I’d also like to present an idea on the issue of Regular Season Champs vs. Conference Tournament Champs in College Basketball. I know there’s been debate on which is more important so why not settle the debate on the court. For a team to receive an automatic bid, you have to win 2 out of 3. What’s the 3rd? If the regular season champ and conference tournament champ are different teams, let them play each other on the court (at the site of the conference tournament) for the automatic bid (possibly on selection Sunday), and have conference tournament championship games be either played on the Saturday before Selection Sunday or the week before. That way, if a regular season champ stumbles in the conference tournament (especially for one-bid leagues), they still have an opportunity to gain the automatic bid to the NCAA Tournament, and they’re rewarded for their success during the regular season making the regular season matter more while it still presents a potential Cinderella story for the conference tournament champ or one last clash between the top teams in a league, and thus, not causing the conference tournaments to matter less. It would also be a replacement to the 31st regular season game. The loser of the best of 3 would go to the NIT, if not an at-large team. Obviously winning the regular season and conference tournament gets your team the automatic bid, and the runners-up could play for an NIT if different teams not receiving an at-large. The only problem I could see is if there’s a tie for 1st during the regular season, in which case, I’d say let the conference tournament champ receive the automatic bid or the conference tournament champ play the farthest advancing co-champ from the regular season for the bid, and then if the regular season co-champ wins the conference tournament, they receive the automatic bid. It’s not the best solution, and it probably wouldn’t be too popular in power conferences and would be unlikely needed for them, but it’s an idea that could be interesting and fun for one-bid leagues. I’d love to hear your opinions on this idea because the only other option I could think of besides letting the selection committee debate which team gets the automatic bid.
http://www.sportingnews.com/us/ncaa-bas ... lqzc4be54x
As for the NCAA Tournament, if the power conferences are 18-20 teams each, I’d say it’d result in 34-35 automatic qualifiers, but 32 conferences could remain an option if there’s 5 16-Team power conferences for 32 automatic qualifiers or if there’s 32 conferences of 11 teams each. I can also see the 16 team power conferences if they play division games double round robin resulting in 2 separate conference tournaments for 2 champions qualifying in 36 automatic qualifiers. Based on these assumptions, I feel the NCAA tournament should have around double the number of automatic qualifiers for total number of teams competing, and therefore, either 64, 68, or 72 teams. I personally feel it should be 64 teams, but I doubt we see a decrease in teams. As for 68 or 72 teams? I’d actually go with 72 teams as there would be more balance in each of the regions as there’d likely be play-in games for the lowest 8 conference champions being 16th seeds and the last 8 at-large teams being 11th seeds. Although it does screw over some smaller conferences as there would be more Power Conference teams (majority being Teams 69-72 most years), it does present the opportunity for more chaos the 12-15 seed teams could be slightly better as some better conference champs would move down a seed resulting from the lesser champions playing each other to earn the 16th seeds.
https://www.bloggingthebracket.com/2018 ... ss-propose
SparkNotes Version:
- First had Conferences of 8-10 Teams when times were simple, and schedules mostly round robin and double round robin. Then came 10-12 where 12 teams added a unique twist with conference championship games add, and teams still play each other frequently in football and twice in basketball often. Today, most are 14-15 Teams (too large) where you hardly play teams from your opposite division in football or twice in basketball without playing 20 conference games.
- Because I doubt conferences will reduce the number of their teams, why not expand the conferences to 16-22 teams and reorganize them into separate geographical divisions reflecting conferences prior to 2011. Then divisions would be 8-11 teams functioning as 2 separate conferences under the name of 1 conference.
- In this format, Football is round robin (9 games in 11 team divisions), basketball is double round robin, division games are the only thing that matters determining a champion, and cross-division games are optional; scheduled by the 2 Schools (as if they’re non-conference games today). 8 team divisions could play a cross-division game or two as if non-conference.
- Conference championship games could still happen, but I’d remove them to make way for an 8 team playoff. Quarterfinal losers could play the first four out in 4 of the New Years Six bowl games while the remaining 2 games would be the semifinals. Also, 7 wins needed to become bowl eligible to cut somewhat cut down on bowl games, but still leave plenty bowl games for teams to compete in.
- In the meantime, football should go division-less as it allows teams in the larger conferences (14 teams, even 12) to play teams outside their division more, and you could still play 3 rivals annually. In addition, with scheduling done right, it would balance the schedule more for most teams, and allows for the top 2 teams in a conference to advance to the conference championship game.
- Conference tournaments for 18-22 team conferences (maybe 16) would be 2 separate division tournaments with the 2 winners receiving the bid for the NCAA Tournament as opposed to 1 bid as conferences of 8-11 receive. The 2 winners could also play each other for the conference championship, but I think it would be unnecessary (maybe it happens adjacent to the idea below, if it does happen).
- For automatic bids (more for one bid leagues) to the NCAA Tournament, make it best 2 out of 3. Win the regular season and conference tournament, and if there’s 2 separate winners, have them play each other for the automatic bid. In the event of a tie in the regular season, if a regular season co-champ wins the conference tourney, they’d automatically qualify, but if a co-champ doesn’t win it, the farthest advancing co-champ (that tiebreaker is highest seed if 2 would lose in semis) would play the conference tournament winner (possibly a rematch of championship game). Loser of the Best of 3 guaranteed a spot in the NIT, if not an at-large team in the NCAA Tournament.
- The NCAA Tournament would either go back to 64 teams, stay at 68, or go up to 72 teams (half of the automatic qualifiers. I prefer going back to 64, but that probably won’t happen. In the event of an expansion 72 teams, the lowest 8 one-bid champs would be 16 seeds while the lowest 8 at-large teams would be 11th seeds. As the better one-bid league champs would likely slide down a seed, it presents a better opportunity for more upset chaos for the 2-5 seeds.