Long time reader. First post. I've had this 4/8 team playoff in my head for along time. This thread is a good place for me to document my thoughts. Obviously a lot of ways the teams can be broken out but the following is just my opinion. Nothing more
There are 64 P5 schools counting Rutgers (if ND wants in they can buyout Rutgers). Move to 4 super conferences. Eight 8 team divisions. 4 conf. champs move to the playoff. 12 regular season games. 11 conference games. 7 against your division. And 4 cross over games swapped every year so a team plays everyone in their conf. at least every other year. By having 11 conf. games every game still matters. Every loss in conf. hurts your chance of playing in the conf. championship (the only way into the playoff). The remaining 12th game is reserved for non-conf. traditional rivalry ie. FSU/FL, OK/TX, GA/GaT, Clemson/SC etc. This is still a very meaningful game to everyone involved.
A lot of traditional SWAC & Big8 rivalries are no longer played: NE vs. OK, TX vs. TA&M etc. The SWAC & Big8 (essentially) are long gone and today's Big12 with 10 teams. Move 2 to ACC, 2 to SEC, 2 to B10, 4 to Pac12.
4 Texas teams to Pac12
KS KSU to Big10
OK OSU to SEC
WV & ISU to ACC
Trade ISU and MD
4 way trade TA&M joins the other 4 TX teams in PAC12, CO to Big10, PSU to ACC, Louisville to SEC.
Geographically the Conf/div. should look like:
Pac12 Pacific
- WA
- WSU
- OR
- OSU
- Cal
- Stan.
- UCLA
- USC
Pac12 South
- AZ
- ASU
- TX
- TA&M
- TT
- TCU
- Baylor
- UT
Big10 West
- WI
- MN
- NE
- IA
- ISU
- KS/OK
- KSU/OSU
- CO
Big10 East
- MI
- MSU
- IL
- IN
- Pur
- NW
- unnamed
- Rutgers/ND/PSU
SEC East
- GA
- FL
- SC
- TN
- Vandy
- MO
- KY
- Louisville
SEC West
- AL
- AU
- AR
- LSU
- MS
- MSU
- OK/KS
- OSU/KSU
ACC Atlantic
- PSU/ND/Rutgers
- WV
- Pitt
- MD
- BC
- Syr.
- VaT
- VA
ACC Costal
- NC
- NCSU
- WF
- Duke
- GaT
- Clemson
- FSU
- Miami
Super weak Big10 West & super strong SEC East. To make divisions historically more fair and still have some resemblance of geographic rivalries we could swap KSU &KS for OK & OSU.
It is also super bad for Miami. We can make a case to bring back the Big Least and those rivalries.
ACC Atlantic
- Miami
- BC
- Sry.
- Pitt
- WV
- PSU/ND/Rutgers
- VaT
- VA