Miami is in talks to join the ACC and could be followed quickly by Boston College and Syracuse, spelling the end of the Big (l)East, at least for football. That would leave Va. Tech and Pitt in the cold, looking for a conference. Would the Big (11) Ten expand to include one or more of these schools? Is this the beginning of the four to five super-conference structure of Division I-A football? http://espn.go.com/ncf/news/2003/0504/1549269.html
you know, that would sort of make a playoff system, of sorts. Conference championships would leave 5 or 6 teams that could meet in a series of bowl games to whittle it down to two for the big one. Just a thought.
This could be the start of a big shake-up. If this happens, the Big East will be forced to add some schools from the nearest non-BCS conferences to keep from going under, and spark a chain reaction that will speed up the process of "weeding out" the weaker D1-A schools coming with the first 1-A purge in 2006. Even the SEC could get involved in the horse-trading, although that is unlikely right now. Nevertheless, it is interesting. A friend and I were talking about this not too long ago and we were just kicking around some ideas about radical conference realignment. We were in agreement that the SEC needed to change it's line-up a little bit to remain the most dominant football conference in the country. This was before the ACC/Big East thing. Now I think we need to, otherwise we risk being passed up by the ACC. They will be tough with Miami, Florida St., NC State, Maryland and Syracuse all in there. What we were thinking is first, trade with the ACC; we get old SEC member Georgia Tech, they get South Carolina back. Then, we do whatever it takes to get Florida State and Miami to join and go to 14 teams, two seven team divisions. Here's how it would look. SEC East: Miami, Florida, Florida St., Georgia, Georgia Tech, Tennessee, Vanderbilt. SEC West: Kentucky, Arkansas, Auburn, Alabama, Miss. State, Ole Miss, LSU. Now THAT would be a Superconference. (Disclaimer: If any of you "purists" out there think this is a horrible idea, don't pillory me to death and call me stupid. This was nothing more than random brainstorming at 2AM in the morning with a few friends who love football. Nothing more)
I think that would be a Super Conference if you replace Vandy with someone else. Why should the east get an easy win??? Vandy shouldn't be in the SEC
Those alignments are not fair at all...Tennessee, Georgia, Florida, FSU, and Miami all in the same division???
I dunno...it ain't that unfair to have Vandy in the East After all, the West has the Rainbow Rebs and Jackie the Clown!! To make the conference tougher, I'd kick out Ole Priss & Moo U and replace them with Tulane & Southern Miss! )
I think the conventional thinking is that the conferences will look like the following, give or take, in a few years, from West to East: Pac-12 North: Washington Washington State Oregon Oregon State Utah BYU Pac-12 South: Cal Stanford USC UCLA Arizona Arizona St. Big 12 -- as is Big "10" -- add Notre Dame (and please, change the name). This gets interesting as far as splitting the conference equitably. A West-East split would leave Michigan, Ohio St. and Penn St. on one side. Here's my solution: Big "10" North: Minnesota Northwestern Notre Dame Michigan Michigan St. Wisconsin Big "10" South: Iowa Indiana Purdue Ohio St. Penn St. Illinois SEC -- as is ACC -- as proposed That leaves very few "powers" in the cold. Va. Tech, Air Force, West Virginia, are few of the top 25 teams of the past few years that would be excluded under this system. This leaves five conferences each with 12 teams. Should make for some interesting discussion regarding a playoff system.
Splitting the ACC is a much tougher task, since the football, basketball and geographic considerations seem to diverge. Here's my best solution, given these interests: South -- Miami, FSU, Ga. Tech, Clemson, Wake, Duke North -- BC, Syracuse, Maryland, Virginia, UNC, NC St. I think this first balances geography pretty well. In football, obviously the two powerhouses are in the same division, but they are balanced out by Wake and Duke, whereas the North is a much tougher division top to bottom. In hoops, we've split Duke from UNC, but the balance seems to work better here, too. The split matters a little less in hoops than in football, since basketball uses a tourney, not a one-game championship. I don't think this would be a very easy sell, though, given the howling that will come from both Miami and FSU. It would be interesting, though.
There is alot of talk in the Pittsburgh media about what is going to happen if Miami joins the ACC. Will Pitt be left out in the cold with W. Virginia, Va Tech, and Temple? The Big East may try to put pressure on Notre Dame to join in football since they are a basketball member, however, the ONLY team the Big Ten really wants is Notre Dame. One other conference that no one has mentioned is Conference USA. If Miami moves to the ACC it is possible that USA will be changed dramatically via a domino effect.
