This website is dedicated to busting up the conferences, and the SEC is the most glaring example of a billion-dollar business conglomerate masquerading as a collegiate athletic conference, but it is amazing to note that eight of the 16 teams projected in a hypothetical playoff after Week 3 are currently in the SEC. You can't front on that, Stoops.
Teams in red have qualified for the 16-team postseason playoff seeded below the standings. Teams in blue
have qualified as the worst two teams in Division 1 and must play to
see who is sent down to Division 2 for the following season. Teams are
ranked in each division using the brilliant Massey comparison rankings.
Southeast
2-0 Florida State
2-0 Auburn
1-1 Georgia
1-1 Clemson
2-0 Florida
3-0 Georgia Tech
2-1 Miami
0-2 Central Florida
1-2 South Florida
Southwest
3-0 Oklahoma
3-0 Texas A&M
3-0 Baylor
2-1 Oklahoma State
2-0 TCU
1-2 Texas
1-2 Texas-San Antonio
2-1 Texas Tech
2-1 UTEP
Mid-South
3-0 Alabama
3-0 LSU
3-0 Ole Miss
3-0 Mississippi State
2-1 Louisville
2-1 Tennessee
2-1 Kentucky
1-1 Memphis
1-2 Vanderbilt
West
3-0 UCLA
2-1 Stanford
2-1 USC
3-0 Arizona State
3-0 Arizona
1-1 San Diego State
2-0 California
0-3 Fresno State
1-2 Hawaii
Northwest
3-0 Oregon
3-0 BYU
3-0 Washington
2-0 Utah
2-0 Oregon State
2-1 Boise State
1-2 Washington State
1-2 Colorado
2-1 Air Force
Great Lakes
3-0 Notre Dame
1-1 Michigan State
2-1 Ohio State
1-0 Cincinnati
2-1 Michigan
1-1 Indiana
2-1 Illinois
0-2 Northwestern
1-2 Purdue
Midwest
3-0 Missouri
3-0 Nebraska
2-0 Kansas State
1-1 Wisconsin
2-1 Arkansas
2-1 Iowa
2-1 Minnesota
1-2 Iowa State
1-1 Kansas
Atlantic
2-1 South Carolina
3-0 Duke
2-1 Virginia Tech
2-0 North Carolina
2-1 East Carolina
2-1 Maryland
2-1 Virginia
3-0 North Carolina State
1-2 Wake Forest
Northeast
3-0 Pittsburgh
3-0 Penn State
2-0 Syracuse
2-1 West Virginia
2-1 Navy
2-1 Boston College
2-1 Rutgers
1-2 Connecticut
1-1 Army
College football playoff projections...
1 Oklahoma vs. 16 Pittsburgh
2 Florida State vs. 15 Stanford
3 Oregon vs. 14 Georgia
4 Auburn vs. 13 South Carolina
5 Alabama vs. 12 UCLA
6 Texas A&M vs. 11 Notre Dame
7 LSU vs. 10 Ole Miss
8 Missouri vs. 9 Baylor
Relegation playoff to be sent down to Division 2
South Florida vs. Purdue
I generally love this idea, but I have a few questions about the execution.
ReplyDeleteFirst of all, is there a rhyme or reason behind the cutoff being 81 teams? I mean, I get it, nine divisions of nine teams, but why only nine divisions? Why not 10-team divisions? Why is 81 better than 72, or 90, or 100?
Secondly, I understand that you're basing this on attendance, but I don't see a link to or descriptions of the source for those figures, nor do I see an explanation of exactly what type of attendance you're talking about (game attendance? student body size?), or, importantly, why attendance is the governing criterion. Why is attendance so important? Why not just use Massey again to select the 81 best teams?
I've found some rather interesting exclusions. For example:
• Arkansas State is, in recent history, a much better football team than Memphis, yet the latter is included and the former excluded.
• Northern Illinois has a pretty long history of being quite competitive, including notching its share of upsets nearly every year. Fellow MAC school Central Michigan is also a fairly consistent throne in the side of
• The state of Nevada completely lacks representation, as do the states of New Mexico (unless you count UTEP, which perhaps we should) and Wyoming, despite having, in some cases, multiple FBS-playing members.
• The city of Houston, despite being in football-mad Texas and having not one but two FBS schools that both were once part of the Southwest Conference, is left out of the fun, as is fellow SWC alum SMU (which, OK, the Mustangs are god-awful this year).
These are, of course, only a few of the schools not included. Several others have recent histories of pulling off big upsets, and even consistently being teams that big schools generally avoid scheduling (Troy immediately comes to mind). Several others are easy to understand why they were excluded; schools like Eastern Michigan, New Mexico State and UAB are perennially among the worst teams in college football (consistently worse than about the top half of FCS).
Personally, I'd make it 10 leagues of 10 teams, or 100 total teams. This would allow inclusion of more of the odd exclusions, while still keeping out most really bad schools. I'd mostly add one team to existing divisions, except for stealing a few teams (and replacing them) from the Southwest and Northwest divisions, to create a nice Mountain West division to pick up some unrepresented states. It's not perfect, but here's an example of how my alteration might look:
Temple (Northeast)
Central Michigan (Great Lakes)
Northern Illinois (Midwest)
San Jose State (West)
Appalachian State (Atlantic)
Arkansas State (Mid-South)
Troy (Southeast)
New Mountain West division:
Colorado (moves from Northwest)
Air Force (moves from Northwest)
UTEP (moves from Southwest)
Texas Tech (moves from Southwest)
UTSA (moves from Southwest)
Texas State
Wyoming
New Mexico
New Mexico State
Colorado State
Nevada (Northwest)
UNLV (Northwest)
Utah State (Northwest)
SMU (Southwest)
Houston (Southwest)
Rice (Southwest)
Tulsa (Southwest)
I could defend some of the odder choices, but this is just an example. I guess I just really like 10-team conferences now that I've had a taste of 9-game conference seasons.
One other question I had: Why put only one team up for relegation? It seems to me that one team in each division would be better.
ReplyDelete