Amid the shocking news that blue bloods Texas and Oklahoma will depart the long-beleaguered Big 12 for the SEC, college football appears to be on the precipice of a seismic shift that will define the next couple decades of the sport.
As all of the stakeholders — from the conferences to the schools to the bowl games to the TV networks — start to plot their next move, pundits are asking which schools the Big Ten should consider adding as a counter to the SEC’s sudden expansion.
How about Kansas and the Jayhawks’ prestigious hoops program? What about Iowa State and the Cyclones’ surging football program led by Matt Campbell? Or perhaps even Oklahoma State and the Cowboys’ nationally respected football and hoops programs, the latter of which just produced Cade Cunningham, the No. 1 pick in the NBA draft?
In the last round of major conference expansion and realignment, the Big Ten fell on its face, adding Maryland and Rutgers under the guise of expanding the Big Ten Network into millions of East Coast homes.
The only problem is that neither school fit from a geographic or cultural perspective, and nothing the two brought to the table from an athletics perspective was enough to overcome the inability to check the first two boxes. (On top of that, the slow death of tiered cable meant the original motivations behind the pact were suddenly a lot flimsier anyway.)
Under the present 14-team arrangement, Big Ten schools can go years without seeing each other on the football field, which is a departure from the annual meetings of yesteryear. Expanding the league beyond 14 just means further dilution of the brand and even longer gaps between meetings for old rivals.
So forgive us if we’re skeptical that the Big Ten can accomplish anything meaningful by simply adding a couple schools.
But if the Big Ten truly wants to counter SEC aggression once and for all, it will require serious and bold action. Rather than poaching the remnants of the Big 12 or targeting the marquee Pac-12 schools as some have suggested, the Big Ten needs to deploy a go-big-or-go-home strategy.
If well-executed, the Big Ten could lead a massive realignment that results in rekindled rivalries, a more geographically sensible grouping of members schools, a coast-to-coast footprint, even larger TV dollars, and an expanded playoffs that culminates annually in the Rose Bowl on New Year’s Day.
And not to bury the lede, but this plan calls for the proposed new super league to leave the SEC to its own devices. That 12-team playoff that would have featured 5 or 6 SEC teams? Let it feature 12 SEC teams! Meanwhile, the Big Ten, Pac-12, ACC and what’s left of the Big 12 would design their own 12-team playoff built around the aforementioned Rose Bowl, the most prestigious property in college sports.
Here is an overview of our plan:
- Five 10-team divisions.
- All 48 schools currently in a Power 5 conference (or the remnants of one) are included, along with Notre Dame and Cincinnati.
- Schools are assigned to divisions based on geographical proximity and historical rivalries.
- TV shares are unbalanced and will be set to reflect each school’s overall percentage of TV revenue earned if you took what the school earns today and divided by the sum of what all 50 schools in the proposed league earn today. For example, Penn State won’t see its share of TV money decline by moving to the new East Coast Division. (More on that below.)
- The thought with respect to TV money is that the new super league will be able to leverage its buying power to negotiate deals that meet or exceed what these schools collectively generate today, especially with potential new players in the mix such as Amazon, Peacock, Apple TV or even Facebook and Twitter, as well as complete ownership of the playoff system.
- Each school plays 12 regular season games: nine division games, two non-conference games and one crossover game based on the final standings from the previous season.
- Non-conference games can be scheduled against teams from other divisions within the league (Notre Dame-USC, for example) or outside of the league entirely (Florida-Florida State, for example).
- Results in non-conference games will not count in league standings but will factor into strength of schedule and at-large playoff berth consideration.
- All five division champions earn a berth in the 12-team playoff, with the top four securing a first-round bye; the remaining seven teams will be at-large selections from within the league.
- Playoff games in both first round (think: NFL Wild Card Weekend) and quarterfinals are played in on-campus stadiums.
- The semifinals rotate between neutral sites, which can be bid on.
- The championship takes place each year at the Rose Bowl on New Year’s Day.
- Oh, and last but not least, the Big Ten spearheads these changes, meaning Kevin Warren is the new commissioner of the conglomerate. And if the Big Ten can make it rain TV dollars on its newly acquired members, why exactly would the targeted schools resist? Out of loyalty to Bob Bowlsby or Larry Scott? Get real.
Anyway, here is our vision for five 10-team divisions in the new super league:
Atlantic
- Notre Dame
- Florida State
- Clemson
- Wake Forest
- Virginia
- North Carolina
- North Carolina State
- Georgia Tech
- Duke
- Maryland
Pros: Maryland, which never fit in the Big Ten, gets reunited with its old Tobacco Road rivals in Duke and North Carolina, restoring some sanity to the college hoops world. In fact, this division is now incredibly sexy from a college hoops perspective as a super-charged version of the original ACC. Clemson and Notre Dame anchor the league from a football standpoint, while Florida State rebuilds and tries to make it a power trio at the top.
Cons: Notre Dame is finally forced to join a conference, which the Irish may view as a negative, but if this is indeed that long-awaited moment, it seems reasonable to place the Irish with the ACC members with whom have a present scheduling relationship.
If Notre Dame resists joining the conference this time around, it risks becoming BYU, where scheduling games, especially late in the season, becomes a tall order. (If you don’t believe us, just look at BYU’s 2019 schedule, which featured a seven-game stretch against Toledo, South Florida, Boise State, Utah State, Liberty, Idaho State and UMass. Barf.)
Midwest
- Michigan
- Michigan State
- Ohio State
- Indiana
- Purdue
- Northwestern
- Illinois
- Wisconsin
- Minnesota
- Iowa
Winners: Nostalgia, for sure. The Big Ten gets restored to the way it looked prior to adding Penn State in 1990. Not that adding the Nittany Lions was bad for business — quite the opposite, actually — but the members of this division would no longer have to go years without playing each other, which was an obvious problem of the 14-team version of the league.
Losers: Nebraska and Penn State would seem to have the most to lose, but if the new super league can ensure those schools maintain their current cut of the TV revenue (or better), it could soften the blow while giving them easier paths to the playoffs.
East Coast
- Penn State
- Miami
- Virginia Tech
- West Virginia
- Louisville
- Pittsburgh
- Rutgers
- Boston College
- Syracuse
- Cincinnati
Pros: All of these schools except Penn State were members of the old Big East at one time or another, with several of them (Boston College, Syracuse and Pittsburgh) having roots that date back to the conference’s early days in the 1980s. …West Virginia and Pittsburgh get to resume the Backyard Brawl rivalry, with the potential for the division and a trip to the playoffs to be on the line.
Cons: Penn State might have the biggest issue with this arrangement as it loses marquee home dates with Ohio State and Michigan, but the trade-off would seem to be a much more reasonable path to the playoffs each year. Would that make it worth it for the Nittany Lions?
Great Plains
- Colorado
- Nebraska
- Utah
- Oklahoma State
- Texas Tech
- Baylor
- TCU
- Iowa State
- Kansas
- Kansas State
Pros: The remnants of the Big 12 live to fight another day, receiving a more permanent and stable home. Meanwhile, the addition of Colorado and Nebraska rekindles an old rivalry and gives the division a Big Eight-meets-Texas vibe.
Cons: Utah would be most likely to throw a stink in this scenario, losing its Pac-12 affiliation and getting forced East, but like Penn State, if the TV money makes sense and the path to a playoff is reasonable, can the Utes make it work? Even if Utah doesn’t care for this plan, are the Utes enough of a power broker to stop it?
Pacific
- Arizona
- Arizona State
- USC
- UCLA
- Stanford
- California
- Oregon
- Oregon State
- Washington
- Washington State
Pros: Much like the proposed Midwest Division, which restores the old Big Ten to its pre-1990 roots, the Pacific Division gets in the DeLorean and goes back to the way it looked prior to adding Colorado and Utah.
Cons: The potential downside for Utah is acknowledged above. For Colorado, the Buffs have always been kind of a tweener, whether it was as the westernmost school in the Big Eight or the easternmost in the Pac-12. At least in the new arrangement, the Buffs get the Nebraska rivalry back and keep cross-Rocky Mountain foe Utah.
If your initial reaction is that it would be weird for the Big Ten, Pac-12 and friends to not play the SEC for national titles, let us remind you that, for many decades, this is how it was anyway.
The Big Ten champ and Pac-12 champ played each other in Pasadena on New Year’s Day, usually while two teams from either the SEC, ACC or then-Big Eight (or Notre Dame) played each other in the Orange Bowl later that night. At times in both the BCS and College Football Playoff eras, the Rose Bowl has been slightly devalued. But that won’t be the case any longer.
As far as the divisions go, if you want to shuffle a few schools around, or perhaps add a BYU and Boise State to replace Cincinnati and one of the Texas schools, we won’t quibble with it.
But it’s clear that the non-SEC stakeholders in college football need to take swift and immediate actions to secure their futures. In other words, if you’re not hunter, you’re the prey.
And the Big Ten — with its own functioning TV network (sorry, Pac-12), massive alumni base and long-standing relationship with the Rose Bowl — is poised to spearhead the overhaul. And it better move soon.
