It seems like the Oklahoma Sooners and Texas Longhorns are heading to the SEC. I think we can all agree that this is a death knell for the Big XII. I suppose they could try to bring in schools from the smaller conferences, but it just would not be enough to make up for Oklahoma and Texas. This means there will be plenty of realignment. Here is how I think things should go…
The SEC adds two schools and they will need to change up their divisions. It makes zero sense to just split them up and add them to each division. Here is my proposal:
EAST
Georgia
Florida
South Carolina
Tennessee
Kentucky
Vanderbilt
Missouri
Alabama
WEST
Auburn
LSU
Texas A&M
Mississippi State
Ole Miss
Arkansas
Texas
Oklahoma
This may seem a little crazy, but I think they should move Alabama to the East. That way the divisions are more balanced. The East will have Georgia, Florida, and Alabama who are always top tier, while the West will have Oklahoma, LSU, Texas, and Auburn. Initially I had Auburn moving to the East since they are closer geographically, but I think Alabama moving over just brings more balance.
The ACC would be silly to not add WVU to their conference. Unfortunately that is the only school in the Big XII that makes any sense for the ACC. In order to pump that number to 16, they should try to bring UCF over from the AAC. Unless they could finally convince Notre Dame to join the conference. If that were to happen, I would say maybe add South Florida (or maybe James Madison if they make the jump to FBS).
ATLANTIC DIVISION
Clemson
Boston College
Florida State
Louisville
NC State
Syracuse
Wake Forest
UCF
South Florida
COASTAL DIVISION
Virginia Tech
Georgia Tech
Pitt
Miami
Virginia
UNC
Duke
WVU
Notre Dame
I did not move these divisions around at all. You have to put Pitt and WVU together, and I figured you should probably split Clemson and Notre Dame. I imagine the Irish would only agree to coming to the conference if they could dominate a division.
The Big Ten needs to be aggressive with poaching away some of the Big XII schools. Most people talking about this right now are saying they should add two. If we are going to move to Super Conferences, the Big Ten should lead the way. Now, if they decide to just add two then it should be Oklahoma State and Iowa State. But personally, they should add six schools and become the Big Twenty…two divisions of ten, 2BigTen (or something equally as silly). If we only added the two, I would put them both in the West and move Purdue over to the East. Here are my divisions if they would get crazy and go with six new teams.
EAST
Ohio State
Michigan
Penn State
Michigan State
Indiana
Maryland
Rutgers
Purdue
Illinois
Northwestern
WEST
Minnesota
Nebraska
Wisconsin
Iowa
Oklahoma State
Iowa State
Kansas
Kansas State
Baylor
Texas Tech
Now obviously I did not take into consideration if those schools would be a good fit for the Big Ten (academically and all that stuff). I am just considering this from a football POV. A conference of this size would mean no more non-conference games. Hell, you would probably only have one non-division game. Also, I would probably hate a massive conference like this. So yeah, maybe they should just bump to sixteen teams.
And now we come to the Pac-12. It is so hard for them to add teams. They would need to add four teams to get to sixteen, which is where the other conferences will be if things shake out this way. They could try to add Baylor and Texas Tech, giving them a little bit of reach into the Lone Star State. That would probably be their best bet (and it would block the Big Ten from creating the first ridiculous conference). I guess if they added those two and then Boise State and maybe Utah State.
NORTH
Washington
Washington State
California
Oregon
Oregon State
Stanford
Colorado
Boise State
SOUTH
USC
Arizona
Arizona State
UCLA
Utah
Utah State
Baylor
Texas Tech
I wish these expansions had nothing to do with money, but that is what this is all about. It is fun to speculate, but at the end of the day, the money is all that matters.
