Somewhat delayed reaction to this, because I don’t obsessively listen to Pate. I think he says a lot to say a little, but that’s podcasts for you. I do at the very least appreciate his traditionalist approach to the sport. And this is one of those instances where I really do agree with what he’s saying.
tl;dr 7 conferences (plus indies) of no more than 10 teams
- SEC
- Big 10
- Big East
- SWC
- Big 8
- Pac 10
- ACC
SEC:
- alabama
- Auburn
- florida
- Georgia
- kentucky
- LSU
- Mississippi State
- Ole Miss
- South Carolina
- Tennessee
Big 10:
- Illinois
- Indiana
- Iowa
- Michigan
- Michigan State
- Minnesota
- Ohio State
- Penn State
- Purdue
- Wisconsin
Big East:
- Boston College
- Cincinnati
- Louisville
- Maryland
- Pittsburgh
- Rutgers
- Syracuse
- UCF
- USF
- West Virginia
SWC:
- Arkansas
- Baylor
- Houston
- Oklahoma
- Rice
- SMU
- Texas
- Texas A&M
- Texas Tech
- TCU
Big 8:
- Colorado
- Iowa State
- Kansas
- Kansas State
- Missouri
- Nebraska
- Oklahoma State
- Utah
Pac 10:
- Arizona
- Arizona State
- California
- Oregon
- Oregon State
- Stanford
- UCLA
- USC
- Washington
- Washington State
ACC:
- Clemson
- Duke
- Florida State
- Georgia Tech
- Miami
- NC State
- UNC
- Virginia
- Virginia Tech
- Wake Forest
Independent:
- BYU
- Northwestern
- Notre Dame
- UConn
- vanderbilt
Like I said I honestly like this. I would maybe keep vandy in the SEC as they were a founding member and push SCar to ACC or something. And if we’re changing some names then I refuse to allow the big 10 and 8 to exist. Somebody has to change that name. But like Josh says, with this system I would almost be okay with an 8-12 team playoff. Thoughts?
This is close, but OU not in the Big 8 is completely wrong, though I know it was to preserve the RRS and because the old SWC only had 9 teams at its height. OU played UT non-con then, and they’d do it again. Then, whatever you do with the name, no reason for the Great Plains conference not to have ten teams too. Also don’t like Northwestern and Vandy getting bumped for johnny-come-latelys like SCar and Penn St, meanwhile other “academic” schools get retained or even re-promoted. There’s also dead weight in the Big East, and no need for any independents on the list other than ND, because even when we are dreaming big dreams, ND is still too stuck up to join a conference, lol. Maybe send Miami back to their outlaw barnstorming days I guess. Really, I think 12 teams conferences that are a little less fixated on the past are the way to do this, but if I were to make a final pass on Pate’s alignment:
- SEC: Boot SCar, add Vandy. I think being in Nashville, he’s just salty than Vandy isn’t better.
- B10: Boot PSU, add Northwestern. Penn State still doesn’t feel quite right as a B10 school, especially if you’re going back in time before the conference brought in their natural potential conference-mates to make them feel more at home and get sweet sweet mandatory carriage money from legacy cable TV companies.
- BE: Boot USF (into the sun… they don’t care anymore, and FAU is already a better place to watch football), add Penn State. Rutgers could go too, but I guess since they invented the sport, they can stay. They can’t hide behind B10 money and pretend to give a shit, though. Also looking at you, BC. If you lose one of them, Miami can come back.
- SWC: Boot OU, add… somebody… Miami if they’re unclaimed and you don’t want more indies, otherwise UTSA, Tulane, Tulsa, UNM, AFA? I dunno. Not USF though. SWC was always an odd duck.
- B8: Add BYU and OU.
- P10: This is fine.
- ACC: Boot Miami, add SCar.
- Independents: Consider ND and Miami, ignore the rest.
On the traditionalist side: vandy was a founding member, plus I’m sure they bring up the average gpa of sec football at least a little. If we keep them in then that means we automatically play them every year.
On the modernist side: vandy isn’t competitive and isn’t really close to being competitive in the foreseeable future. We could easily have them as a protected ooc matchup to appease anyone who wants that.
The OU thing I honestly don’t have too strong of a feeling for. If we have a sooner lurker I’d love to hear from them. Josh’s reasoning was that adding OU kept it from being a Texas conference. Which, you already have Arky. But if that’s not enough I would maybe even suggest adding the AZ teams. I think that might be a bit much geographically, but it may make more sense culturally? idk
I could also recommend throwing the service acadamies into the ivy league, which we could also lump NW and vandy into. I feel like the service academies and the more academically inclined universities have the same “grindset” and this could help bring the ivies back into relevance in the sport. Since if we’re keeping Rutgers in the power conferences, we should keep Princeton and Yale in the big leagues. No way in hell they would ever vote for that though.
I just listened to most of the video. He raises most of the right questions, but answers several of them incorrectly IMHO (beyond the notion of doing what he wants, of course). Bumping the B8 to 10 teams up front and creating one more conference would help with flexibility. I also think if you’re doing this with the schools as they stand, not having any blueblood or newblood anchor the BE is a huge mistake, hence throwing PSU in with them. Might actually switch VaTech and Miami in for UCF and Maryland too. Again, USF is surplus to requirements. They wanted a hospital and more research grants, and they got them while ignoring football. If we have an NFL style set of national broadcast deals, a reborn SWC is amazing; if not, it’ll implode again; that is a LOT of egos crammed into basically 5 significant TV markets.
You could also go all the way and be brutal with bottom feeders, instead of evicting Vandy (understandable in its way) and Northwestern (why? Lots of recent competence) but no one else, and even bringing in USF and Rice. I would prefer to wait until TCU has a good year to do this though, LOL.
Now all that said, is it better? Hell yes it’s better.
