My pointless re-shuffling of the FBS conferences!

Everyone seems to have an opinion on the national playoff system and how unfair the conference set-ups are. Power Five conferences can't decide on whether having eight conference games or nine is the better set-up; Group of Five conferences complain that they can't get a fair shake no matter how many games they play in or out of conference. Should you have a conference title game? Should you not have that "13th data point"?

And most pressing of all: scheduling parity. How can you fairly determine the two/four/eight/sixteen best teams if they play such disparate schedules? If Alabama plays, say, Mercer, instead of a ninth conference opponent, is that fair? Is it equitable for Ohio State and Oklahoma to play an early season high stakes game, knowing that seeing a straight number (or, God forbid, a squiggly one!) in the loss column spells doom for your playoff chances? If UCF or Boise State or any other G5 school has eight or nine games required against other G5 schools in their own conference, how could they possibly play a schedule of comparable difficulty to, say, an SEC or Pac-12 school?

There is a solution. It will never be implemented, and there's no point in even elucidating reasons beyond the single word, "money". But it's fun to consider, so here we go! 

Welcome to the SBAC - the Smarter Balanced Athletic Conferences! I've divided the 130 FBS teams into fourteen conferences of 9-10 teams each. (I tried having 13 conferences of ten, and that may still be the better plan, but I struggled to make the alliances coalesce.) Each conference has at least four Power 5 teams in it, and at least four Group of 5 teams in it. (There are exceptions: one with three P5 but some strong G5 teams in it; three with three G5 teams but several weaker P5 schools.) The travel costs have also been brought back in line - West Virginia is not in a Texan conference; C-USA no longer stretches across the country.

Each conference will play eight conference games, four home/four road. (The ten-team conferences rotate each year which teams fail to play each other.) The other four games on the schedule may contain no more than one FCS school, but because that's the money that allows some of those programs to survive, I don't want to wipe those off the board completely. There are various other restrictions we could add to those non-con games, such as requiring one true road game or ensuring that the G5 schools get real games, but those are for down the road.

Now, eliminate the conference title games. Instead, play a 16-team playoff bracket: fourteen conference champions, plus two wild cards determined by committee (which is how all the other divisions do it anyway). I would allow the other schools with six wins play in bowl games, personally - if you want to call the first round bowl games, like we do now with the CFP, fine. But only eight teams will play more than 13 games in a season now (this season, 13 teams played more than 13 games in the FBS). Four will play 14, two will play 15, and the two finalists play 16. They'll survive. The FCS schools like North Dakota State and James Madison seem to do just fine. 

Without further ado, here are my conference breakdowns:

NEW ENGLAND CONFERENCE: Army-West Point, *Boston College, Buffalo, U-Conn, U-Mass, *Penn State, *Pitt, *Rutgers, *Syracuse, Temple. (5 P5, 5 G5 schools.)
OHIO CONFERENCE: Bowling Green, Kent State, *Indiana, Marshall, Miami-Ohio, *Notre Dame, Ohio U, *Ohio State, *Purdue, *West Virginia. (5 P5, 5 G5 schools.)
GREAT LAKES CONFERENCE: Akron, Central Michigan, Eastern Michigan, *Michigan, *Michigan State, *Minnesota, Toledo, Western Michigan, *Wisconsin. (4 PF, 5 G5 schools.)
MIDWEST CONFERENCE: Ball State, Cincinnati, *Illinois, *Iowa, *Iowa State, *Nebraska, *Missouri, Northern Illinois, *Northwestern. (6 P5, 3 G5 schools.)
MID-ATLANTIC CONFERENCE: Appalachian State, East Carolina, *Kentucky, *Louisville, *Maryland, Navy, *Virginia, *Virginia Tech, Western Kentucky. (5 P5, 4 G5 schools.)
CAROLINA CONFERENCE: *Duke, Memphis, Middle Tennessee State, *North Carolina, *North Carolina State, Old Dominion, *Tennessee, *Vanderbilt, *Wake Forest. (6 P5, 3 G5 schools.)
PLANTATION CONFERENCE: Charlotte, Coastal Carolina, *Clemson, *Georgia, Georgia Southern, Georgia State, *Georgia Tech, *South Carolina, [Liberty upon ascension]. (4 P5, 5-6 G5.)
PANHANDLE CONFERENCE: Central Florida, *Florida, Florida Atlantic, Florida International, *Florida State, South Alabama, South Florida, *Miami-FL, Troy. (3 P5, 6 G5 schools.)
DEEP SOUTH CONFERENCE: *Alabama, *Auburn, Louisiana Tech, *Mississippi State, *Ole Miss, Southern Miss, Tulane, UAB, UL-Lafayette, UL-Monroe. (4 P5, 6 G5 schools.)
GULF COAST CONFERENCE: *Arkansas, Arkansas State, Houston, *LSU, Rice, *Texas, *Texas A&M, Texas State, UT-San Antonio. (4 P5, 5 G5 schools.)
LONE STAR CONFERENCE: *Baylor, North Texas, *Oklahoma, *Oklahoma State, SMU, *TCU, *Texas Tech, Tulsa, UTEP. (5 P5, 4 G5 schools.)
ROCKY MOUNTAIN CONFERENCE: Air Force, BYU, *Colorado, Colorado State, *Kansas, *Kansas State, New Mexico, New Mexico State, *Utah, Utah State. (4 P5, 6 G5 schools.)
CALIFORNIA CONFERENCE: *Arizona, *Arizona State, *Cal-Berkeley, Fresno State, San Diego State, San Jose State, *Stanford, *USC, *UCLA. (6 P5, 3 G5 schools.)
NORTHWEST CONFERENCE: Boise State, Hawai'i, [Idaho], Nevada-Reno, *Oregon, *Oregon State, UNLV, *Washington, *Washington State, Wyoming. (4 P5 schools, 5-6 G5 schools.)

Trying to balance conferences is a futile task. I tried to look at a program's history and potential - for example, the Panhandle conference only has the three Power Five schools, but it's hard to look at FAU, FIU, UCF, and USF and not think that's going to be a powerhouse conference. Similarly, the Carolina conference may have six P5 teams, but Vandy and Wake and Duke aren't exactly powerhouse programs. I'm worried about the California conference doing what the Pac-12 already does - cannibalize itself - but with our playoff format, that won't be as important. Every conference has a rep in the playoff. Simple. 

So, out of curiosity, what would this have looked like in 2017? 

Our fourteen champs and two wild cards might have been (in the order above) - Penn State, Ohio State, Wisconsin, Northwestern, Virginia Tech, North Carolina State, Clemson (+Georgia), UCF, Auburn (+Alabama), LSU, Oklahoma, Kansas State, USC, and Washington.

If we went by the CFP committee final rankings, then we'd have these seedings:

#1 Clemson v. #16 Kansas State
#8 USC v. #9 Penn State
#4 Alabama v. #13 Northwestern
#5 Ohio State v #12 LSU
#2 Oklahoma v #15 North Carolina State
#7 Auburn v #10 Washington
#3 Georgia v #14 Virginia Tech
#6 Wisconsin v #11 UCF

...and then do what you want with that tournament. (Here's something to debate, though: Auburn would have been the Deep South champion, right? They defeated Alabama. Would they have to therefore have a higher seed than the Tide? Or would you be ok with the wild card Alabama being seeded higher than its conference champ Auburn?)

But every team has a shot at the tournament: win your conference, and you're in. Local rivalries flourish, balanced schedules raise all boats, and with four non-con games, you can still have your OSU-Michigan rivalry games and so forth.

In a more realistic vein, the argument for an eight-team playoff actually gained some traction in my mind this bowl season for the very first time - I've been a four-team proponent forever, unless you're going to go the route I just went and have it match every other sport in intercollegiate athletics! But if you go to an eight-team playoff, and then guarantee six of the spots: the five Power Five champs, and the Group of Five highest ranked team. Add in the next two best teams, and I'll go for that. It does the essential thing that my system does: it guarantees every team a SHOT at the title. Maybe UCF doesn't beat Auburn, and then Georgia, and THEN Alabama. But wouldn't it be interesting to find out if they could? Some years, that G5 team goes out in round one. Let the Power conferences laugh. But so far in the CFP years, those G5 teams are 3-1. Since the BCS era began, the G5 teams are 7-3 against the big boys in the major bowl games, plus another win and loss when the cowardly BCS committee had two "BCS buster" teams (TCU and Boise State), so they scheduled them against each other so none of their precious major conference teams would be beaten by these undefeated powerhouses. (For the record, BSU beat the Frogs, 17-10, in a hard-fought game that should have scared the other big boys.)

And that is why you're not going to see that expansion for at least a few more years. (The current format is contracted for six more years, by the way.) The money can only be split so many ways before the haves complain about having to share with the have-nots. Just look at the Congressional tax scam bill to see the proof. But if they were subject to the NCAA the way every other sport and every other division was, something like my plan would have been implemented a long time ago.

So, I'll continue to dream of the day when everyone has a fair shot. The teams and even the conferences in the FCS may not be equal, but every team has a chance to win the national title. (Except the Ivy League. They're too good to associate with the peons who keep playing in December.)
Central Connecticut State plays in a really weak league, the Northeast Conference. Their ELO-rating of 55 would be last place in four other conferences in the FCS. But they won the NEC, so they get to go to the national tournament and give it their best shot! Can Troy? Can Toledo? Can Boise? Heck, can UCF?

No. Not under the current system. There are 65 teams in all of collegiate and professional sports which have literally zero opportunity to win its championship. They're all the Group of Five teams in division 1 college football. Every other team in every other sport is at least theoretically eligible to be the champion (barring specific ineligibility issues, like rules violations). Is that fair? Of course not.

Let's give the SBAC a try! Or...at least, let the G5 champion have a shot at the title!