What should college football conferences look like? The case for common sense realignment

College football in 2023 includes plenty of complaining.

Coaches complain about … mostly everything, but especially how impossible roster management has become. Fans complain about conference realignment and ruined rivalries. A bicoastal Big Ten makes no sense unless the sole goal of conferences is to maximize television revenue. Imagine that!

But solutions? Those are harder to come by.

Plenty of coaches and administrators tacitly acknowledge conference alignment is horribly broken, but what should conferences look like? How could the distribution of schools improve the sport as a whole and not just the bank accounts of the richest programs fortunate enough to be in leagues where passion runs the highest? What would happen if someone with common sense was in charge and could hit the reset button and draw up a solution that benefited the whole, rather than the few?

We’re so glad you asked.

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In a world where realignment has gone wild, let’s lay out a vision for a college football landscape driven by common sense. In short: It’s time to take some modern sensibility, hop into our time machine and head back toward 1970s geography, turning the Power 5 into a Power 8.

It’s better for everyone. The only loss is Big Ten and SEC fans no longer being able to brag about how much more money their schools are getting (that fans never see) than everyone else. We can live with that.

Here’s how each new, rebuilt conference would look in a college football world where things make sense and aren’t on a path to making the sport worse as a whole.

1. Major conferences’ television rights are pooled

The Supreme Court’s 1984 decision allowing schools and conferences to negotiate their own TV rights sounded great in theory. But in practice, it’s the single decision that’s had the most negative impact on college football. In the decades since, there’s been a gold rush toward television money. If a program’s conference isn’t getting enough, it’s going elsewhere, curse the geography.

The NCAA absolutely should not be in charge of negotiating the television rights. I wouldn’t trust the NCAA to negotiate a better price for an oil change on my car. But pooling TV rights and negotiating with all the conferences as a whole makes sense and protects rivalries and the geography that helped build college football into America’s second-favorite sport.

Sorting out rights with multiple networks across multiple conferences is more complex than it is now, but the NFL manages it. College football would be fine working with ESPN, Fox, NBC and CBS to reach a conclusion that makes sense.

2. Geography matters; superconferences are dead

Next year, Georgia will travel to Texas, which joins the SEC in 2024. At that point, the Bulldogs will have made one conference trip to Darrell K Royal-Texas Memorial Stadium and zero to Kyle Field to play Texas A&M, which joined the SEC in 2012.

Superconferences do not make sense. They are not conferences. They are loose associations.

Eight- to 10-team conferences are actual conferences. The math and geography isn’t perfect in our system — some old relationships can’t help but be broken — but it’s greatly improved. Teams are grouped with nearby schools in a way that makes sense. The new ACC, SEC, Big East and Big Ten have 10 teams. Three of the major leagues will play a full round-robin schedule every year. The others will play almost everyone every year, with a few exceptions. (We can live with Mississippi State and Tennessee and Virginia and Clemson not playing every year.)

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Considering where the sport is, that’s hardly novel and a vast improvement from the current situation. Playing home-and-homes with the same teams every year is how rivalries are born and grow.

The past two decades of conference moves have produced few real rivalries with juice.

3. Everyone plays 7 conference games

It makes no sense that the major conferences play different numbers of conference games. Here, those days are over. All eight major conferences play seven conference games. Outside of that, teams are required to play at least three games against opponents in one of the other seven major conferences. That will provide a robust, entertaining nonconference slate that will also help provide more fodder for debate about the best leagues.

Schools can still control who they play, but adding this will allow for cross-conference rivalries like Iowa–Iowa State and USC–Notre Dame to continue without forcing schools to make those their only big-time nonconference games every year. As for rivalries like Georgia-Georgia Tech, Florida–Florida State and Clemson-South Carolina: What if I told you those were no longer nonconference games?

This setup provides more exotic in-season matchups we rarely get to see, especially considering the postseason setup. The other two opponents on the schedule can be whomever a school chooses, but FCS games are highly discouraged and the Playoff committee penalizes teams that play them.

And if there’s no round-robin in a conference, we’re bound to get some ties that are tough to solve, but the solution is simple: Every conference title game pairs the top two teams in the conference standings. If there is a tie between two teams that have played head-to-head, the winner on the field plays in the title game. If there is a tie between two teams that haven’t played, the No. 2 team ranked highest by the committee plays No. 1. It’s one more incentive for teams to play tough games outside of conference play.

Speaking of the Playoff …

4. The 12-team playoff is here to stay

The system is inspired by the regionalism of the 1970s, but there are some clear changes. We’re not going to just decide the national champion after bowls with matchups set by strict conference tie-ins. We’re keeping the postseason as it will be in 2024.

All eight power conference champions earn an automatic bid, regardless of ranking. Every conference title race will have Playoff implications. The highest-ranked team from the other conferences also earns a bid.

That leaves three more at-large spots for the leagues to fight over.

5. Notre Dame, you’re in the Big Ten.

Enough, guys. No more special treatment or special rules for access to the title game. In a perfect world where all major conference TV rights are pooled and negotiated together, independence no longer makes sense for the Irish, anyway.

The first four teams will graduate to the big time. Their football programs are often better than many of the artists formerly known as the Power 5 already. My system rewards those who take the sport seriously and get on-field results.

And Nebraska? If you want to play Ohio State and Michigan, you can do so out of conference.

The Huskers are back in the Big Eight and might be able to win a conference title, something they haven’t done since 1999. Texas A&M has just one conference title since 1993, and the prospect of winning the new, rebuilt Southwest Conference is something that could happen with some frequency. Arkansas, meanwhile, no longer has to toil as a team with a talent level in the bottom half of its league and can get back to winning more, too.

7. No more misnamed leagues

The Big Ten hasn’t had 10 teams in 30 years and will expand to 16 next year. The Big 12 hasn’t had 12 members in a decade. The Pac-10 had to rebrand when it added two teams.

If you have a number in your name, that’s how many teams call your conference home. Period. Let’s introduce some common sense to a sport with too little of it.

Editor’s note: This story is part of The Athletic’s Realignment Revisited series, digging into the past, present and future of conference realignment in college sports. Follow the series and find more conference realignment stories here.

(Top illustration: John Bradford / The Athletic; photos: Owen C. Shaw, Rich Clarkson, Ronald C. Modra, Jerry Cooke / Getty Images)