NCAA Football (Not the Video Game)

Everything else
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If nothing else, the Pac-12 can survive based purely on geography, unless the Big Ten gets super ambitious and wants to create a super conference with the Pac-12 teams most palatable to their tastes (sorry “State” schools, presumably). I’ve read that it’s the power conference that generates the least amount of revenue, but I cannot see a conference scooping them up with the travel burden it would place on their non-football sports.

The clear answer is the Big 12. It is by far the newest conference, almost collapsed once before as it is, and has several schools that would most certainly not be picked in a hypothetical power conference fantasy draft: Baylor, TCU, Kansas State, and Iowa State bring nothing to the table and/or have a religious affiliation the other power conferences regard as undesirable. You could probably argue for the inclusion of West Virginia, Oklahoma State, and Texas Tech in the latter group as well, but I think the former could be a decent fit for the ACC via their old Big East ties and the latter two are commonly seen as package deals with their wealthier, bigger siblings and have had intermittent football success so they would not be embarrassments the way certain recent conference additions have been (whisper I’m talking about Rutgers).

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This will never happen, but what I"d look to do:

If anything they should go to a 74 team model, 7 conferences of 10 + 4 independents (Notre Dame+ the service Acadmies), and an 8 team playoff

PAC-10: UCLA, USC, Ariz, Ariz St, Cal, Stan, Ore ,Ore St, Wash, Wash St
GMC: Iowa St, Kansas , Kansas St, Missouri, Okla , Okla St, Col, Neb, BYU, Utah
SWC: Texas, Tex A&M, Tex Tech, Baylor, TCU, Houston, SMU, Rice, Arkansas, UNLV
Big 10: Iowa, Indiana, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Michigan, Illinois, Ohio St, Mich St, Purdue, Northwestern
SEC: Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Auburn, Tenn, Kentucky, Vanderbilt, LSU, Miss, Miss St
ACC: UNC, NCSU, Duke, Wake, Virginia, Clemson, Maryland, Georgia Tech, Florida St, Penn St
Metro: Syracuse, Pitt, BC, Miami, Cincy, Louisville, South Carolina, West Virginia, Virginia Tech, Rutgers

Polls would be kept and used for playoff seeding and the Wild Card team (if Notre Dame or a Service Academy ends up top 8 in polls, they make it in automatically)

You can eventually expand to 80 , and make an 8th conference out of the academies , ND, and 6 other schools.

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I tried a similar setup—I definitely had Penn State and SCAR swapped out—in one of the old NCAA games, mostly as an attempt to resurrect the Big Eight and SWC and keep conferences to a max of ten teams so they could all play round robins, but the game’s realignment features didn’t really allow for it without having absurdly large mid-major conferences (you couldn’t create new conferences, so you had to move teams somewhere). Ultimately, I settled on a promotion/relegation setup with each power conference paired with a mid-major, which was fun, but also totally unrealistic.

65

This still comes down to the “are they pros or not?” question. If they’re not, the more and smaller regional conferences are better for everyone. If they are then there’s actually a certain logic to kill of the weaker schools and move to a Top 36 or 48 school model with only a few historic “conference” games to play for the local yokels.

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Not a good look, Bama

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SEC speed

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A wave to go with their Tide.

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500? That’s gotta be half the football team.

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Looks like some of the SEC teams are working their way toward herd immunity, including my beloved Auburn Tigers:

Coach Gus Malzahn said Sunday night that the Tigers had five positives early in the week and four more after additional testing Thursday. With contact tracing, seven others who had close contact with them face a mandatory 14-day quarantine.

“We had two position groups where we did not have enough guys,” coach Gus Malzahn said Sunday night. He declined to say which positions.

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I watched a bit of the Austin Peay - Central Arkansas game last night

If that is an example of safely playing college football,it ain’t happening. Some people wearing masks, some not, no face guards for players, masks on the sidelines and in the crowd non worn properly including coaches and players with masks and the assistants, minimal social distancing anywhere.

It looked insane to me.

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Gonna be some massive outbreaks soon.

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The Big 12 announced a “minimum threshold” of available players before they’ll cancel a game this season:

In order to account for student-athletes who will have to miss games because of positive coronavirus tests, contact tracing and regular injuries, the Big 12 determined on Friday that teams with at least 53 players available – including seven offensive linemen, four interior defensive linemen and one quarterback – must play or it will be considered a forfeit.

If teams have fewer than 53 players available and don’t meet the position benchmarks, the game would be declared a no-contest if it can’t be moved to a later date. Teams that fall below 53 players – but are still able to meet the position benchmarks – have the option to play the game.

Reportedly the SEC and ACC are both working on similar guidelines.

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Mizzou 45 LSU 41!!!

Ted Lasso has his first win in CoMO!

(And in case you think I’m kidding about comparing Eliah Drinkwitz to Ted Lasso…)

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LSU’s in serious trouble this year. Neither of the teams they lost to are good (while Missouri has only lost to ranked teams, one of them was a comfortable loss to Tennessee and Tennessee looks pretty mediocre; Mississippi State’s ‘high-powered’ offense has scored a combined 16 points against traditional SEC powers, er, Arkansas and Kentucky after laying it on LSU). LSU’s schedule only gets harder moving forward, so we’re likely to have a defending champ with a losing record.

79

Not to mention that Missouri was missing three receivers due to covid in that game. LSU looks extremely vulnerable this year.

Texas took another loss yesterday as well. In fact it was a tough Saturday for several ranked teams. Florida (#4) got knocked off as did Miami (#7) and while that was not an upset, I was surprised at how badly they got thumped. The landscape is going to change though with more power 5 conferences getting started soon. COVID has made this a very weird season.

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To be fair, LSU lost 3/4 of their starters on offense and defense, and almost all of those guys are playing on Sundays now.

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And Mizzou beat them with only 60 scholarship players suited up due to COVID issues or injury. (The SEC minimum is 53 players on scholarship, or a game is postponed/canceled. The typical scholarship limit is 85 players). That included having to play walk-on juco transfers at defensive tackle and WR.