BCS Shakeup: A Proposal for College Football Conference Realignment

What a sneaky title this is. 

While the main premise of this article is to propose a more logical realignment of the current college football conferences, it is also a sneaky way to slip in yet another Division I playoff format. 

This way, we can do something logical in this sport like crown a champion by what happens on the field.

My conference realignments serves to group college football programs into regional areas (another thing that makes sense but isn't done). It also serves to include all college football teams in the quest for the championship and not eliminate programs by lumping all the second tier schools into one conference.

With 120 Division I-A teams, this is the perfect time and perfect number for something like this to be done. With 120 teams, it is now possible to have 10 college conferences consisting of 12 teams. This allows every conference to have a championship game. 

Just the very thought of that should excite every college football fan, as well as the teams, players and coaches.

Grouping the teams by region creates awesome rivalries that will mean something. Of course, some previous conference rivalries will be lost but provisions can be made for every program's biggest rivalry to remain in tact. Also, the regional conference groupings set up a great situation for a playoff system that makes sense.

My proposal calls for a West Region and an East Region with five conferences in each region. Each conference will have six teams on one side and six on the other. Initially,  the split can be done to have balance of program strength between each side. 

A realignment of the conference splits can be done every three to four years to maintain the balance between both sides of each conference. The realignment will be based by the performance of each team over the previous three to four years.

So, before I dive headlong into the intricacies of this realignment along with offering rebuttals to arguments people may have, allow me to reveal to you the proposed conferences and their teams.  

Of course, the names of the conferences can be tinkered with, but I went with made most sense at the time I put them together.

I placed teams in each sides of the conference based on my recollection of their recent historical performance in college football. 

I will continue this article after the tables showing the realigned conferences with the meat and potatoes of how this proposal will improve college football to levels never before seen.

To view my proposed conference realignments and playoff set up click on this link here.