Realigning lesser conferences to adhere to NCAA FBS guidelines would create the fairness the little guys seek.

Dozens of schools play tricks to meet requirements to stay in the FBS, like fake ticket sales to meet attendance guidelines. The teams they hurt are often from the same state, as fan bases are divided and conferences outside of the Power 5 are bloated with weakness. That's not a statement about their academics or their team spirit; it's about their ability to compete financially with teams that are literally out of their league. Remove the teams that don't belong, and the remaining conferences will be much stronger.

In the past, I've written about how to realign conferences to give a fair shot to teams from outside the Power 5 conferences. I'm surprised how well removing the bloat solves this problem on its own.

Remove the teams from Conference USA and the Sun-Belt Conference which don't belong, and you get a surprisingly strong conference. Here, I'm also adding back in a few of the smaller teams from the American conference (Tulsa, SMU and Tulane). What you get is a conference with three top-25 teams (four if you go by the polls instead of the computer models), and 8 top 50 teams, allowing for plenty strong-enough schedules.

SOUTHERN: 14. Coastal Carolina (SBC), 16. Marshall (CUSA), 22. Louisiana (SBC), 27. Tulsa (American), 32. Appalachian St (SBC), 36. Liberty (Independent), 45. Southern Methodist (American), 62. Tulane (American), 63. UAB (CUSA), 86. Louisiana Tech (CUSA), 109. Rice (CUSA), 119. Southern Mississippi (CUSA)

East Carolina and Temple may already be on their way out the door from the American. Here, I picture the core teams from the American joining with independents to build a power conference, and adding Boise State, which once almost joined the American before the conference's instability scared them off.

5. Cincinnati (American), 7. BYU (independent), 26. Boise State (MWC), 28. Central Florida (American), 39. Memphis (American), 54. Houston (American), 55. Army (independent), 94. Navy (American).

You'd see from their rankings how strong this conference would be. Every one of these teams has been in the top 25 within the past few years, even though they were picked for fan bases, TV markets, etc. The weakest teams this year are from markets like New York, Baltimore-Washington, and Houston.

I like compact conferences, which allow the best teams to play each other every year, so I'm keeping this conference small, since there's no longer a size limit for the ultra-profitable conference tournament. But other teams I could imagine joining include San Diego State and Liberty. Or South Florida could remain.

I'd even hope that maybe Notre Dame would join: This conference offers a better schedule than the ACC; Notre Dame's own TV contract would be no problem; the worst teams currently in this conference would be Army and Navy, who were top 20 recently and who are Notre Dame rivals anyway. Even without Notre Dame, this would still be a Power 5-quality conference. [For basketball, Connecticut sweetens the pot for Notre Dame to join the Big East while Butler, Marquette and DePaul would make for division rivals that don't require airline travel.]

The logical home for Temple and East Carolina would be to join the remaining teams from the MAC.

EASTERN: 30. Buffalo (MAC), 38. Western Michigan (MAC), 41. Florida Atlantic (CUSA), 74. Miami Ohio (MAC), 90. Toledo (MAC), 97. East Carolina (American), 102. Troy (SBC), 116. Temple (American), 117. South Florida (American)

Most of the Mountain West teams are big enough to meet the NCAA's standards for survival, but without Boise State, none are excellent. But since Nevada, Hawaii, Wyoming and New Mexico are the flagship schools for their respective, I guess it makes sense to stay in the FBS. (Not trying to inspire them to move *to* the FBS, but Montana also easily meets the FBS guidance for attendance, with an average attendance about equal to the Mountain West.) And the California schools are huge, even if they aren't flagships.

WESTERN: 37. San Jose St., 53. Nevada, 57. Air Force, 59. San Diego State, 72. Fresno St., 75. Wyoming, 87. Hawaii, 96. Colorado State, 122. New Mexico.

These are the teams that don't belong in FBS. (Except for the independents, every one of them comes from a state with Power-5 teams, and every one draws away from another mid-major team.)

MAC: 60. Central Michigan, 79. Ohio, 80. Kent, 81. Ball State, 108. N. Illinois. 113. E. Michigan, 125. Akron, 126. Bowling Green

Sun Belt: 83. Georgia Southern, 105. South Alabama, 106. Arkansas St., 114. Texas St., 127. Louisiana-Monroe.

CUSA: 84. UT-San Antonio. 101. Charlotte, 104. Western Kentucky, 111. North Texas, 112. Mid Tennessee State, 116. Texas-El Paso, 122. Florida International.

Coastal Carolina also has very weak attendance in recent years, but since they're doing SO well this year, I expect their attendance woes will soon be over.

Sorry, but this article is lousy... I’d love to see an Eastern Conference of Football that has UMass, UConn, Rutgers, Syracuse, Temple, Penn State, Boston College, Maryland and Virginia...which was proposed in the 1980s by a few schools and some others that were independent at the time.

There has to be an algorithm that can measure the success/failure of a team over a season. If you win all your games, but you play crappy teams...then you should not be rated higher than a team that won against much better teams.

The problem with football is that there is ALWAYs the underdog who pulls those one or two games out of their shorts to knock off the BIG team.

I guess we could simply play the entire season like a big 300 team tournament, triple elimination or something like that.

You’re describing an early go at a Big East football conference, which eventually included Rutgers, Syracuse, Temple and Boston College from your list plus Pittsburg.

Maryland and Virginia had joined the ACC by then, Penn State had joined the Big 10, and UConn and UMass didn’t have Division 1-A football teams... and soon won’t again. So the conference recruited independents Miami, Virginia Tech, and West Virginia.

Of course, the ACC raided the Big East of Pitt, Virginia Tech, Syracuse, Miami, Boston College and the later addition of Louisville, causing it to fall apart as West Virginia and Rutgers also found new homes (Big 12 and Big 10).

But while I’m responding to you for the benefit of anyone’s curiosity, I have to say that it takes a real, first-class ***hole to say an article is lousy without any explanation, and the prove yourself far more ignorant.

>> There has to be an algorithm that can measure the success/failure of a team over a season. If you win all your games, but you play crappy teams...then you should not be rated higher than a team that won against much better teams. <<

There are only a few hundred such algorithms like that whose results are posted on-line after every weekend. Massey (mratings.com) has meta-results of those rankings, whose results I used when ranking the teams. And they rule the polls and BCS rankings.

The big problem isn’t that teams with lousy schedules are walking away with super-high rankings; BYU is 9-0 at #13, and Marshall is 7-0 at #22. Neither has much hope of making the playoffs. The problem is that they’ll end up facing a 7-6 team that doesn’t belong in a bowl game at all... and that the last thing a major-conference team wants to do is schedule a game against someone who was undefeated last year: if they win, the game is utterly forgotten about.

And so teams like Central Florida and Boise State and Cincinnati continue to have undefeated seasons and nonetheless go absolutely nowhere. Building conferences out of such teams would at least give them the chance to have strong schedules.

You said UConn won’t have D1A football soon, so I have to say that you are wrong. In 2020, we had some interesting games scheduled, including Mississippi State. In 2021, we have games with Perdue, Vanderbilt, Army, Wyoming, Clemson and UCF. With our ladies Basketball Program, we can get teams to play us and not only at their stadium, but at PAWSARF (Pratt and Whitney Stadium at Rentschler Field).

If Connecticut can work out some deal to play with MAC in football and stay in the Big East for other sports, more power to them. I’m not waiting to dance on their graves. I only hope they don’t ruin their basketball programs trying to create a football program because I actually do like their basketball teams.

... in fact, although I’d rather see them go FCS than be in the current MAC because the current MAC is terrible at everything, the “Eastern” conference I propose out of the ashes of the current MAC might actually be a good home for them.

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