Fun With the BCS and College Football Realignment

Here's my plan to make college football more fair. Keep in mind I paid absolutely no attention to current TV contracts, the wishes of university presidents or bowl committees, basketball or logic. Those things tend to get in the way of what's right for the greatest sport on earth. I think my plan makes college football a better product. And it gives us a better national championship.

Conference Realignment

First up are the conferences. The ACC, SEC, Big 12 and MAC stay the same. Notre Dame joins the Big Ten to give it 12 teams and a conference championship game.

The Pac 10 adds BYU and Utah to give it 12 teams and a championship game.

The Big East adds UCF, East Carolina, Marshall and Western Kentucky to give it (that's right) 12 teams and a championship game.

The Mountain West loses its two strongest members, but gets the best from the WAC and two teams from C-USA. It's still not as good as the nine-team Mountain West that included BYU and Utah, but it does have 12 teams and a championship game and could become the seventh BCS conference. Yes, I realize I didn't move Hawaii to the new Mountain West. But with the travel costs associated with including Hawaii and the inevitable downturn the Warriors will face without June Jones, I decided to include SMU instead.

C-USA gets screwed, just like it did five years ago when the Big East had to fill in its empty spaces. However, it becomes a junior SEC and more of a regional southeast conference. Oh, and it still has 12 teams and a championship game.

This gives us nine conferences with at least 12 teams and a conference title game and nine teams spread throughout the country that inhabit the remnants of the Sun Belt and WAC as well as Army and Navy.

The National Championship

Now for deciding the national champion. We have six 12-team conferences with automatic bids into our new BCS. They are joined by six at-large teams, at least one of which must come from a non-BCS conference. We then inact the plus-one system.

The Cotton Bowl and Holiday Bowl are added to the BCS mix to give us six BCS bowls to host our 12 teams. Those 12 teams are the only teams that are eligible to compete in the BCSCG, which will be held the Saturday before the Super Bowl.

All bowl games, BCS and otherwise, have to be completed by Jan. 2 (if Jan. 1 falls on a Sunday). After those games are played, we run the BCS rankings again to get our two teams for the BCSCG which will rotate between the Cotton, Holiday, Orange, Sugar, Fiesta and Rose Bowls.

Doing this gives fans of the two BCSCG teams enough time to make travel arrangements and ESPN enough time to hype the shit out of it.

If You Disagree With Me You Must be a Communist

So there you have it. This is the best way to fix college football. Realign the conferences, add two bowl games to the BCS and have a plus-one national championship. It gives the little guys a chance, keeps the regular season meaningful, keeps the bowls happy and gives the fans ample time to get to a national title game.

It gives the little guys a chance by including them on the BCS. It keeps the bowls happy because six of them have an impact on possibly deciding the national championship instead of one. And it benefits the fan by giving them nearly a month to get to that BCSCG at the end, which is MUCH better than a playoff.

This makes college football a better product and in my opinion would make it more money than it already does (imagine the hype and coverage leading up to championship weekend). Now if we can just get that conference realignment going.