New Blog Post: CONFERENCE REALIGNMENT DRASTIC MEASURES 2021
Let's all join the Sun Belt and call it done, boys!
OH PLEASE GOD NO NOT MORE REALIGNMENT! Just when I thought it couldn’t get any worse, Texas and Oklahoma leave for the SEC. I’m not sure what’s supposed to happen from here, I’m not sure I care all that much either, frankly.
https://joebush.net/2021/07/27/conference-realignment-drastic-measures-2021/
For like a postscript that I think is longer than the actual post, keep reading here:
The more I think it over the more that I am spiritually okay with college football’s current realignment deals as long as it does actually end up with the European Super League analogue of like a twenty-four team superconference/subdivision and then everybody else is kind of free to fuck around and do whatever. I was sort of of the mindset that, while I didn’t want it, I thought the European Super League concept would ultimately be good for the game because it’d make an already thick line of delineation (one we like to pretend isn’t there) between the ~12 clubs that really will have a shot at the UEFA Champions League in any given season and everybody else. If it’s just an NFL D-2 sort of thing going on still weirdly connected to a University system. I’d be frustrated because being left out of a major conference would hurt the men’s basketball team that does compete on a national level, which is why I advocate for The Connecticut Model, but I would absolutely trade the delusion that Kansas has any shot at a national championship in football for playing Missouri every year again.
My point here is, this might have to be the band-aid ripping off that the sport needs. If you get that superconference of Texas, Oklahoma, Texas A&M, Alabama, Auburn, LSU, Florida, Georgia, Florida, Florida State, Miami, Clemson, Notre Dame, Ohio State, Michigan, Michigan State, Penn State, Wisconsin, USC, UCLA, Oregon, Washington… That’s like 22 teams, maybe throw in like Tennessee and North Carolina to make it a clean 24. Even that’s probably a wider array of teams than could consider making the playoff this year. Cut that off, let them fight it out in a sort of NFL feeder league, and let everyone else figure out what to do. Let that be what they have and let everybody else become unburdened from the pressure of modern college football.
When I went to San Diego State football games in 2018 and 19, I had a great time. They weren’t competing for a national championship, I think the years of undefeated G5 teams getting shafted for the sake of Oklahoma losing by 30 have proven that. But, still, I enjoyed those games. There was still intensity at those games, and fun, and the in-person experience, at least, was great! They didn’t lose much at least from the fan perspective because it was a game that really only mattered to the two alumni bases whose teams were competing on the field that night.
Maybe a breakaway league atop the rest of them might be better for the middle tier because they could lose the delusions of grandeur that hold so many of them back - and I am counting the University of Kansas among them. Only one school was talking about hiring Les Miles in 2018. Certainly only one school was talking about hiring Charlie Weis back in 2011. We probably don’t make short-sighted and overly expensive moves like that without the delusions of grandeur from which the team currently suffers.
But I only would want that in the case that it goes this way whole-hog. I am definitely not looking forward to like the inevitable future of a 20 team Big Ten and a 16 team SEC and a 16 team ACC while the narrative that everyone still has a shot keeps getting pushed while it’s still the same like seven games each week. It’s gotta be that upper division just completely cut off from everyone else or I don’t want it.