Fourth and Dumb

Some ideas related to the projected formation of the Big 64, a collection of four 16-team conferences:

1.  There are lots of thoughts out there that the 64 chosen teams will break away from the NCAA, but keep in mind the various benefits the present arrangement provides.  The most significant is by continuing to operate under the illusion that athletic departments are good faith portions of universities that are looking out for the good of the student-athletes, the universities and athletic departments enjoy certain public relations and tax benefits.  Those benefits could be severely tested if certain people in the Justice Department got their way and/or the conferences and universities are too brazen in their greed.  For an example of public relations at work, just look for all the mentions of the academic benefits of the conference realignments.

2.  If there are four 16-team conferences, the Plus-One bowl option suddenly becomes more palatable.  Assuming the champions of the Big 16 and Pac 16 meet in the Rose Bowl and the champions of the SEC and Big East/ACC (see #3) meet in either the Orange or Sugar Bowls, the winners of those events would advance to the closest thing to a non-mythical national championship.  However, the new and improved Mountain West could have a protest vote if they are able to maintain their status as the next best football conference.

3.  My first assumption is the merger of the Big East and ACC would keep the Big East name, but now I am not so sure the new conference would not throw out the ACC name.  If the ACC is the naming option that prevails, the basketball schools could take the Big East name and the Atlantic 10 schools that would be raided could say they are headed to a more prestigious conference.  Also, money is a bigger draw than aesthetics, so no administrator will blink an eye at Louisville and Cincinnati being in the ACC despite being 700+ miles from the ocean, no more so than the Texas schools headed to the Pac-10.

4.  How would divisions work in the new regime?  One aim of the divisions is to preserve local rivalries.  The most likely football program is each team plays the seven teams in its division and two interdivision games that rotate.

- The easiest conference to decipher is the Pac-16.  The eight schools in states on the Pacific Ocean would form the West division and the Arizona schools and Big 12 refugees would form the East division.  Almost all significant rivalries are preserved; the Arizona schools have not developed any football rivalries of note in their 32 years in the Pac-10.  The one rivalry not preserved, between Nebraska and Colorado, only developed in the 1980s and can continue out-of-conference.  As the only conference schools without an in-conference rival, Colorado and Texas Tech would likely play each other the last weekend of the regular eason.

— Pac-16 West: Washington, Washington State, Oregon, Oregon State, California, Stanford, USC, UCLA

— Pac-16 East: Arizona, Arizona State, Colorado, Oklahoma, Oklahoma State, Texas, Texas A&M, Texas Tech

- The next easiest conference to work out is the Big 16.  Iowa State and Iowa are a natural pairing.  NU, MU, KU, and KSU can work out a satisfactory rivalry arrangement among the four of them.  All major Big Ten rivalries from the eastern part of the footprint remain annual except for the Little Brown Jug.

— Big 16 West: Nebraska, Kansas, Kansas State, Missouri, Iowa State, Iowa, Minnesota, Wisconsin

— Big 16 East: Illinois, Northwestern, Indiana, Purdue, Ohio State, Michigan, Michigan State, Penn State

- The third easiest conference to figure is the Big East.  The ridiculous Atlantic and Coastal appellations will be tossed in favor of easier South and North divisions.  Boston College and South Florida could be swapped to improve geographic cohesiveness, but the Bulls are going to be an air flight away from the nearest conference member regardless, so it will not make too big a difference for them, unless #5 happens.  None of the involved schools have rivalries, anyway.

— Big East North: Syracuse, Pittsburgh, West Virginia, Rutgers, Connecticut, Boston College, Louisville, Cincinnati

— Big East South: Maryland, Virginia, Virginia Tech, North Carolina, North Carolina State, Duke, Wake Forest, South Florida

- The thorniest conference is the SEC, although even then much of the conference is a slam dunk.  The SEC East is set to become an incredible beehive of hate.  Would the proposal in #5 only exacerbate the hatred?  Tennessee and Vanderbilt are moved to the SEC West because their rivalry is the most historically significant in the UT-Vandy-UK triad, and both Tennessee teams had their rivalries with schools from the west prior to the SEC expansion of 1992.

— SEC West: Arkansas, LSU, Mississippi State, Mississippi, Alabama, Auburn, Tennessee, Vanderbilt

— SEC East: South Carolina, Clemson, Georgia, Georgia Tech, Florida, Florida State, Miami, Kentucky

5.  There is a mutually beneficial swap that could improve geographic cohesiveness, although it would be historically damaging: The Big East sends South Florida to the SEC in exchange for Kentucky.  Kentucky has not often been a factor in SEC football, while South Florida is more a football than basketball school.  South Florida in the SEC also gives that conference a monopoly on Florida and the Big East a monopoly on Kentucky.  Did I say something about historically damaging?  Forget it; conference realignment is all about the money!

Cincinnati is legit.

The Big East Conference, which is always looking for respect, earned some this season both on the field and on the sidelines, as none of its coaches got fired for the third consecutive season. 2007 started with two new coaches. 2008 will start with one new coach but zero new regimes, as Bill Stewart was an in-house promotion. Will the Big East make it four in a row?

Cincinnati had a very good season in the first year of the Brian Kelly regime. However, it would have been much better if not for that mid-season slump against middle table clubs Louisville and Rutgers. Still, it was a great first impression that has Kelly solidly on the comfortable portion of the green chair.

Connecticut had arguably their best season ever, but the way it ended, with blowout losses to Cincinnati and West Virginia and the convincing defeat to Wake Forest in the Meineke Bowl, left at least a bittersweet taste in the mouths of those involved with Huskies football. Randy Edsall’s job security is still excellent, but this was a missed opportunity to take the next step toward a blue chair or toward lock-in consideration for the job at his alma mater Syracuse if (when) that position opens. Instead, he earns a green chair heading into the 2008 season.

Louisville had a disastrous 2007 season. Widely expected to contend for the national championship, this team fell flat on its face as Brian Brohm had a miserable senior season. His draft status plunged and so did the status of his mentor, Steve Kragthorpe, who was the hot coach coming off some nice seasons at Tulsa. Is his a sign of things to come or will Kragthorpe show great improvement in year two? The people at Louisville are spoiled by success in the past decade, so Kragthorpe inherits a yellow chair.

Pittsburgh’s record has not progressed much in the three years since Dave Wannstedt took over from the maligned Walt Harris. Despite the 5-7 record, there were signs of progress, notably taking advantage of a success-drunk West Virginia team in a 13-9 season finale shock. That win likely earned Wannstedt a contract extension through 2012. However, he needs to pick it up and get the Panthers to a bowl game. Wannstedt sits in a yellow chair; he needs to start having winning seasons if he wants to fulfill his contract.

Rutgers had huge shoes to follow after the magnificent 2006 season, and it was not able to fill them. Ignore the bowl win over Ball State; the Big East has terrible bowl tie-ins. It would have been a great rebound season just to lose to Cincinnati and West Virginia, but they also games to six-win Maryland and Louisville clubs. Regardless of the bittersweet season, Greg Schiano can still point to the 2006 season as he is comfortably perched on his green chair.

South Florida had a fantastic start to the season, highlighted by wins over its rival UCF and the league bully West Virginia. Unfortunately, it fell apart as the Bulls fell from 6-0 to 9-4 after the blowout loss to Oregon in the Sun Bowl. It was a collapse that coach Jim Leavitt can learn from. His job is more than safe, but the only coach this program has ever known could have earned the elusive blue chair if he had not befallen the #2 curse. Instead, he remains on the green chair.

Syracuse continues to be the clear benthic layer of the BEast. The good news? They won a conference game. The bad news? They lost to Miami University. Greg Peterson is in deep trouble and he will be gone if he does not inspire this team to at least the level of Paul Pasqualoni’s last season. It was a minor miracle that he was not canned after last year’s crapfest, which brought his record to 7-29 with the Orange. Robinson gets an orange chair to match the school color. Any loss now could turn that chair red and his employment in upstate New York a bad memory.

West Virginia had a great season, although in mid-December it did not look that way. An early loss to South Florida was no shame, but the loss to Pittsburgh in the season finale kept the Mountaineers out of the BCS National Championship Game. Then came the departure of Rich Rodriguez for the Michigan job. However, all of that became irrelevant as interim coach Bill Stewart boldly and thoroughly demonstrated his credentials with another fantastic bowl performance by a school with a shoddy history of bowl games, clobbering Bob Stoops and Oklahoma in the Fiesta Bowl. The interim tag was quickly lifted and Mountaineer fans look forward to a bright future following Rodriguez’s hasty bounce. Stewart earns a green chair for 2008, as do almost all new coaches, but with some gold lace thanks to the 1-0 record already achieved.