Conference Realignment - By the Numbers

After the recent announcement of USC and UCLA moving to the Big Ten, there's been talk of other Pac-12 teams eventually moving.  But there's also a chorus of "if the Big Ten wanted them, they would have taken them already."  

That got me thinking.

One thing we have noticed over the last couple of decades is that change can be slow and gradual.  Look at the national championship process -- they didn't immediately go to a 12 team playoff.  Instead, it was a series of steps over 30 years (Bowl Alliance to BCS to 4 team CFP to 12 teams).

I believe conference expansion and realignment is very similar in speed.  It's a gradual process, where a conference is not going to add too many teams at once.  Then I remembered that the Big 12 is adding four teams this year alone.

So I thought some more, and realized that there are two types of conferences in realignment.

First are the "power" conferences.  They kick off the realignment process by expansion.

Then you have the "reactive" conferences.  While they could end up with more members at the end of the process than the start, they usually do it from a position of reacting to a move from one of the "power" conferences.

Butterfly Effect Games: Hokie Football Edition

Happy Summer, everyone!   After a couple of early CFP-era “butterfly effect” games, I thought I’d finish this little series (at least for now) with a batch of games that could have totally re-shaped the highs and lows of my beloved Virginia Tech Hokies.  

I’ve got the pre-BCS, BCS, and CFP eras covered.  This is certainly not all-inclusive, and I anticipate covering even more games in the future!

Butterfly Effect Games: 2015 Arkansas at Ole Miss

 It's been a couple months since my first "CFP era" butterfly effect post. I'm back, and this time with a game that was one of THE defining moments of the season - and perhaps even beyond - even though neither team was an actual Playoff participant!  I also wanted to wait until this week to post this, as the date April 25 (4-25) holds some significance when talking about this game!

Butterfly Effect Games: 2014 Baylor-TCU

 As promised in my last post, I've got a few more "butterfly effect" games to highlight. It's been a while since I've done these, which means that we can now look at some games in the CFP era to determine their long-lasting significance.

Kicking things off: a game that seemed destined for one of these posts the moment the initial CFP field was set.

2022 Season Look-Back

 With the National Championship Game almost a week in the past, and the 2023 Week 0 games about 8 and a half months in the future, we've made it to the off-season.

I plan to do a couple of "butterfly effect" posts in the months to come, along with some other unusual looks into the past, present, and future of the sport.

But for now, I thought I'd take the opportunity to look back at the season that was, sharing some highlights and areas I'd like to see improved in the future.

2022 Regular Season Wrap-Up

Well, we've made it to the end of the regular season (aside from Army-Navy). So before we look forward to the bowl games to come, I thought I'd take a look back at the season we enjoyed and shared some highlights.

12 team playoff "what if": 2022

 2022 - Semifinals:  Peach and Fiesta

Top 4	Quarterfinal	First Round
#1 Georgia	Sugar	#9 Kansas State @ #8 Tennessee
#2 Michigan	Rose	#10 USC @ #7 Alabama
#3 Clemson	Orange	#11 Penn State @ #6 Ohio State
#4 Utah	Cotton	#12 Tulane @ #5 TCU

This format still allow for the same 12 teams in the New Year's Six.  Due to the uneven match-ups in the conference title games and a couple of upsets, the four teams getting first round byes are actually ranked #1, #2, #7, and #8.

The only guaranteed rematch comes from the Big Ten, where OSU had previously beaten PSU.

12 team playoff "What If": The early BCS era

In the final part of our "What If" exercise, we take a look at the early part of the BCS and apply the proposed 12 team playoff structure to those seasons.

Again, we will just be looking at seeding and early matchups, as the landscape of college football was vastly different at the time.

New Year's Six Projections: Week 13

 I think these projections/predictions will be quite boring, and probably not much different from next week.

Predicting the 2022 final four

This is probably the perfect year for exactly a 4-team playoff.  I believe it's going to be an easy decision for the top 4, and I think there's only one conference championship that matters.  However, there seems to be a lot of people expecting some sort of drama and debate.