by Charleston Pony » Thu May 31, 2001 8:10 pm
I don't see any of the 12 school conferences wanting to break away from that mold...unless it would both reduce travel expenses AND improve the overall strength of the conference. For the SEC, that would mean adding schools like Fla St or Clemson in the east and UT, A$M or OU in the west. I could see a conference wanting to expand to 14 schools, since that would set up 6 divisional games (presumably closer in proximity to reduce travel) and require only 2 cross-over games. Of course, in the SEC, Alabama/Auburn are closer to Georgia than they would be to Texas or Oklahoma. Realistically, I don't see this happening.
What does make sense, in order to structure Division I football for a playoff system, is to require all conferences to have at least 12 members and have conference championships (like most now have bball tourneys) to determine their playoff representative. This would effectively force the consolidation of the SunBelt, WAC, MWC & CUSA into just 3 conferences. It might also FINALLY force Notre Dame to join the Big 10 (where they belong). It would make for some interesting shuffling of schools as the ACC and Big East expanded to 12 and the other conferences (CUSA, MWC & WAC) then back-filled to get to 12 schools.