PonyFans.com

Okay, I thought of this, but...

Can you believe that Baylor is losing money in the big 12? Also, TCU is losing a ton on C-USA. SMU actually made money in the WAC even though we were awful in footballt hat year.

I think the answer in conference athletics is promotion/relegation with a major and minor regional conference to cut down on travel expenses.

For example, in our region, the major conference would be the big 12 south with one extra team, LSU (there would still be a big 12, but the north would add a team too, and it would be the big 14). The loser of the big 12 south would play a game against the winner of the minor conference for promotion/relegation.

This way, there would not be a perrinial loser (Baylor), which ends up losing a ton of money because they always have losing teams. The minor conference teams would be excited about football because every year they have a chance to move up and play with the big boys.

The minor regional conference would start out as all remaining Texas, Louisiana, and Oklahoma division one schools: SMU, TCU, Houston, Tulsa, UTEP, Rice, Tulane, Louisiana Tech, Louisiana-Lafeyette, North Texas. Instead of going to a bowl game, the conference winner will play against the Big 12 south loser for a chance to get promoted to the big 12.

This way, you have promotion/relegation to make things more competitive. You also don't necessarily have to include the minor teams in BCS bowl games because their benefit of winning their conference is to fight for promotion. So it allows you to do the following with the BCS picture:

1) every major conference has a conference championship game, which is effectively the first round of the BCS playoff system.

2) The major conferences will be Pac 10, SEC, Big 12, Big 10, ACC, Big East.

3) The Pac 10, Big East, ACC, and Big 10 will expand by at least two teams so that they can host a conference championship game. Notre Dame, BYU, Fresno would be examples of teams that are included into the conferences.

4) The BCS playoffs will begin two weeks after the conference championship, and will have the winners of the BCS conferences, and two at large teams who can come from either BCS conferences or minor conferences. So 8 teams total, and the playoffs will last three weeks.

What do you think?

I kind of like your idea. Do you mean to leave Baylor in the Big 12? Or are you adding them to your proposed regional conference?

Also, the one thing that I see that would never get approved would be the clause about the conference winner playing the Big 12 South loser for the chance to join the Big 12. There's no way the Big 12 would allow a rotating membership and dangle that last spot to some potentially unattractive (to them) schools. Can you imagine the Big 12 bigwigs trying to put up a positive spin if they somehow have to welcome Tulsa, Louisiana-Lafayette or North Texas (calm down, NTSU fans - I'm thinking in terms of TV/ticket markets here) to the fold? Neither can I.

I've seen this porposed before, and one thing that no one seems to think about is what happens when a school say SMU schedules a home and home series against one of the schools in the bigger conference say Texas Tech. The first year we play in separate conferences, but SMU win their smaller conference and the play-in game, while Texas Tech stays in the big conference by not coming in last. The second year you now have to regular season games scheduled against the same team, I don't know that many schools would opt for that and all the scheduling problems it can create every year.

Actually, that would be an easy scheduling conflict to resolve. You just lost a slwe of games against regional teams, one of which would probably enjoy keeping the rivalry alive and having low transportation costs. So you would reschedule your TT game against someone like TCU, who you no longer would have a conference game with.

Also, I think it would make the major conferences stronger, because you wouldn't have teams just trying to hang on to a paycheck (see Vandy, Baylor, Duke). And no teams would be "undesirables", they would have earned the right to play with the big boys.

To answer the first question, Baylor would be in the Big 12 the first year, and when they finish last, would be able to host a promotion/relegation game.

I've mentioned this kind of possible realignment in the past in which BCS conferences are paired with regional Mid Major conferences and the loser drops out and the winner jumps in. Scheduling would not be that difficult in that the winner and loser would just swap schedules for that year with a little horse-trading to keep rivalry games.
But you are correct that there would be problesm in that if the Aggies finished last and were demoted, they would not have their perennial game with the Horns the next year. I don't think anything like this will happen unless there is a big enough stink and perhaps some antitrust action to spur it on. I also suspect that the team dropping out would be back the next year. It would also give the Mid-major teams something to shoot for besides a bid to the Ex-Lax Bowl in Cowlick, California. The other interesting point to be made is that our football team is our football team was 5th among all the mid-major schools in football revenue. That means that we were ahead of 7 schools in C-USA, 7 teams in Mountain West, the entire MAC, WAC and SBC. So when people pick on our attendance figures, the response is that it shows in our revenues. Show us yours.