My College Football Conferences (Part 2)

(continued from part 1)*

After going through the BCS conferences in the previous blog I will now discuss the Non-BCS conferences as well as my custom bowl affiliations and permanent divisional cross-over rivalries.

The first conference on the list is Conference USA, which, because of its very broad name and the inability to rename conferences, made for a perfect place to dump teams without regard for geography.

In real life, the conference is set up in the usual 2 divisional conference model, complete with a championship game. In my world though, this original conference has been completely picked apart and very little if anything is the same. So, I’ll only show my version...nah,...screw it,...I’ll show them both just to contrast just how different the two are:

Conference USA as it is now:

East Division:
East Carolina
Marshall
Memphis
Southern Miss
UAB
UCF

West Division:
Houston
Rice
Southern Methodist
Tulane
Tulsa
UTEP

My C-USA:

Arkansas State
Mid Tenn State
Western Kentucky
ECU (East Carolina)
Memphis

Not all conferences went through so much turnover. Case in point, the MAC.
Mid-American Conference as it is now:

East Division:
Akron
Bowling Green
Buffalo
Kent State
Massachusetts
Miami (OH)
Ohio

West Division:
Ball State
Central Michigan
Eastern Michigan
Northern Illinois
Toledo
Western Michigan

The only change here was moving new 1-A UMass to the Big (L)East. Other than that, all things remained the same. In another neat example of my conference moving predicting the future, last year I moved Temple to the Big East. This year, Temple will be in the Big East in real life.

On to another conference that was complete picked apart, but I’d have to say my favorite Non-BCS conference in my set up.

My Sun Belt Conference:

UAB - (University of Alabama Birmingham)
UL Lafayette - (University of Louisiana Lafayette)
Louisiana Tech
Tulane - (Also in Louisiana)
UL Monroe - (University of Louisiana Monroe)
Southern Miss
Troy - (Alabama)

Seeing as I wasn’t allowed to change conference names, I liked that there were enough small teams from Louisiana and elsewhere in the southeastern US to make up a conference called “The Sun Belt”.

Now, it’s time for the last real conference:

My Western Athletic Conference:

Nevada
San Diego State
Fresno State
UNLV
Hawai'i
San Jose State

Another good name/geographical fit with the WAC, refugees and castoffs after all the moving dust settled.

Last group of teams, if you can call it that, the Independents. So called, because they are not in any conference. Not really even going to list them here. Just the other service academies and Notre Dame. Only real change from real life is that I moved newly independent BYU to the MWC. As I said in my previous blog, I would have like to have Air Force in with Independents, but I just couldn’t get it to work....yet...

Occasionally, when these larger conference championship having conferences form it is necessary to separate teams that previously had a long standing rivalry. The solution to this in many cases is a yearly permanent crossover game. For example, Illinois and Northwestern were separated by the divisions of the new Big Ten. To keep the rivalry going on a yearly basis (both teams are in Illinois), they play a yearly cross divisional game. The rest of the cross divisional games are rotated so that all teams in the other division eventually play.

This permanent cross divisional rivalry would have been great when the Big 12 formed, keeping the Nebraska/Oklahoma game going on a yearly basis...but I’m sure Texas nixed that.

I didn’t set up permanent cross divisional rivalries for every conference. Pretty much only did it for conferences that already did so.

Here are mine:

Big Ten Permanent Division Crossovers:

Nebraska vs Penn State

Nebraska/Penn State have a history together in non-conference match ups. This is also the real life crossover game, so I just kept it intact.

Iowa vs Michigan State

Because I moved both Michigan teams to the other division, this is a unique match up to my game. I liked the way it sounded. Two typically middle of the road Big Ten teams, seems fair.

Minnesota vs Michigan

This is actually a trophy game in real life. In real life, this is a divisional game. So in my setup, I thought it necessary to keep the battle for the jug intact.

Wisconsin vs Ohio State

Another unique match-up in my setting. The main reason I went with these two teams is they are normally on par with each other, so it was mostly a fairness thing.

Illinois vs Indiana

Went with this because it was a good border battle match-up. Not only between the two teams involved, but because it is pretty much my border between divisions.

Purdue vs Northwestern

I would like to say this was an awesome fit that I had tons of reasons for, but it pretty much is just a “what was left over” match-up. That and I didn’t mind giving my Boilermakers a cupcake for their permanent crossover.

Big 12 Permanent Division Crossovers:

Kansas vs Houston

I don’t have a lot of awesome reasons for this one, but I nonetheless really liked the idea of this match-up. Don’t really have a reason for that other than it just “felt right”.

KSU vs TCU

Didn’t realize it until now but this is a purple team battle. As with the other Big 12 crossovers, I tried to go with team playing style and traditional level of success.

Oklahoma vs Texas

The Red River Rivalry, even though I nerfed the Longhorns into total suckitude, I still felt the need to the preserve this rivalry. In last year’s game, I played Oklahoma every year as Nebraska which meant a loss every year for the Sooners Haven’t started doing that in this year’s game, but in case I do, this will (sort of) balance out a scheduled loss against me with a scheduled win against the hapless (thanks to me) Longhorns.

This match-up was also the main reason I went with permanent crossovers in my Big 12, because even when the Big 12 had 12 teams they didn’t do permanent crossovers.

Oklahoma State vs Texas Tech

They are traditionally pass heavy spread teams. This is another “felt right” match-up.

Mizzoo vs Texas A&M

A match-up of this year’s newest SEC teams. I liked this match-up, too. Actually, come to think of it, I was pleased top to bottom with the Big 12 crossovers, makes me wish I could play cpu vs cpu in online mode.

Iowa State vs Baylor

This match up is based mostly on traditional strength, or in these teams’ cases, lack thereof. In recent years, ISU has been on the upswing and Baylor had its first heisman trophy winner last year. For the most part, in real life they’ve been the basement dwellers of their respective conferences. I find it somewhat fitting that in real life they’re both improving although I’d expect Baylor to take a dive this year now that RG3** has graduated.

SEC Permanent Division CrossOvers:

As far as I know, I left these crossovers as-is. The lone exception being Georgia Tech replacing South Carolina in the Arkansas/South Carolina crossover.

What to do when all is said done? The conferences have played their games and it’s time to ship the teams off to BCS bowls.

Orange Bowl
Growing up watching Nebraska lose to one team or another from Florida every year, it seems fitting to tie my new conference with an entire division full of Florida teams to this bowl and I did just that. Same deal with the Big 12 I tied them to this bowl in remembrance of when the Big Eight champion automatically went to the Orange Bowl. I can still remember seeing the Oranges landing on the field from the stands during waning moments of a last game of the season victory over Oklahoma.

Rose Bowl
Kept the Pac 12/Big Ten thing going. Never going to happen though as my Nebraska team and perhaps eventually the other team I’m playing as (Washington State) will normally be undefeated and headed to the National Championship game instead. Even if one or the other of my teams loses the odds that BOTH teams I’m playing as lose in a single season is ridiculously slim. All that being said, no reason to keep the match up going on paper.

Sugar Bowl
In the coming years the SEC and Big 12 winners will meet in a new bowl called the Champions Bowl. For the same reasons as the above Rose Bowl, only in real life, I don’t see this happening very often. For now, as far as I can recall, the SEC is currently tied to the Sugar. That and the fact that it’s played in Atlanta makes for a good fit.

The Big East and MWC’s both have automatic bids in my set up as well, but not tied to any specific bowl, leaving a one bowl at large spot to pacify the Non-BCS conferences.

Thank you to everyone for reading my little manifesto. I realize it may not mean much to most, and nothing at all to some, but it is something that is very enjoyable to me and I felt the need to share.Thank you for letting me do so.

Lots of people have hobbies, mine just happens to be living in my own little football world. Where I have the conferences set up in a way that makes my game uniquely my own.

Thanks again for reading.

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*= Makes sense doesn’t it?
**= In making that link I learned he was born in Japan....never would have guessed that...

My College Football Conferences

The year was 2009ish* I was listening to Jason Peter’s radio show in a park with my girlfriend at the time’s dog. Missouri was all but begging to get out of the Big 12 and get into the Big Ten. I’m not positive but I think the governor was even involved.

Jason and his co-host poked fun at Joe Paterno for suggesting the Big Ten needed to add a 12th team so the conference could hold a championship game. Jason also joked, wouldn’t it be cool if Nebraska ended up in the Big Ten? Right..........that would never happen...

Today:

• Missouri is in the SEC
• Nebraska is in the Big Ten
• Colorado is in the Pac 12
• Texas A&M is in the SEC
• TCU and West Virginia are in the Big 12
• The radio show was canceled
• I broke up with that girlfriend and never really see that dog anymore and haven’t been to that park in ages.
• Joe Paterno has since been fired after coaching at Penn State since dinosaurs roamed the field, dying a few days/weeks/whatever later and turned into some kind of anti-christ.

Things change in life, even over the course of a few years. These unfathomable, unforeseeable and in some cases (“like how could Nebraska ever in the Big Ten?!”**) downright laughable, can come to pass.

These unseen changes can therefore create understandable unforeseen domino effects.

One of the effects of all this team shuffling was EA Sports, makers of the annual college football video game, saw the writing on the wall and enabled players to shuffle teams to different conferences. The first year this was very limited, but admirable at the time on such short notice.

That year's game let you only swap teams, you could move teams but each conference had to end up with the same number of teams they had to begin with. The following year, the game added the ability to alter not only the teams in a conference but the size of said conference and its bowl affiliation.

A smart move on EA’s part, at the time team conference musical chairs were in full force and there was no way to know who was going to be left out and who was going to be sitting in what conference chair when it was all over.

From this real life mess, and these real life changes, a new tradition has emerged, every year since the earliest most limited version of the conference team moving ability, I have scoured over the teams (now up to 123 in this years version) to come up with conferences that suit my desires most.

I don’t have OCD, but when it comes to putting teams in conferences, my brain tends to churn on the different possibilities endlessly until I am completely unable to stop thinking about it. In fact as I write this, I worry that in sharing what I ended up with THIS year I’ll spot some things that I just HAVE to change....and be back to lying in bed at night thinking things like....”If I move Tulsa to THIS conference then I can......” on and on until I fall asleep, awash in my team moving puzzle.

So, at the risk of sending myself into another team moving binge, I’m going to share with you the conferences I ended up with and why I put them that way.

I will include the real life versions*** compared with what I ended up.

Even in its third year of existence the conference editor still has its limitations. You cannot completely delete a conference or create new ones. Nor can you have less than 4 teams in a conference or more than 16. These additional limitations only add to the puzzle-like nature of my OCDesque ponderings of what team I should put where.

I’ll start alphabetically and move through the BCS conferences. Called BCS conferences because they are the traditional power conferences and a team winning such a conferences gets an automatic bid to play in a BCS bowl. Named because these bowls rotate hosting the National Championship game.

ACC as it is now:

Atlantic Division
Boston College
Clemson
Florida State
Maryland
North Carolina State
Wake Forest

Coastal Division
Duke
Georgia Tech
Miami (FL)
North Carolina
Virginia
Virginia Tech

You’ll notice that Florida State and Miami(FL) are in different divisions, I personally don’t like this, but it was done for the same reason Ohio State and Michigan were put into different divisions in the Big Ten. The idea from the powers that be were hoping that those two teams will someday meet in the conference championship. If they are in the same division they will never meet in the conference championship. I know this sounds dumb, but I’ll put in a frame of reference so that my more local readers can see why this was done the way it was done.

Growing up, Oklahoma/Nebraska was the defacto Big Eight conference championship. If they were in the same division in sort of a “Super Big Eight”, the Oklahoma/Nebraska game would never play for the conference title.

Another cool thing about the ACC is that they used portions of the conferences full name, to name the divisions: Atlantic Coastal Conference = Atlantic Division + Coastal Division. I sort of wish the Big Ten went that route instead of Legends and Leaders..... Big Ten = Big Division + Ten Division...nope,...makes too much sense...

All that being said, this is my fantasy college football world...and I ended up putting almost all of the Florida teams in the same conference, and I scrapped the division names even though I just got done talking about how neat they were....

MY ACC - My Changes in Italics
Carolina Division
North Carolina
Duke
NC State
Clemson
South Carolina^ - Swapped with Georgia Tech from the SEC
Wake Forest

Florida Division
Florida State
FIU - Snagged from a lessor Non-BCS conference
USF - Moved from the Big East
Florida Atlantic  - Snagged from a lessor Non-BCS conference
Miami^
UCF  - Snagged from a lessor Non-BCS conference

The game may not allow you to rename or eliminate conferences, but it does let you change the names of divisions within conferences. As you can imagine I had a lot of fun with this. This ability also ended up affecting where teams were entirely.

This is the first example of what you will see as a running theme. State based divisions/conferences. In this case all teams in the Carolina Division are either in North or South Carolina, Florida the same,...

Some would take issue with adding FAU, FIU and even UCF to the same conference/division. With the more traditional powers of FSU and Miami, the facilities mismatch between the teams is staggering, and I have to admit it does bother me a little. In the end, I just liked the Florida vs Carolina conference.

Big 12 as it is now:

Baylor
Iowa State
Kansas
Kansas State
Oklahoma
Oklahoma State
TCU
Texas
Texas Tech
West Virginia

Yes,....West Virginia is now in what was once the Big Eight plus a few refugee teams from Texas.....I won’t comment on that....

My Big 12 - My Changes in Italics
Big Eight Division
Kansas State
Iowa State
Oklahoma State
Kansas
Missouri - Moved back from the SEC which they will be in for the first time this year to their original home in the Big 12
Oklahoma

Texas Division
Texas^
TCU
Texas A&M - Moved back from the SEC which they will be in for the first time this year to their original home in the Big 12
Texas Tech
Baylor
Houston - Snagged from a lessor Non-BCS conference

The Big Eight division is made up of teams from the original Big Eight, minus Colorado and Nebraska. The Texas Division name, I originally struggled with as it is the exact same as a team in that division, but alternatives like “Southwestern” and “Lone Star” division didn’t really tickle my fancy.

For some reason, I really really badly wanted to include Tulsa in with their Oklahoma brethren, but I just couldn’t get it to work. Doing so resulted in what I will simply refer to from here on out as the “implosion” phenomenon. Moving one team results in a domino effect that results in a completely unworkable mess that I end up not even being able to finish. So, I had to leave them out at the cost of my OCDness just to keep the almost chemical like balance stable enough to avoid “implosion”.

Cool side note, I had the same set up for the Big 12 in  last year's game, but TCU hadn’t made any indication they wanted in the Big 12. A year later....I don’t have to move them at all.....things keep changing...

Big East as it is now:

Cincinnati
Connecticut
Louisville
Pittsburgh
Rutgers
South Florida
Syracuse
Temple

The Big East is so full of folly in real life it is often referred to by unkind non-Big East fans as “The Big (L)East. The problems with the Big East in the recent past and the near future are enough to fill a blog in its own right. This blog is going to be epically long enough as is, so I’ll skip straight to my variation of the conference:



My Big East - Pretty much everything is turned upside down here, so just assume pretty much everything is changed. Added () to explain where some of these schools are to those who may not be familiar.

N England Division
Boston College
Rutgers (New Jersey)
Syracuse (Upstate New York)
Pittsburgh
Connecticut
Louisville
UMass

Virginia Division
Virginia Tech
Maryland
Marshall (West Virginia)
Cincinnati
Virginia
West Virginia
Temple (Philadelphia)


I tried to got with the State conference theme again. I realize not everyone in the Virginia division is in Virginia and a few of the schools in the “N England” division are not in New England, but in my defense in the coming years, the Big East is set to add San Diego State and Boise State,...teams which as you can gather, couldn’t be farther from the east,...so cut me some slack....

That being said, I know I promised myself that I wouldn’t let my writing of this blog make me re-think/re-organize things, but I may just reorganize teams within the divisions. My geography looks messed up a bit...could be better...perhaps I’m wrong.

Also, with the addition of UMass, in real life, to the 1-A level, I got to add Marshall to the Virginia division. This makes the Big East bigger than most conferences in my game, but I don’t mind as much. There is some truth to the “Big (L)east” backlash and I don’t mind only one team emerging as champion from this set of 14.... Kinda seems to even the playing field, at least in my mind.

As you might guess “N England” stands for “New England”, but Division name character limitations prevented me from using the name I wanted. Come to think of it, that was why I didn’t go with “Southwestern” for the Texas half of my Big 12 conference.

Big Ten as it is now:

Legends
Iowa
Michigan
Michigan State
Minnesota
Nebraska
Northwestern


Leaders
Illinois
Indiana
Ohio State
Penn State
Purdue
Wisconsin

As I stated earlier, the Big Ten got organized based on the hope that Ohio State and Michigan would someday meet in the championship, just like their end of the year match up meant for so many decades. Another reason the divisions were set up this way was to preserve as many yearly rivalries as possible and prevent one division from being way better and dominant over another division (as was the case with the Big 12 toward the end of it’s actually have 12 teams and a championship).

Such reasons don’t make much sense in my world. After all, I’m playing as Nebraska, which means I’ll more than likely be winning not only the conference every year but also the national championship....so no real need to worry about divisional balance then....

Like last year, I didn’t move any teams to or from the Big Ten, just swapped divisions for some teams to create an East/West geographical alignment, which if you haven’t noticed already...I kinda have a thing for.

Last year I went with the ACC division naming method, naming the Divisions “Big” and “Ten”. This year, I went with “Plains” and “Lakes”. I realized this doesn’t make 100% sense and I may change it back to “Big” and “Ten”, but at the time, Lakes and Plains, felt right:

My Big Ten:

Plains Division
Nebraska
Wisconsin
Minnesota
Northwestern (it's by Chicagoish)
Illinois
Iowa

Lakes Plains
Michigan
Indiana
Ohio State
Michigan State
Penn State
Purdue (it's in Indiana)

Like Tulsa, I’m always tempted to shoehorn both Pitt and Notre Dame (which is in Indiana in case you didn’t know) into the Big Ten, especially since Notre Dame already has yearly rivalries with Michigan State, Michigan, and Purdue, but they would both have to be added to the Eastern division, resulting in the need for two more teams in the western (plains) division,... It would also result in myself playing in the biggest conference in my game (16 teams), which I wasn’t fond of when I first made this set up,...but now that I think about it, it would provide more variety.....and perhaps allow me to play as Purdue without much annoyance of playing the same teams twice every year....hmm...

Anyway...at the time, adding Notre Dame and Pitt would result in implosion so I left it be.

MWC as it is now:

Air Force
Boise State
Colorado State
Fresno State
Hawaii
Nevada
New Mexico
San Diego State
UNLV
Wyoming

My MWC:

Mountain Division:
Utah
Tulsa
Air Force
Colorado State
Utah State
Colorado
BYU
Wyoming

West Division:
SMU
UTEP
New Mexico State
North Texas
UTSA
Rice
New Mexico
Texas State

The Mountain West Conference isn’t a BCS conference in real life, but with sixteen teams total and if the Big East gets to keep their BCS affiliation, I’m cool with them having BCS status in my little college football world.

The two divisions are a north/south split using the ACC division naming method. I realize “west” doesn’t really fit the division made up of mostly texas teams, but I think of “Wild West”, which makes me think of people in cowboy hats, which seems to fit Texas....screw you...it made sense to me.

Some things did bother me about this arrangement. I already talked about Tulsa,...but also, I don’t really like having Air Force in there. They fit geographically (Ft. Collins Colorado), but I prefer to have all the service academies as independents. I had trouble finding teams to fill the mountain division though, so there they stayed.

I really like how UTEP is sort of the linch-pin of the West division, as it is actually closer to the New Mexico schools than any of other Texas teams. Not sure why this brings me such joy...but it does.

Also of note, two of the three teams new to the 1A level are in the Mountain division, Texas State and UTSA, the road runners....cool team name if you ask me...I wish them the best of luck.


Pac 12 as it is now:

North Division
California
Oregon
Oregon State
Stanford
Washington
Washington State

South Division
Arizona
Arizona State
Colorado
UCLA
USC
Utah


My Pac 12:
Calizona Division
UCLA
Stanford
Arizona State
USC
Arizona
Cal

Northwest Division
Washington State
Washington
Idaho
Oregon
Oregon State
Boise State

Only change here is I moved Colorado and Utah to the MWC and moved in the two Idaho schools. Boise fits pretty good, but with their tiny Kibbie Dome (capacity 18,000) in a little place called Moscow, Idaho doesn’t really jive well with UCLA’s Rose Bowl (92,000), but I like the geographical fit and I have a soft spot for Idaho.

I thought about make a custom version of Idaho with a bigger stadium, but I was in a hurry to play and never did it....maybe next year.

Last year, I had a complete “California” division with the addition of Fresno State and San Diego State, but this year I moved Arizona and Arizona State back in their place. The result is a conference that is a combination of California and Arizona “Calizona”. Calizona sounds like some sort of lasagna/pizza hybrid Pizza Hut is about to introduce.....

Neat fictional sandwiches aside... now I’m wondering if I left Arizona and Arizona State in the MWC like I had last year, I could move Tulsa....crap! Nevermind...stop thinking about that!......I’m sure I tried that and I’m sure it didn’t work.

Another aspect of this conference is that I’m playing as Washington State. So, I had extra interest in this conferences make up when I got things started.

< insert link to previous blog here> As you might recall from a previous blog ol’ Wazzo is my new second favorite team, although I found it hard not to still play as Purdue, I just didn’t want to be playing Big Ten teams twice every season if I played as Nebraska too,...wait,...we already covered that didn’t we? My bad.

SEC as it is now:

East Division:
Florida
Georgia
Kentucky
Missouri
South Carolina
Tennessee
Vanderbilt

West Division:
Alabama
Arkansas
Auburn
LSU
Mississippi State
Ole Miss
Texas A&M

My SEC:

East Division:
Florida
Tennessee
Georgia
Georgia Tech
Kentucky
Vanderbilt

West Division:
Mississippi State
Alabama
LSU
Arkansas
Ole Miss
Auburn

Other than the swap I mentioned earlier with Georgia Tech for South Carolina, I just restored the SEC back to how it was before they added Missouri and Texas A&M before this season.

I toyed with the idea of moving Florida to the ACC’s all Florida division but the result was, as you might have guessed, implosion.

That’s it for now. As I write this, I’m not ever sure all of this will fit on a single blog, for now though, this is it for part 1. The 2nd part will consist of the non-BCS conferences, my custom bowl affiliations, and permanent cross divisional rivalry set-ups.

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* = I think
**= Me in 2009
***=As of today, things could change depending on what Texas has up their ass
^ = This is a team that I replaced with a much more horrible version with the team creator tool. They look exactly the same as the real life version of the school except the suck really really hard. In every case I can think of this is because I really really hate said school.