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.
* = 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.
Follow me on twitter @TheSmittyBlog
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