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A Wholly Stupid Conference Realignment Strategy that Will Surely Make Everyone Mad

Bored on a Monday during social distancing, something told me to redraw the current FBS conference alignments. G5 and P5 are no longer meaningful distinctions. There are now ten FBS conferences of between 10 and 12 teams. I am not a college football traditionalist, and I like staring at maps without doing all of the complicated math or GIS technical wizardry to determine whether I'm actually making the most efficient groupings or not. I'm sure I'm also getting some regional identities wrong, and some schools are more shoehorned into a conference because others fit elsewhere better, and reducing conferences below 14 teams was a big goal.

So without further ado, here's my colossally dumb realignment strategy guaranteed to make people mad. Most of these are made by very rough geographical areas that seemed fine when I hashed this out. I don't know how the conference championships or newly cross-conference rivalries should be handled. I didn't actually think this ahead. If you have any ideas, you're welcome to add them.

Pacific Conference: (10 teams)
Washington
Washington State
Hawai'i
Cal
Stanford
SJSU
Fresno State
Nevada
Oregon
Oregon State

This was a somewhat easy conference to come up with. Schools along the Pacific coast from the Bay area north (plus Hawai'i) were grouped together. Nevada and Washington State aren't coastal, but this was early (I moved along the map from west to east), Nevada had to go somewhere, and I figured keeping the Apple Cup was good. I wasn't as nice regarding rivalries later on.

Rockies Conference: (10 teams)
Boise State
Utah State
Utah
BYU
Wyoming
Colorado State
Colorado
Air Force
Kansas State
Nebraska

Yeah, I said 10 was the minimum, but this is the hardest conference to round out according to my arbitrary plans. I may have come up with a solution later on, though. There's not much else going on here except these schools generally play in the Rockies or are in the Mountain Time Zone. I get that Idaho is very close to Wazzu, but it's my list.

Desert Conference: (10 teams)
UNLV
ASU
Zona
UNM
NMSU
UTEP
Texas Tech
UCLA
USCw
SDSU

This is actually the first conference I started splitting from the Pac-12, and on the map, it makes sense. Southern California schools through a band of the southwest to West Texas fill this out. You could even make a cool division name scheme on the different deserts involved. I haven't spent too much time in the southwest, but I loved the time I was there, so I wanted the desert to stick out and have its own moment to shine. Also, if it hasn't happened yet, this is where people start getting really Mad Online, as the Rose Bowl is now split off from the upper Pacific schools. I promise things get worse.

I-35 Conference: (10 Teams)
North Texas
SMU
TCU
Baylor
TAMU
Texas
Texas State
UTSA
Rice
Houston

When I visited the Texas State History Museum last August, there was a placard that mentioned a very significant portion of the population in Texas is concentrated along I-35. By the map, six of the ten schools in this conference follow suit (TAMU looks about halfway between the wedge of I-35 and I-45, and the Houston area schools trail off a bit), so that's how the conference gets its name and school selection.

Plains Conference: (10 teams)
Oklahoma
Okie Light
Tulsa
Arky
Arkansas State
Illinois
Kansas
Iowa
Iowa State
Mizzou

I've seen a lot of bickering about exactly what the Midwest is, so I avoided using it in any conference names. This is mostly a combo of that operate, well, in the Great Plains. Pretty easy. Arkansas and Mizzou are sort of outliers here, but they fit in my arbitrary geography, so you guys are stuck with them. This breaks up the endless B1G, Big XII, old Southwest Conference, why not dump some off on the SEC head scratching that this region provided. Commence new head scratching.

Upper Gulf Watershed Conference: (12 teams)
La Tech
ULM
Louisiana Lafayette
LSU
Tulane
Memphis
UAB
Ole Miss
Clanga
USM
Bama
South Alabama

I've split the SEC up. This conference is roughly somewhere close to the path of the Mississippi River or places it drains. I've got nothing else, but at least Bama and LSU can continue to play each other.

Piedmont Conference: (10 teams)
Barn
Troy
Georgia State
UGA
Clemson
Vandy
Georgia Tech
MTSU
South Carolina
UNC Charlotte

This is mostly the area that comprises the current SEC East. Since a fair amount of the schools lie in the Southern Piedmont, that's what I went with. Seems a nice and compact conference with some potentially good matchups in there as well as some new regular games to be played.

Appalachian Conference: (12 teams)
Kentucky
Louisville
Cincy
Marshall
WVU
App State
Virginia Tech
Pitt
Penn State
Western Kentucky
Tennessee
Liberty

Here I go playing with fire. I liked the idea of conferences based around mountain ranges and other geographic features, so here's an attempt to mix stuff up. Generally, this follows the heart of the Appalachian Mountains and the heart of old coal country.

Lower Great Lakes Conference: (12 teams)
Kent State
Purdue
Miami Hydroxide
Indiana
Ball State
Ohio State
Ohio
Akron
Toledo
Bowling Green
Notre Dame
Northwestern

Lower Great Lakes in this case involves the southernmost states that border the Great Lakes. Notre Dame finally joins a conference, and since any conference would make them mad, this seems perfectly fine. Northwestern gets the nod for this conference over the next one since it's on the shore of Lake Michigan, a bit further east than NIU, and I really wanted to keep conferences at an even number.

Upper Great Lakes Conference: (10 teams)
Minnesota
Wisconsin
Western Michigan
Central Michigan
Eastern Michigan
Michigan
Michigan State
Northern Illinois
Buffalo
Syracuse

This was kind of fun. Even though the schools aren't that much further north than those in the LGLC, the states they are located in stretch a lot further north. Plus, we can add newcomers Buffalo and Syracuse into the conference for more people to argue about who the best cold weather teams are.

East Coast Bias Conference: (12 teams)
Boston College
UMASS
UCONN
Army
Rutgers
Temple
Navy
Maryland
Virginia
Old Dominion
Eastern Carolina
Coastal Carolina

I tried my best to make a coastal conference that actually sticks to the east coast here. And we also have the major East Coast Bias media markets dominating. UVA is the furthest inland by far, making this conference make more sense than the ACC.

South Atlantic Conference: (12 teams)
Duke
Wake Forest
UNC
NCSU
Georgia Southern
UCF
FAU
Miami Fluoride
USF
FIU
FSU
Florida

This was the last conference I came up with. It's the most jumbled and is basically the Florida schools and the North Carolina schools I didn't think could be broken apart properly. Georgia Southern is also there ready for a permanent neutral site game against Florida in Jacksonville. As ham-fisted this conference is since it's the leftovers of schools I didn't fit into other places, it still makes more sense than the ACC.

I went through the above trying to figure out where my math went wrong since I was getting only 129 schools. Then I realized the map I was using to visualize this was made before 2018. I didn't want to redo everything to add Liberty in, so they have been kicked out of FBS or will play all games away as the tenth team in the Rockies Conference. Whichever solution makes more people mad is what we'll go with.

I had fun coming up with this and look forward to hearing how I've messed this up.

EDIT: Of course the UGA guy forgets Tech...Completely unintentionally. They go into the Piedmont. Tennessee, being in the mountains moves into the Appalachian Conference, and Liberty can be in their natural geographic location, bringing the Appalachian Conference to 12 members. Idaho had moved down to FCS, which I forgot, so that made the Rockies Conference only eight teams. The dumb logic of this entire post moves Kansas State and Nebraska to the Rockies Conference, making both them and the Plains Conference an even 10 teams.

EDIT 2: Miscounted Plains Conference. Arkansas State has been moved to actually make it ten teams. UAB, which was supposed to be in the same conference as the Bama and Mississippi schools has been moved to the renamed Upper Gulf Watershed Conference (to be more accurate with inclusion of the Alabama schools not in the Mississippi River watershed).

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