For the past 22 years it's been an annual tradition of mine to buy the Sporting News College Football Preview Magazine. I look forward to it at the beginning of each summer, or at the end of spring, as the case may be. It seems to be in stores a little prematurely this year, as the local cover features one Terrelle Pryor. The magazine ranks the Buckeyes number 8 to start the year. Do the writers still feel this way now?
Today I'd like to take stock of the changing college football landscape and review what the conferences in Division 1-A (or FBS, if you prefer) look like now, in the wake of some movement of teams. Some of these line-ups are pretty curious, so we'll have to do our best to make some sense of the situation.
ACC-No changes here, still 12 teams in 2 divisions of 6. A simple North/South Division set-up would have worked nicely here, but the ACC apparently believes that it is in the league's best interest to have Florida State and Miami potentially meet in a conference title game as often as possible. People evidently love rematches, as those teams meet every year anyway. People love rematches. I don't.
Big East-Still 8 teams. The league recently replaced departed members Boston College,Miami, and Virginia Tech with Cincinnati, Louisville, and South Florida. At least these teams are more or less in the 'East'. The plan to bring in Texas Christian in the near future makes less sense to me than anything that I've ever seen in college football.
Big Ten-With the addition of Nebraska, which broke long ties with the likes of Kansas, Missouri, and Oklahoma, this is now a 12-team, 2-divison conference. Was the conference split into East and West Divisions? No. Let's just say that I don't like the final decision that was made for team placements and we'll leave that discussion for another day.
Big Twelve-Lost Colorado and Nebraska and now stand as a ten team conference. One would think that a league called the Big 12 would want to have 12 teams in it. Texas Christian, anyone?
Conference USA-Still a 12-team, 2 division set-up, with East and West Divisions. Some leagues could learn something here.
Mid-American Conference-13 teams, 2 divisions. Why an unwieldy 13 teams? Because the Big East decided to kick Temple out a few years ago, and so the Owls needed a new home which they found as the MAC's 13th team. For football only. My guess is Bill Cosby wasn't consulted about this.
Mountain West-Lost 2 teams (BYU and Utah) and added 1 (Boise State). So now there's 8 teams. Pretty good league, and if you have Versus, you can actually watch their games.
Pacific 12-Added Colorado and Utah, neither of whom is anywhere near the Pacific Ocean. I guess Arizona and Arizona State really aren't on the coast, either. At least their new divisions make sense, I'll give them credit for that.
SEC-The gold standard in college football conferences. No changes, and none needed.
Sun Belt-The same 9 teams. That is, the same 9 teams that really ought to be in Division I-AA (or FCS).
Western Athletic Conference-Down to 8 teams from 9 with the loss of Boise State. The loss of the Broncos will undoubtedly be a gain for the rest of the league, which will finally have a shot at a conference crown.
Independents-Still Army, Navy, and Notre Dame. Oh and now BYU, too. Why BYU? I'm not really sure.
So that's it. There wasn't enough room here to list all the teams, but they can easily be found somewhere on the Web. Or buy the TSN Preview Magazine, which I highly recommend. To sum up, there are still 120 teams. There are 11 conferences, 6 of which are 12-team, 2 division set-ups (Except the MAC which has 13). One league has 10 teams, another has 9, and three others have 8. And there's 4 independents. We have a league called the Big Ten which has 12 teams, and a league called the Big Twelve which has 10 teams. Maybe one day we'll get this all figured out.
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