BPBlueSox
07-20-2003, 10:59 PM
A conference plan that really makes some sense
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By Pat Forde
Special to ESPN.com
In a stunning nationwide revolution, the insurrectionists at ESPN.com have unseated NCAA president Myles Brand, demoted commissioners of the Bowl Championship Series conferences, torn up every existing conference television contract and installed Lee Corso as the new Supreme Allied Commander of College Sports.
Mascot headgear for everyone!
The purpose of the revolution: To completely realign conferences any damn way we please.
Not so fast, my friend? OK, maybe not. But a modest little web site can dream, can't it?
As long as Miami and Virginia Tech have gone to the ACC and started college athletics on the painful process of reordering itself, why not do it right? Why do a little window dressing when we should be knocking the entire house down and starting over?
Why not do it this way:
GREATER TOBACCO ROAD CONFERENCE
Members: Clemson, Duke, Maryland, North Carolina, North Carolina State, South Carolina, Vanderbilt, Virginia, Virginia Tech, Wake Forest.
Commissioner: John Feinstein, over Billy Packer. Because Mike Krzyzewski wants it that way. (And as you can tell, we've run off those annoying, football-first expansionist types like Florida State and Georgia Tech, freeing Coach K to resume mid-Atlantic emperor duties.)
Why We Like It: Location, location, location! If the prigs at Duke and North Carolina are going to harrumph about athletic travel costs, wait until they see the compact little setup we have here. A tank of gas gets you everywhere -- except Vanderbilt, of course.
But seriously: Vandy in the Southeastern Conference is like Tipper Gore moving in with the Osbournes. At least give the Commodores Wake Forest to commiserate with.
The former SEC would hate to lose Vandy for the following reasons: Everyone loves an automatic win; everyone gets a contact buzz off the school's academic rep; and someone in that dodgy league has to be able to stand up and say, "NCAA investigators have not questioned any of our student-athletes, boosters or coaches in the last year."
The ACC folk would welcome Vanderbilt for those reasons, not to mention the fact that it helps keep conference smugness running obnoxiously high to invite a Quality Institution like Vandy to be a member. (The same folk will feign deafness if you bring up the names Chris Washburn, Danny Ford or Len Bias.)
Downside: Dadgum Quotient drops precipitously with only one Bowden still in the league.
MATT SUHEY CONFERENCE
Members: Boston College, Cincinnati, Connecticut, Marshall, Penn State, Pittsburgh, Rutgers, Syracuse, Temple, West Virginia. (As part of the unapologetic bribe it took to get the Nittany Lions to leave the Big Ten, the league gave conference naming rights -- and eight home games -- to Penn State.)
Commissioner: Joe Paterno, so he can appoint his own officiating crews. That should lessen the likelihood of a repeat performance of septuagenarian JoePa chasing the zebras off the field.
Why We Like It: Penn State returns to its natural turf before Paterno hangs up his highwater britches for good, ending the forced brotherhood with the Midwest. It also rekindles the old rivalry with Pittsburgh.
West Virginia must finally play Marshall, the in-state stepchild that the Mountaineers try to ignore and conveniently forget to schedule. In return, Marshall fans must promise to surgically remove the decades-old chips on their shoulders.
And because one day, Rutgers is going awaken and get it going. Really. Any time now. No doubt about it. Just you wait. Yep, any time. ...
Downside: With Villanova and Notre Dame cleared out, UConn's women's basketball team might never lose again. Like Geno Auriemma doesn't already think he knows everything.
BIG TEN DAMN THE MATH CONFERENCE
Members: Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Iowa State, Michigan, Michigan State, Missouri, Minnesota, Northwestern, Ohio State, Purdue, Wisconsin. (If the Grand Old League could call itself the Big Ten with 11 members, why not with 12?)
Commissioner: John Goodman. Because the man looks like he'd love nothing better than putting down some schnitzel and Old Style at a Midwest pregame tailgate. Then he'd waddle out and dot the "I" in Script Ohio, uninvited.
Why We Like It: The Michigan-Ohio State old guard, still reveling in the fact that the college football season came down to a play in the end zone in that game last November, is overjoyed to see annoying interloper Penn State leave. Especially since the Nittanies have been replaced by two schools (Iowa State and Missouri) guaranteed not to upset the Natural Order Of Things.
Northwestern continues to get to hang around, lording its academic superiority over all the state-school schmucks.
And because the network boys have always dreamed of locking up the state of Iowa in a single conference package. Who needs New York and L.A. when you've got Dubuque?
Downside: Larry Eustachy misses out on an entire new league of frat parties.
BRING BACK THE WISHBONE CONFERENCE
Members: Arkansas, Colorado, Colorado State, Kansas, Kansas State, LSU, Nebraska, Oklahoma, Oklahoma State, Texas, Texas A&M, Texas Tech.
Commissioner: Dan Jenkins, the crusty old author, sports writer and Texas native, who would tolerate cheating if done with a degree of panache.
Why We Like It: Anything that reunites Arkansas and Texas is a good thing. When the pig helmet logo and the steer helmet logo collide on the field of battle, college football is better for it.
Nebraska and Oklahoma are together again forever -- none of this rotating off the schedule garbage. League bylaws mandate that they must play each other every year in throwback tear-away jerseys, to satisfy our Inner Greg Pruitt.
Colorado State is finally on even terms with Colorado, after all those years at the WAC/Mountain West kids' table. It only seems fitting, since the Rams routinely upset the Buffaloes in the annual early-season game.
LSU arrives, giving fans the delicious road-trip extremes of Rocky Mountain highs and beneath-sea-level lows along the bayou. Any league that has New Orleans within an hour's drive of one of its schools is OK with us.
Downside: What, no Baylor? (Um, never mind.)
PAC-10 GETS RELIGION CONFERENCE
Members: Arizona, Arizona State, Brigham Young, California, Oregon, Oregon State, Stanford, UCLA, USC, Utah, Washington, Washington State.
Commissioner: Rick Neuheisel. The Eddie Haskell of college sports has established USC as the 9-5 preseason favorite through his offshore sports book. And if you call his 800 number now, he will reveal his four-star lock selection for the opening week of games -- absolutely free!
Why We Like It: The old Pac-10 was so secular that it could use a little Bible beatin'. Or, in this case, a little Book Of Mormon beatin'.
Enter the stormin' Mormons from Provo and Salt Lake City (just tell the rest of the league to keep its polygamy jokes to itself). And think of the sports writers' religious ecstacy generated by those Rick Majerus press conferences.
Downside: You still have to go to Pullman and Corvallis.
KING FOOTBALL CONFERENCE
Members: Alabama, Auburn, Florida, Florida State, Georgia, Georgia Tech, Kentucky, Louisville, Miami, Mississippi, Mississippi State, Tennessee.
Commissioner: Gotta bring back Roy Kramer to pilot this runaway freight train of a gridiron league. Moneybags Roy will want to caress the Benjamins personally when the bowl money starts rolling in from this embarrassment of football riches.
What We Like: What would you say to an Eastern Division of Miami, Florida, Florida State, Georgia, Georgia Tech and Tennessee? Better or worse than the AFC South?
We'd like to see the looks on faces in rural Kentucky when Big Blue Nation finds out it has a full conference partner in that no-account little brother from Louisville -- until they mobilize for an assault on the state's biggest city. (Those two schools are in charge of basketball and will be awarded 80 percent of the tickets for the conference tournament. Everyone else will be jockstrap-deep in spring football by then anyhow.)
Georgia and Florida fans finally get to see Georgia Tech and Florida State play a football schedule populated with something other than namby-pamby hoops schools. Georgia Tech and Florida State fans finally get to see what it's like in a league that operates under the credo, "If ya ain't cheatin', ya ain't tryin'."
And if you're going to take Nashville and New Orleans out of the league, it helps to add Miami and Atlanta. There's only so much Starkville, Auburn, Tuscaloosa and Oxford a sports writer can take. Man cannot live on college-town barbecue alone.
Downside: Compliance directors, do you know where your boosters are? More importantly, do you know where their money is?
So that's it, the blueprint for revolution. But seriously, you didn't think we'd go to all that trouble and not finish the job, did you? That's right, the season ends the way it's supposed to end: Not with a series of indistinguishable bowls, but with the champions of the newfound leagues and a few hand-selected wild cards competing in a playoff.
And the playoff ends with Supreme Allied Commander Corso handing the ESPN.com Trophy (a solid-gold mouse and accompanying mouse pad, perhaps?) to the tournament winner in the Rose Bowl. Welcome to the new world order -- or at least an entertaining daydream.
Pat Forde covers college football and college basketball for the Louisville Courier-Journal.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
By Pat Forde
Special to ESPN.com
In a stunning nationwide revolution, the insurrectionists at ESPN.com have unseated NCAA president Myles Brand, demoted commissioners of the Bowl Championship Series conferences, torn up every existing conference television contract and installed Lee Corso as the new Supreme Allied Commander of College Sports.
Mascot headgear for everyone!
The purpose of the revolution: To completely realign conferences any damn way we please.
Not so fast, my friend? OK, maybe not. But a modest little web site can dream, can't it?
As long as Miami and Virginia Tech have gone to the ACC and started college athletics on the painful process of reordering itself, why not do it right? Why do a little window dressing when we should be knocking the entire house down and starting over?
Why not do it this way:
GREATER TOBACCO ROAD CONFERENCE
Members: Clemson, Duke, Maryland, North Carolina, North Carolina State, South Carolina, Vanderbilt, Virginia, Virginia Tech, Wake Forest.
Commissioner: John Feinstein, over Billy Packer. Because Mike Krzyzewski wants it that way. (And as you can tell, we've run off those annoying, football-first expansionist types like Florida State and Georgia Tech, freeing Coach K to resume mid-Atlantic emperor duties.)
Why We Like It: Location, location, location! If the prigs at Duke and North Carolina are going to harrumph about athletic travel costs, wait until they see the compact little setup we have here. A tank of gas gets you everywhere -- except Vanderbilt, of course.
But seriously: Vandy in the Southeastern Conference is like Tipper Gore moving in with the Osbournes. At least give the Commodores Wake Forest to commiserate with.
The former SEC would hate to lose Vandy for the following reasons: Everyone loves an automatic win; everyone gets a contact buzz off the school's academic rep; and someone in that dodgy league has to be able to stand up and say, "NCAA investigators have not questioned any of our student-athletes, boosters or coaches in the last year."
The ACC folk would welcome Vanderbilt for those reasons, not to mention the fact that it helps keep conference smugness running obnoxiously high to invite a Quality Institution like Vandy to be a member. (The same folk will feign deafness if you bring up the names Chris Washburn, Danny Ford or Len Bias.)
Downside: Dadgum Quotient drops precipitously with only one Bowden still in the league.
MATT SUHEY CONFERENCE
Members: Boston College, Cincinnati, Connecticut, Marshall, Penn State, Pittsburgh, Rutgers, Syracuse, Temple, West Virginia. (As part of the unapologetic bribe it took to get the Nittany Lions to leave the Big Ten, the league gave conference naming rights -- and eight home games -- to Penn State.)
Commissioner: Joe Paterno, so he can appoint his own officiating crews. That should lessen the likelihood of a repeat performance of septuagenarian JoePa chasing the zebras off the field.
Why We Like It: Penn State returns to its natural turf before Paterno hangs up his highwater britches for good, ending the forced brotherhood with the Midwest. It also rekindles the old rivalry with Pittsburgh.
West Virginia must finally play Marshall, the in-state stepchild that the Mountaineers try to ignore and conveniently forget to schedule. In return, Marshall fans must promise to surgically remove the decades-old chips on their shoulders.
And because one day, Rutgers is going awaken and get it going. Really. Any time now. No doubt about it. Just you wait. Yep, any time. ...
Downside: With Villanova and Notre Dame cleared out, UConn's women's basketball team might never lose again. Like Geno Auriemma doesn't already think he knows everything.
BIG TEN DAMN THE MATH CONFERENCE
Members: Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Iowa State, Michigan, Michigan State, Missouri, Minnesota, Northwestern, Ohio State, Purdue, Wisconsin. (If the Grand Old League could call itself the Big Ten with 11 members, why not with 12?)
Commissioner: John Goodman. Because the man looks like he'd love nothing better than putting down some schnitzel and Old Style at a Midwest pregame tailgate. Then he'd waddle out and dot the "I" in Script Ohio, uninvited.
Why We Like It: The Michigan-Ohio State old guard, still reveling in the fact that the college football season came down to a play in the end zone in that game last November, is overjoyed to see annoying interloper Penn State leave. Especially since the Nittanies have been replaced by two schools (Iowa State and Missouri) guaranteed not to upset the Natural Order Of Things.
Northwestern continues to get to hang around, lording its academic superiority over all the state-school schmucks.
And because the network boys have always dreamed of locking up the state of Iowa in a single conference package. Who needs New York and L.A. when you've got Dubuque?
Downside: Larry Eustachy misses out on an entire new league of frat parties.
BRING BACK THE WISHBONE CONFERENCE
Members: Arkansas, Colorado, Colorado State, Kansas, Kansas State, LSU, Nebraska, Oklahoma, Oklahoma State, Texas, Texas A&M, Texas Tech.
Commissioner: Dan Jenkins, the crusty old author, sports writer and Texas native, who would tolerate cheating if done with a degree of panache.
Why We Like It: Anything that reunites Arkansas and Texas is a good thing. When the pig helmet logo and the steer helmet logo collide on the field of battle, college football is better for it.
Nebraska and Oklahoma are together again forever -- none of this rotating off the schedule garbage. League bylaws mandate that they must play each other every year in throwback tear-away jerseys, to satisfy our Inner Greg Pruitt.
Colorado State is finally on even terms with Colorado, after all those years at the WAC/Mountain West kids' table. It only seems fitting, since the Rams routinely upset the Buffaloes in the annual early-season game.
LSU arrives, giving fans the delicious road-trip extremes of Rocky Mountain highs and beneath-sea-level lows along the bayou. Any league that has New Orleans within an hour's drive of one of its schools is OK with us.
Downside: What, no Baylor? (Um, never mind.)
PAC-10 GETS RELIGION CONFERENCE
Members: Arizona, Arizona State, Brigham Young, California, Oregon, Oregon State, Stanford, UCLA, USC, Utah, Washington, Washington State.
Commissioner: Rick Neuheisel. The Eddie Haskell of college sports has established USC as the 9-5 preseason favorite through his offshore sports book. And if you call his 800 number now, he will reveal his four-star lock selection for the opening week of games -- absolutely free!
Why We Like It: The old Pac-10 was so secular that it could use a little Bible beatin'. Or, in this case, a little Book Of Mormon beatin'.
Enter the stormin' Mormons from Provo and Salt Lake City (just tell the rest of the league to keep its polygamy jokes to itself). And think of the sports writers' religious ecstacy generated by those Rick Majerus press conferences.
Downside: You still have to go to Pullman and Corvallis.
KING FOOTBALL CONFERENCE
Members: Alabama, Auburn, Florida, Florida State, Georgia, Georgia Tech, Kentucky, Louisville, Miami, Mississippi, Mississippi State, Tennessee.
Commissioner: Gotta bring back Roy Kramer to pilot this runaway freight train of a gridiron league. Moneybags Roy will want to caress the Benjamins personally when the bowl money starts rolling in from this embarrassment of football riches.
What We Like: What would you say to an Eastern Division of Miami, Florida, Florida State, Georgia, Georgia Tech and Tennessee? Better or worse than the AFC South?
We'd like to see the looks on faces in rural Kentucky when Big Blue Nation finds out it has a full conference partner in that no-account little brother from Louisville -- until they mobilize for an assault on the state's biggest city. (Those two schools are in charge of basketball and will be awarded 80 percent of the tickets for the conference tournament. Everyone else will be jockstrap-deep in spring football by then anyhow.)
Georgia and Florida fans finally get to see Georgia Tech and Florida State play a football schedule populated with something other than namby-pamby hoops schools. Georgia Tech and Florida State fans finally get to see what it's like in a league that operates under the credo, "If ya ain't cheatin', ya ain't tryin'."
And if you're going to take Nashville and New Orleans out of the league, it helps to add Miami and Atlanta. There's only so much Starkville, Auburn, Tuscaloosa and Oxford a sports writer can take. Man cannot live on college-town barbecue alone.
Downside: Compliance directors, do you know where your boosters are? More importantly, do you know where their money is?
So that's it, the blueprint for revolution. But seriously, you didn't think we'd go to all that trouble and not finish the job, did you? That's right, the season ends the way it's supposed to end: Not with a series of indistinguishable bowls, but with the champions of the newfound leagues and a few hand-selected wild cards competing in a playoff.
And the playoff ends with Supreme Allied Commander Corso handing the ESPN.com Trophy (a solid-gold mouse and accompanying mouse pad, perhaps?) to the tournament winner in the Rose Bowl. Welcome to the new world order -- or at least an entertaining daydream.
Pat Forde covers college football and college basketball for the Louisville Courier-Journal.