NCAA Football Conferences Are Supposed To Be Regional

college football is back, baby

Soon, due to forces entirely outside of my control, I’m going to have to give a shit about what happens in Florida. And California. And Utah. I can feel my dinner swimming upstream at the thought.

I, like many proper folk, am thoroughly disgusted by the current state of college football conferences. This isn’t a new or original idea; in fact, this is probably going to be one of my most mainstream complaints featured on this blog. But, this weekend I get to watch TCU and Michigan beat Colorado and East Carolina [East Carolina? Now they’re just making stuff up], so to celebrate the return of beloved college football, I had to rush this one to the presses.

If you are unfamiliar with the state of college football conferences, I direct your attention to the handy-dandy map below stolen borrowed from 538 dot com. In short, college football is largely played within conferences. These conferences have historically been fairly regional. But those days are coming to a swift end… regional rivalries will become an endangered species, and what is left of charming local identities will be lost to time. If you are familiar with this issue, also look at the map because I took the time to put it there because it does a particularly good job highlighting the issue at hand:

Nate Silver is a dumpy nerd idiot and I’d like to push his head in a toilet, but this map performs a useful function here.

The “conference creep” in college football has become egregious. Why is Texas A&M in the SEC, away from their legendary rivalry with the University of Texas? They have a whole song about it, dammit. Why is Rutgers in the Big 10? I already cannot afford to attend a Michigan football game; now you want me to spend my hard-earned money to travel and stay in New Jersey, too??? They won’t let me pump my own gas there… what a forsaken land.

For even the most passive of football fans whose allegiances only go so far as getting blackout drunk cheering loudly in the student section during their college days should be aghast to see conferences become convoluted beyond recognition. From a practical standpoint, try getting undergraduate Emma in Communications to care one iota about football when the list of schools she has to remember changes every year. Try explaining to Maggie from Oregon what the hell a “Clemson” is.

To my reader that is more in-tune with this topic, you might be thinking “yeah, but it’s all about the TV dollars, y’know.” To which I say: “How could you possibly think I would find that an interesting thing to hear? Be cleverer.”

The Meat of the Matter…

Now, I’m going to tell you what the NCAA college football conferences should be. [Note - I don’t care about any other sport here because, as any board of trustees at a school other than Xavier or UConn will tell you, football is the only sport that counts].

In short, conferences should be charmingly regional. The Big 10 is perhaps the best example of both a conference with a clear regional flavor and a conference under great threat from the new changes (also, I happen to know some stuff about the Big 10 because I am paid dollars by a school currently in it, and I don’t do research for this blog bc lol, so it has to be off the dome). The Big 10’s guiding principle should be: Cornfed. If a school cannot be described as cornfed, midwest, “flyover,” rustbelt, and/or farm country, then git! Shoo! You don’t belong in the Big 10! [I’m looking violently and with great loathing at you, Rutgers, Maryland, UCLA, and USC]. The farthest reach I will accept for the Big 10 are places with the Ogallala Aquifer underneath. And even that’s a stretch at times. The Big 10 is supposed to be big, cornfed dudes playing Classic Football. Rushing, defense-heavy teams that know the phrase “knee high by the Fourth of July.”

The PAC-12, in contrast, is a conference still holding its regional bones relatively well. I don’t mind the creep to include Colorado and Utah because I would say they exhibit vaguely eastern behavior. They like hiking and instagram and granola. A proper PAC-12 would keep to only the states physically bordering the Pacific Ocean, but unless the Mountain West is going to become more respectable, I understand that Colorado, Utah, and Arizona should go somewhere, probably.

The ACC, likewise, should handle those states that border the Atlantic Ocean. It is called the “Atlantic Coast Conference,” after all. Their regional vibe should largely be “original 13 colonies or bust.” Though, I’ll happily lump Florida with the ACC because I don’t care what happens on the Atlantic Coast, and I similarly don’t care what happens in Florida.

The Big 12 is maybe the biggest regional disaster zone… maybe tied with the Big 10, but either way, it’s a bad time to be Big. This one stings especially badly because you hate to see a dynamic powerhouse like the mighty Horned Frogs, College Football Champions (Runner-Ups), be lumped together with the likes of BYU (*barf*), anywhere in Ohio (offensive), and anywhere in Florida (a federal crime). In the platonic ideal of the Big 12, they sweep up the outskirts of the SEC, Big 10, and the PAC-12… the states of the southwest, home of the Texas Football Machine. The local rivalries should have the dumbest southern names (I mean as a compliment), such as the Skillet Bowl and the Red River Showdown. Everyone should be wearing cowboy boots, big tacky topaz necklaces, and be throwing around “y’all” like they’re paid to do so. If the Big 10 is cornfed, the Big 12 should be cornbreadfed.

Finally, you know I’ve saved discussing the SEC for last. No one likes the SEC, let’s just be real [if you’re reading this from the SEC, please don’t remind me, and for once, be quiet]. This conference should be home to schools where you go for the football, not the degree. We need those schools! They’re carrying the great American game on their backs. But let’s not get silly here and start adding schools where you can get a (mostly) real education, like Texas A&M. That’s not the spirit of the SEC titans. Still, this conference is undeniably less egregiously overstepping than others, so as long as they keep their delinquent student sections to themselves, I can’t bemoan them too much here. And honestly, I’d probably gently root for some SEC teams out of southern affinity if your fans weren’t so annoying… consider this free PR advice.

Wrapping up.

For some of you readers, this marks the end of a heinously boring installment of The Stump. Rest assured - I will do my due diligence to not overindulge in sports opinions. This is about the maximum I can care anyway.

For other readers, you might have loved this one! Even considered having thoughts of your own about it! Don’t. I have no interest in: 1) learning new information, 2) being corrected, or 3) thinking more deeply about literally anything I have written here. All of my Bob Dylan fans managed to be quiet during the classic rock post, so I beg of you to exercise similar well-behaved restraint.

Oh, and you might have noticed I left out a ton of conferences! I call those “no name” conferences that I shouldn’t be expected to think about! I dare you to google the conferences that have harbored the most national championship titles (in modern era… all Ivy Leagues should be disqualified from sports statistics on account of being massive weenies) and tell me I’m wrong to focus my attention as I did. Actually, per my previous paragraph, don’t tell me anything. Instead, sing your adulations in the comments section and root for TCU & Michigan on September 2nd.