Super-sized conferences are breaking college football

The dawn of NIL has forced a realignment of college conferences, putting pressure on the structure of conference championships. When you look at the Power Four football conferences (ACC, Big 10, Big 12, and SEC), each have expanded somewhere between 16 and 18 members. 

The past two seasons have demonstrated that the current conference championship format is not equipped to corral the super-sized power conferences. Deciding the top teams in the country is left to too many qualitative metrics (strength of schedule, head to head, and common opponents).

Something needs to change.

Texas A&M’s path to CFP

Looking at the SEC, Texas A&M had a historic 11-1 regular season, good for one of the best records in the nation. However it featured in-conference wins against seven out of the nine worst teams in the SEC; and every team they beat had a conference win percentage of .500 or worse.

The Aggies season would end in disappointing fashion as they lost twice in a row, against in-state rival the Texas Longhorns 27-17 and in the first round of the College Football Playoff against the Miami Hurricanes 10-3.

A&M arguably only faced three impressive teams all season (Miami, Notre Dame, Texas), and its only win of the three came in the form of a controversial one-point victory over ND in Week 2.

TAMU is one of multiple glaring examples of how massive conferences allow teams to waltz unscathed through their conferences thanks to scheduling issues.

Is a return to Divisions the solution?

It would seem creating divisions within the conferences should be closely considered. This would stoke more fierce rivalries among inter-division opponents, ensuring more even matchups and a clearer cut conference championship.

Looking to the past, all of the Power Four conferences had divisions but were eliminated across  the last decade — a division format made less sense with smaller membership.

In 2024, the Big 12 (with 16 members) had a four-way tie at the top of the conference between Arizona State, Iowa State, BYU, and Colorado, who all finished with a 7-2 record. By the end Arizona State and Iowa State faced off due to tiebreakers, but many thought that BYU was more deserving than Iowa State.

This season in the ACC (with 17 members), Virginia guaranteed their spot after a 7-1 conference record, but there was a 5-way tie for second place between Duke, Miami, Georgia Tech, SMU, and Pitt. As Miami fans well know, the unranked 7-5 Duke Blue Devils were awarded the second spot over a 10-2 Miami team ranked No. 12 in the country at the time.

Applying the Divisions to the ACC

When looking at the ACC, the conference has 17 members, which forces teams to play more or less games than one another. All of this would be solved if another team joined the conference.

But let’s concentrate on how the current structure of the ACC would address this issue. There would be three main things taken into consideration: rivalries, location, and talent. It might look something like this:

ACC North: Syracuse, BC, Pitt, Louisville, VT, Virginia, Clemson and Georgia Tech

ACC South: Miami, FSU, SMU, Cal, Stanford, Duke, UNC, NC State and Wake Forest

For the divisions, it would be fair to re-evaluate every five years whether the two divisions are evenly split. Currently the competition would be tight; each division would be well balanced. 

The proposed system would also allow scheduling and travel to be much simpler; every division team plays one another, the north would have 7 conference games while the south would have 8. At the end of the season, the two representatives from each division would face-off for the championship.

As some guidelines here are the five hypothetical tiebreaker rules: 

1 – Conference Record

Conference records always take importance over every guideline but would have more weight as every team faces each other.

2 – Head to Head

Due to everyone facing off this should solve for tiebreakers except for three (or more) way ties.

3 – Overall Record

In the case of Miami – Duke the tiebreaker was Win Percentage of Conference opponents. In the context of a 7-5 record, the overall record should have more weight.

4 – National Ranking (AP poll / CFP)

Ideally the conference championship should be settled by this point but if it goes this far National Ranking should be considered in ensuring that the best teams compete for the conference championship.

Will realignment fix everything?

Fans want more entertaining matches and teams want ease of scheduling and travel.

The answer is simple — either return to smaller conferences or implement divisions to make conferences matter.

In the end, no matter the solution, it won’t be perfect. Sports fanatics will always say that there will be a better format, but the least we can do is learn from past mistakes.