Musings from Arledge: The Musings Conference Realignment Plan
For better or worse, conference realignment is not going away. Regional rivalries don’t matter, tradition doesn’t matter, and common sense may or may not matter.
I’ve made my peace with this. My problem is that the realignment is currently being handled by university administrators and network executives – in other words, the same people who brought us Larry Scott, the NCAA, and Small Wonder. This isn’t much better than entrusting the process to an all-star team of the craziest Congressmen from both political parties.
So I’m giving the people what they want and need: The Musings Realignment Plan.
My plan is built on three pillars: football excellence, revenue enhancement, and punishing and humiliating my enemies. I don’t care about geography or travel, because this is a football-only plan. The basketball teams will have a different realignment plan. That sport makes money, and there are more basketball powers than football powers. It doesn’t make sense to have one plan for both sports. And I’m not worried about travel for the non-revenue sports, because any sports that average less than 500 in attendance will hold all of their future competitions by Zoom. I’ll leave it to somebody with a deeper knowledge of field hockey to figure out the logistics.
Here’s how my master plan shakes out:
The Big 10 Conference
We’re going to call this my Big 10, not because it has any real connection to the existing Big 10, but because I want to continue the recent tradition of having conferences with numbers in their names that do not correspond in any way to the number of teams in the conference. I think it’s hilarious. The Big 10 Conference will have 16 teams.
This is the power conference. The winner of this conference will be the recognized national champion. These teams will make ten times the money that the other conferences make. And it will tolerate no whining from outsiders about that. If other teams find it unfair, they should have been better at football for the last fifty years.
Here’s the lineup:
A couple of points on this. Yes, Nebraska’s history would qualify them, but they’re awful now, and I don’t see that program recovering. It’s hard to bounce back when you have such a terrible recruiting base. Tennessee has an argument for inclusion, but I don’t listen to arguments, and there are already too many southern teams. Washington may not belong, but it’s a close call, and I’m including them to piss off Oregon.
Also, if you’re paying attention, you can see that’s only fifteen teams. That’s because the Big 10 Conference will have a partnership with another conference – the Can’t Buy Me Love Conference – which is composed of Oregon, Texas A&M, and Oklahoma State. Every year, the Big 10 will hold an auction in which these programs, which essentially means T. Boone Pickens, Phil Knight, and the Texas oilmen, will try to outbid one another to reserve (for one year only) the last spot in the Big 10 Conference. The two losing universities will play each other twelve times that season.
The Academic Twelve Conference
Oregon
Okay, I’m obviously joking about the last one. Just trying to see if you’re still awake.
This ten-team conference will have a partnership with the Ivy League. Each year, the last-place team from the Academic Ten is relegated to the Ivy League for the following season, and the winner of the Ivy League will play the following season in the Academic Ten. I’ve always been intrigued by the way English soccer punishes losers in this fashion, and the truth is that Rice would dig getting to call itself an Ivy League team for a year. So win-win.
The winner of this conference has the right to acquire five National Merit Scholars or one Nobel Laureate from each of the other conference members.
The Little Brother Conference
Texas A&M*
Oklahoma State*
* When the Can’t Buy Me Love Conference implodes.
This one should be obvious. All of these programs share a state with a major football power that has consistently overshadowed it. Some of them have even had really good programs on occasion, but nobody has ever forgotten that they are second banana in their own state. I know South Carolina and Pittsburgh are going to hate this, since both programs were once better than their sibling school. But you’ve fallen too far behind. There’s nothing I can do.
The winner of this conference receives the Eli Manning Trophy.
The Overachiever Conference
This is a tough category, and I realize there will be some disagreement here. Wisconsin probably believes it is better than most of its new conference colleagues (it is) and deserves a spot in the new Big Ten (it doesn’t). Some of these programs (like Iowa State) have only recently been decent. Some (Baylor and Cincinnati) are in states with lots of high school talent and probably should have been better consistently while others are stuck in states with almost no talent.
But all of these programs share this: none are considered traditional powers and all of them are capable of doing real damage to a top program.
The winner of this conference receives the Bill Snyder Award.
The Pacific 12
All remaining teams will play in the new Pac-12. There will be about eighty teams in this conference, and they will be divided randomly, because nobody really cares. These teams will play their games on Thursday nights and Saturdays at midnight eastern. All games will be shown on a streaming service or ignored.
The winner of this conference will receive the Faith, Family, Football Trophy.
It sounds like Lincoln Riley is excited about the progress USC has made in its secondary. This is obviously great news. The secondary was not helped by its front seven over the last two seasons, but the deficiencies up front do not excuse what was often terrible coverage and tackling from the corners and safeties. At corner, Ceyair Wright has apparently made a huge jump forward, and USC fans rightly expect big things from Domani Jackson, Jacobe Covington, and experienced transfer Christian Roland-Wallace. At safety, a larger, more physical Calen Bullock should be a star, Max Williams is undersized but has made a lot of big plays over the years, Bryson Shaw showed promise, and Zion Branch and Christian Pierce will be tough to keep out of the lineup.
USC’s defense is designed to disrupt and cause big plays. But USC blitzed relatively little last year, probably because Alex Grinch didn’t trust the linebackers to get to the QB and didn’t trust the secondary to cover and tackle. But an athletic secondary that can get a hand on the ball and bring players to the ground in the open field will allow Grinch to play much more aggressively upfront.
USC doesn’t have to be great defensively. But they need to be fundamentally sound, they need to tackle, and they need to be dangerous – and by that I mean they need to be aggressive and force turnovers. With the offense USC will put on the field next year, opposing offenses will feel a ton of pressure to score touchdowns. USC must be able to get to the quarterback and force tackles for loss on running plays. If teams are forced to play behind the sticks, USC can expect to have lots of turnover opportunities.
Just hold opposing teams under 30 guys. That really is all it will take.
This week on Musings from Arledge Solo Edition I talked offensive and defensive line play with two Trojan greats: Pat Harlow and Dan Owens. Check it out:
