1.  No more Independents

This is mainly for Notre Dame, but to the others as well, it’s time to join a conference. I don’t see the benefit of not being in a conference. The benefits you receive are conference scheduling, rivals, championship games and conference tv revenue distribution. Notre Dame, the main independent, hasn’t won anything as an independent in the last 30 years. It’s time to fall in line with the rest of college football and join a conference. 

2. 12 team conferences

In 2024, college football at the FBS level will go through another major conference realignment shakeup. The next wave of realignment will essentially kill the PAC 12,  stretching the ACC, Big Ten, and Big 12 over 3 or more time zones for schools. The conferences have grown to 16 , 17 and 18 schools and that seems like a bit too much. No reason Miami and Cal are in the same conference, or Rutgers and UCLA considered a conference game. It is very unrecognizable for a college football historian or traditionalist. So I think we should make it uniform across all conferences to have 12 schools. Here’s how the college football landscape looked back in 2010 right before everything got out of hand.

With 135 FBS schools slated for 2025 and beyond with Delaware’s recent announcement to move up, we would need to add 9 more to get to the magic number of 144. In my realignment I brought back Big East and WAC football, kept some of the conferences the exact same from 2010, moved some schools to different conferences that I think makes more sense to align with while also adding some notable FCS schools up to the FBS level. Below you can see a breakdown of how the conferences look in the conference realignment .

AAC		ACC		Big 12		Big East
Arkansas State	SMU	Boston College	Miami	Baylor	Nebraska	Cincinnati	Syracuse
Houston	TCU	Clemson	North Carolina	Colorado	Oklahoma	ECU	Temple
Louisiana	Tulane	Duke	N.C.State	Iowa State	Oklahoma State	Louisville	UCF
Memphis	Tulsa	Florida State	Virginia	Kansas	Texas	Marshall	UConn
North Texas	UAB	Georgia Tech	Virginia Tech	Kansas State	Texas A&M	Pittsburgh	USF
Rice	UTSA	Maryland	Wake Forest	Missouri	Texas Tech	Rutgers	West Virginia
B1G Ten		C-USA		MAC		MWC
Illinois	Northwestern	Appalachian St	MTSU	Akron	Kent State	Abilene Chr	S. F. Austin
Indiana	Notre Dame	Army	Navy	Ball State	Miami OH	Air Force	Tarleton
Iowa	Ohio State	Charlotte	Old Dominion	Bowling Green	Northern Illinois	Colorado State	Texas State
Michigan	Penn State	Delaware	Richmond	Buffalo	Ohio	New Mexico	Utah State
Michigan State	Purdue	James Madison	UMass	C. Michigan	Toledo	New Mexico St	UTEP
Minnesota	Wisconsin	Liberty	W. Kentucky	E. Michigan	W. Michigan	Sam Houston State	Wyoming
PAC 12		SEC		Sunbelt		WAC
Arizona	Stanford	Alabama	LSU	Coastal	Kennesaw State	Boise State	Montana State
Arizona State	UCLA	Arkansas	Mississippi	FIU	LA Monroe	E. Washington	Nevada
BYU	USC	Auburn	Mississippi St	FAU	LA Tech	Fresno State	Sacramento St
Cal	Utah	Florida	South Carolina	Georgia So	South Alabama	Hawaii	San Diego State
Oregon	Washington	Georgia	Tennessee	Georgia State	Southern Miss	Idaho	San Jose State
Oregon State	Washington St	Kentucky	Vanderbilt	Jacksonville St	Troy	Montana	Utah St

Notre Dame is in the conference it rightfully belongs in and now the Big Ten will have another potential contender. PAC would probably never accept BYU in real life but this isn’t about religion or politics it’s about ball. The American Athletic Conference could potentially change their name to the Southwestern Conference since it would have 4 of the original members in there and it’s not currently being used. Big East Football was fun (2007) and would be great to see again with some new exciting members. The Big 12 programs that left did not achieve the success they thought they would have and should have stayed together. The WAC is back with some new but promising schools that know how to win. Maryland should’ve never left the ACC. Conference USA is now more regionally aligned instead of being stretched all across the country. The MAC is perfect and never should change. The MWC probably looks the most different but it also makes sense for those schools and its region based. The Sunbelt should still be fun minus the schools it used to have before this realignment. The SEC never needed to expand the conference; the core 6 of Alabama, Auburn, Florida, Georgia, LSU, and Tennessee have all won titles since ‘98.  

3. Mandatory 9 conference game schedules/no divisions

This is very simple here: play the teams in your conference. It can be done, it’s not that difficult the PAC 12 just played a season like this and it was one of their best years to date as a conference. Fans want to see more conference games and TV execs also want to see it because they can have a better product. The SEC shouldn’t have cupcake week during week 13 anymore with a 9 game conference schedule. Every conference has agreed to go divisionless except for the Sunbelt but they should join the rest of the college football world. It’s best for conference championship games to have the two best teams playing.

4. Neutral site championship games

I think it’s fair to have a neutral site game rather than one at a home site no matter the record of the teams involved. I have some suggestions that would make the most sense for conferences who don’t currently have a venue.

AAC – NRG Stadium, Houston, TX

Big East – M&T Bank Stadium, Baltimore, MD

C-USA – Nissan Stadium, Nashville, TN

MWC – State Farm Stadium, Glendale, AZ

Sunbelt – Everbank Stadium, Jacksonville, FL

WAC – Levi’s Stadium, Santa Clara, CA

5. Make the playoff 8 best championship weekend teams

I have a solution that should satisfy college football fans with an 8 team college football playoff. In order to be selected to the 8 team playoff you must at least play in your championship game. Based on my 12 conference realignment 8 out of the 24 teams participating on championship weekend will make the 8 team playoff. This will maintain the competitiveness of the regular season and gives teams a chance at making the playoffs for all conferences. There would be a lesser chance of star players opting out of major bowl games(NY6) in this model because all of those bowl games will be part of the playoffs moving forward. A hypothetical conference championship weekend would have looked something similar to this in my current realignment. 

AAC:  SMU vs Tulane

ACC: Florida State vs N.C. State

Big 12: Texas vs Missouri

Big East: Louisville vs West Virginia

Big Ten: MIchigan vs Ohio State

C-USA: Liberty vs James Madison

MAC: Toledo vs Miami OH

MWC: Air Force vs New Mexico State

Pac 12: Wasington vs Oregon

SEC: Alabama vs Georgia

Sunbelt: Troy vs Jacksonville State

This would be the 24 schools eligible and based on how this season panned out the top 8 teams would more than likely be in the playoffs. The top 8 schools that would be in the playoff would play the first round bowl games on 12/23 at the Peach, Fiesta, Orange, Cotton bowls. The second round of games will be permanently played at the Rose and Sugar bowls on New Year’s Day, with the championship game rotated every year at a city who wins the bid to host. I placed the hypothetical playoffs below. 

6. Change targeting punishment

Automatic ejection shouldn’t happen for targeting penalties, it changes the dynamic of the game. Sometimes it’s really accidental and not egregious at all. I would suggest we follow NBA rules with flagrant 1, flagrant 2 levels to the foul. If it is deemed something is at a higher level then that would be an automatic ejection, if not they can continue to play but can’t do it again or ejection.

7. Every school should have player’s names on their jerseys

In the world of NIL this should be mandated so the players can benefit from their own jersey sales. Notre Dame, Penn State and USC need to make this happen immediately. 

8. Change bowl eligibility from 6 wins  to 7 wins

I feel like we are rewarding too much mediocrity, to the point schools can leave bowl season with a losing record. What would be best is to have it more difficult to get bowl eligible by making it a 7 wins requirement instead of 6. This would make sure you can’t have a losing season if you went bowling at worst you’ll be 7-7. This year that would’ve left us with 60 bowl eligible teams. Currently there are 41 bowl games and that’s way too much, there’s one school who is going bowling with a 5-7 record. I believe 30 bowl games is more than enough and incentivizes the regular season even more.  

9. Transfer portal altering

I have an alternative or a suggestion for the transfer portal that might slow down the madness it has quickly become. The rule I would install would be that any first to  second year player that enters the portal will not be immediately eligible without a waiver like coaching change, family issue, or a Justin Fields situation. Hopefully that reduces the amount of players in the portal especially since a good amount don’t always find a new home.

10. Give Reggie Bush back his Heisman Trophy