It’s basically the middle of July. We’re on the downswing of the long college football offseason, but we’re still about three weeks away from it being almost time for camp to be right around the corner.

What better way to spend this time than to discuss the future of college football? And specifically, a completely radical, wildly unlikely plan for conference realignment.

In late June, Connecticut announced they were leaving the AAC and heading back to the Big East, which does not offer football. The decision sparked this blog post by Matt Brown of SBNation (@MattBrownSBN) musing about what will drive future conference realignment.

Past realignment was driven solely on the notion that more geographic territory equals more cable TV subscribers which equals more money per school for conferences to pay out. With cord-cutting, that’s not a reliable way to guarantee conference strength going forward. If everyone continues to cut the cord, channels like the ACCN and SECN will see their revenue streams dwindle.

Throw in game attendance dropping and the costs of operating an athletic department continuing to rise (along with the real possibility of paying players in the future) and conferences are going to need to figure out how to best engage their fan bases to buy streaming subscriptions, attend games, and buy merchandise.

Brown theorized that future realignment will be about getting smaller, that conferences will need to cultivate an identity. And he’s right. A 14-team conference is too big and any bigger would tip the scales toward disaster. Barring some revolutionary scheduling mechanism, the teams don’t play each other enough. Louisville still hasn’t played Virginia Tech in an ACC game.

The schedule just doesn’t have enough games for mega-conferences and that lack of consistent competition means there is no real connection between schools like VT and Louisville. If you make conferences smaller, so that you play the same teams each year, now we’re back to the regional competition and competitiveness that drove the college sports explosion of the 80s, 90s and early 2000s.

I’m pretty sure I prefer the status quo to the setup I am about to propose, but if we’re going to see a realignment shift towards smaller conferences, then let’s get a little crazy with it. I’m sure in today’s world, any shift toward smaller conferences will revolve around putting together the most prominent Power-5 programs possible and ditching the rest of the programs that don’t matter. That’s not what this proposal does.

The most obvious way to cultivate an identity is to join with schools close to you. The rising costs will be stymied, as flights become bus rides, as multiple-day stays become shorter stays, etc. As teams compete with other entertainment options, being able to fill seats with opposing visitors is a legit solution to the attendance problem. Playing a bunch of schools within a short drive to major alumni population centers makes road tripping a reality and a solution.

And that’s what we’re about to go. We’re going to radically reimagine conferences - not as the Big 12, Pac-12, ACC, Big Ten, SEC and the Group of Five. But rather as which schools should play each other every single year based solely on geographic location.

From there, we’ll limit each conference to eight, which means teams will play seven games against the same teams every year.

That leaves five non-conference games to schedule each year. One will be a mandated FCS game, to be decided each offseason (more to come on this).

The other four games will remain like the current non-conference system, which will allow Alabama to schedule LSU, Oklahoma to schedule Texas, etc., etc. Even with the dramatic realignment I’m about to introduce, with a couple of power programs in each new conference and four non-conference games, we should be able to get the same number of premier matchups each week.

Many Group of Five teams will join Power Five teams in new geographical conferences. A few FCS programs had to get launched right into the big leagues to make the eight-team thing work.

Each conference will also have an FCS division associated with it. Which is where the second part of this plan comes into play - a promotion and relegation system like the English Premier League. Each conference will be able to decide how many teams get promoted or relegated,

While this system will destroy the power conferences as we know them and there is some discussion to be had over the fairness and safety of regularly matching up, say a financial powerhouse in Alabama against a program like South Alabama, it’ll also create drama at the back end of the standings as teams fight to maintain their spot in the top division.

What level of interest would there be in a late-season matchup between a 4-7 Virginia and 3-8 Old Dominion right now? The game would be played at noon in a half-full (at best) stadium and would be watched on television by even fewer people. Now,what if that game was a relegation battle in the top division, with the winner staying up in the top-flight for another year and the losing spending a year in the FCS division?

Now, think about the FCS division. Give them a conference championship where the winner not only earns a berth in whatever FCS Playoff comes to be but also earns promotion into the top league the next season? THE DRAMA. And while you’re increasing attendance because games will have high-intensity stakes at every level, you’ll also be drawing subscriptions to streaming services for fan bases across each level of the sport.

With so much change and differing strength of conferences, the college football playoff will need to be expanded to at least eight. We’d rely on the same rankings system we currently have to decide who gets in, as there are just too many conferences this way to do a champion-and-you’re-in format. But we’ll be attempting to combine the regional appeal of college football, beating your neighbors, and staying in the top division with the national appeal of crowning a national champion. Today’s college football world sometimes feels like the regional appeal has been lost due to the unstoppable programs at the top of the pyramid.

Do I have any idea how this would work for recruiting, or the transfer portal, or any other logistical issue that I have yet to mention, like what the heck do we do with basketball? Nope. But it’s July, so let’s have some fun.

1. FLORIDA GEORGIA LINE

FBS

FCS

Florida State

Georgia State

Florida

Georgia Southern

Miami

FIU

South Florida

Bethune Cookman

UCF

Florida A&M

Florida Atlantic

Kennesaw State

Georgia

Mercer

Georgia Tech

Stetson

We keep a handful of traditional rivalries together here with the Florida and Georgia powers. South Florida and UCF, in their current levels, have a much better chance to test themselves. The pro/rel fight here is probably often left to FAU, Georgia State, Georgia Southern and FIU. If this conference were to decide on two teams for pro/rel, things would get interesting.