At Tuesday's SEC meetings, Nick Saban won himself some fan/media brownie points by suggesting that teams from the five power conferences should only schedule other power-conference teams.
Nick Saban wants Power 5 conferences to play only games against other P5 schools. "Better for fans & for players"
— Brett McMurphy (@McMurphyESPN) May 27, 2014
Of course, this is an impractical suggestion that carries no weight, and it's a bit hypocritical coming from a coach whose school cancelled a series with Michigan State. Moreover, the power schools want plenty of home games, which means they'll continue to schedule Central Michigan over better home-and-homes.
The only way for there to be more power non-conference matchups is for the conferences to arrange them, like the ACC-Big Ten Challenge in basketball.
We'll preface this by saying that it would be extremely difficult to put together. It would require all of the Power Five conferences to go back to eight conference games apiece, and it would mean they couldn't schedule many out-of-conference games years in advance. And there are three other major hurdles:
- The conferences are different sizes, so not everyone would be included.
- Top teams could be punished for playing other top teams.
- Teams could lose out-of-conference rivals.
To get around the conference size issue, the challenge could include only the previous year's top 10 in each conference's standings (with Notre Dame in the ACC). That would make scheduling difficult for the bad teams, but they likely wouldn't provide entertaining games anyway, and that's the whole point of this exercise. The challenge would change yearly, so teams will have the opportunity to work their way back in, and they're free to schedule BYU, Boise State, UCF, and other strong teams.
As for the competitive balance argument, the No. 1 teams in each conference wouldn't all play each other. The teams ranked No. 1 through No. 5 in each conference could play teams ranked No. 1 through No. 5 from the other conferences. For instance, the top SEC team might play Pac-12 No. 2, Big Ten No. 3, ACC No. 4 and Big 12 No. 5. The teams in the top group would certainly have tougher schedules than the teams in the 6-through-10 group, but the College Football Playoff committee would take that into account.
And maintaining annual out-of-conference rivalries (like Clemson-South Carolina and Iowa-Iowa State) would require giving certain teams permanent opponents from certain conferences, which would be a mess. But college football is always messy. We haven't accounted for this stipulation below, however.
So here's the template:
| Pod | SEC | Big Ten | Big 12 | ACC | Pac-12 |
| Pod 1 | SEC #1 | Big Ten #2 | Big 12 #3 | ACC #4 | Pac-12 #5 |
| Pod 2 | SEC #2 | Big Ten #3 | Big 12 #4 | ACC #5 | Pac-12 #1 |
| Pod 3 | SEC #3 | Big Ten #4 | Big 12 #5 | ACC #1 | Pac-12 #2 |
| Pod 4 | SEC #4 | Big Ten #5 | Big 12 #1 | ACC #2 | Pac-12 #3 |
| Pod 5 | SEC #5 | Big Ten #1 | Big 12 #2 | ACC #3 | Pac-12 #4 |
| Pod 6 | SEC #6 | Big Ten #7 | Big 12 #8 | ACC #9 | Pac-12 #10 |
| Pod 7 | SEC #7 | Big Ten #8 | Big 12 #9 | ACC #10 | Pac-12 #6 |
| Pod 8 | SEC #8 | Big Ten #9 | Big 12 #10 | ACC #6 | Pac-12 #7 |
| Pod 9 | SEC #9 | Big Ten #10 | Big 12 #6 | ACC #7 | Pac-12 #8 |
| Pod 10 | SEC #10 | Big Ten #6 | Big 12 #7 | ACC #8 | Pac-12 #9 |
And here's how that would play out using last year's conference standings (roughly).
| Pod | SEC | Big Ten | Big 12 | ACC | Pac-12 |
| Pod 1 | Auburn | Ohio State | Oklahoma State | Duke | USC |
| Pod 2 | Missouri | Wisconsin | Texas | Notre Dame | Stanford |
| Pod 3 | Alabama | Iowa | Kansas State | Florida State | Oregon |
| Pod 4 | South Carolina | Nebraska | Baylor | Clemson | Arizona State |
| Pod 5 | LSU | Michigan State | Oklahoma | Louisville | UCLA |
| Pod 6 | Georgia | Penn State | West Virginia | Syracuse | Utah |
| Pod 7 | Texas A&M | Michigan | Iowa State | Boston College | Washington |
| Pod 8 | Vanderbilt | Maryland | Kansas | Virginia Tech | Arizona |
| Pod 9 | Ole Miss | Northwestern | Texas Tech | Miami | Oregon State |
| Pod 10 | Mississippi State | Minnesota | TCU | Georgia Tech | Washington State |
So here are each of the out-of-conference pods for the 2014 season -- each of these teams would play the four others in its pod, with home games split two-and-two:
More scheduling!
Pod 1: Auburn, Ohio State, Oklahoma State, Duke, USC
Pod 2: Missouri, Wisconsin, Texas, Notre Dame, Stanford
Pod 3: Alabama, Iowa, Kansas Sate, Florida State, Oregon
Pod 4: South Carolina, Nebraska, Baylor, Clemson, Arizona State
Pod 5: LSU, Michigan State, Oklahoma, Louisville (included here despite playing in the American, because why not?), UCLA
Pod 6: Georgia, Penn State, West Virginia, Syracuse, Utah
Pod 7: Texas A&M, Michigan, Iowa State, Boston College, Washington
Pod 8: Vanderbilt, Maryland (and the same for Maryland), Kansas, Virginia Tech, Arizona
Pod 9: Ole Miss, Northwestern, Texas Tech, Miami, Oregon State
Pod 10: Mississippi State, Minnesota, TCU, Georgia Tech, Washington State
So for example, Louisville, LSU, Michigan State, Oklahoma, and UCLA would all play a round robin, and that would be each team's entire out-of-conference schedule for 2014.
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As expected, the top five pods look awesome, while the bottom five pods look "meh," but way better than any of those teams vs. Florida International.
If college football really did a challenge like this, the conference commissioners would probably want to tweak some things to make it more equitable for the bottom teams. For instance, it could move to 12 or 14 pods and include all the major-conference teams, along with the top non-power five teams each year. Or, it could only include the top five teams in each power conference.
Regardless, this is not going to happen, because of rivalries, money, the logistics of it, and the fact that college football is bad at change.
But it's clear that if the conferences did adopt this system, Saban's fans would benefit. Alabama's four non-conference opponents in the challenge would be Florida State, Oregon, Iowa, and Kansas State. Their four non-conference opponents this year are West Virginia, Florida Atlantic, Southern Miss, and Western Carolina.