NCAA "Conferences"

I just heard the news that the greatest collegiate institution in the history of mankind, Notre Dame, has decided to join the Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC) in all sports except football. Until now, Notre Dame has been one of the few remaining independent teams in college football, and they have played in the Big East in all other sports. I don't know why exactly Notre Dame chose to join the ACC, but it probably has a lot to do with the fact that the Big East conference recently lost a lot of its members in basketball, and Notre Dame felt that by joining the ACC, they would get more exposure. With more exposure, of course, comes more money, and money is probably the biggest reason that Notre Dame decided to make this move. Based upon those two facts, I can understand why Notre Dame made this move. I'm not going to knock them or any other school for trying to make as much of a profit as they can, but what this move really made me think of is one question. What is the relevance of conferences in college athletics?

I could go look this all up, but I'm not going to do that just to help prove my point. I consider myself a big fan of sports, and if I lose track of this stuff, then it leads me to believe that many other people are absolutely clueless when it comes to this subject. So Notre Dame now plays in the ACC along with schools like North Carolina, Clemson, Duke, and its newest member (at least for basketball, maybe not all other sports), Syracuse. Syracuse was one of the initial members of the Big East, and for the past decade, the Big East has been one of the best conferences in college basketball. Throughout that time period, longtime Big East schools like UConn, Georgetown, and Villanova have been very successful. However, the Big East also profited greatly from the arrival of teams like Marquette and Louisville from Conference USA. The addition of those two teams really helped the Big East become the power it was in basketball.

The Big East underwent a major overhaul recently in basketball, as Syracuse was not the only team to leave. I'm told by ESPN that the Big East was severely weakened in terms of basketball. The problem is, I can't exactly remember why. I know UConn is still in the Big East, and I'm about 99% sure that St. John's and Seton Hall are as well. I'm less certain about this, but I think Georgetown and Villanova are still Big East basketball schools.
For some reason, I think Pittsburgh left, and the only thing that would make sense would be that they left to join the ACC. If the conference was severely weakened, then it would also mean that either Louisville and/or Marquette left as well because they played a big role in making the Big East as good as it was in terms of basketball. I am not sure about West Virginia, but they have had a good basketball program recently, so they may have left as well. I am assuming that all or most of these schools are now members of the ACC because geographically that would make the most sense, but honestly, I'm not too sure about that.

Speaking of geography, in what is probably by far the most confusing conference realignment move, Boise State is a member of the Big East in football (I'm pretty sure). Boise State! Boise is in Idaho! How in the world does it make any sense for a team from Idaho to play in the Big East? Unless the rest of the college football in this country is being played in the Pacific Ocean, Boise is not east of pretty much anything. However outlandish this is, I think Boise State actually has the most right to claim that they needed more exposure in a bigger conference. Even though they are out in the middle of nowhere (at least in the eyes of a New Yorker...and honestly, that's really the only point of view that matters, isn't it?), they have been able to put together a sustainably great college football program. The biggest knock on them that has prevented them from playing for a national championship has been their soft schedule when compared to teams from the SEC, Big 10, and other BCS conferences. So while Boise State playing in the Big East may render a map of the United States irrelevant, for the school, it does actually make some sense.
Texas Christian (TCU) is also a football program that has been very good for the last decade, and their membership in a non-BCS conference has hurt them as well. I think they moved to either the Big 12 or the Pac 12 (formerly the Pac 10), and for the same reasons that Boise State joining a bigger conference makes sense, this move makes sense for TCU as well.

It doesn't stop there though. Not only does geography hardly matter when deciding conference membership, the names of the conferences don't matter as well. The Big 10 used to be called the Big 10 for a reason. There were 10 teams in the conference. However, for the past few years (how many, I honestly do not know), there have been 12 teams in the Big 10. This year Nebraska joined the Big "10" in football. I can't think of any team that left the conference in football, so does the Big 10 now have 13 teams? I'm not sure.

The Big 10 has to still be called the Big 10 because there is already a conference called the Big 12. The problem with that is (who would have guessed?) I don't think there are 12 teams in that conference anymore, at least in football. As I already mentioned, Nebraska left to join the Big 10, and I think Missouri left to join the SEC in football. As far as basketball, I don't know, I'll have to wait until the season starts to find out if Missouri and Nebraska are still Big 12 basketball schools.

Throughout all of this realignment or movement or whatever you want to refer to it as, the SEC seems to be the most stable of all of the conferences. I think the fact that there are so many SEC teams that have rivalries that date back so far (take your pick between Auburn, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, and a few other schools), the conference members would never think about leaving. However, I never thought that Syracuse would leave the Big East in basketball, and that happened, so who knows, maybe Auburn will be playing football in the Pac 12 next year. Missouri joining the SEC in football this year though shows that the conference is still not open to the idea of adding new members.

As I am writing this, I now am not even sure that Missouri joined the SEC in football. I am 99% sure that they are not in the Big 12 anymore, and I'm pretty sure that they are now in the SEC but maybe they are in the Big 10 now. Within the SEC, there is the SEC East and the SEC West, and I am almost positive that each division contains the same number of teams (either five or six). So that means if Missouri is now in the SEC, either one other team had to join the conference or one team had to leave the conference to keep the number of teams even. So maybe Missouri is in the Big 10...

Some schools are members of conferences that make no geographic sense, some schools are members of one conference in football and a different conference in basketball, and there are other schools that I think are members of conferences that might not even exist anymore. I think Conference USA still exists, but if you asked me to name the teams in the conference off the top of my head I could come up with Memphis, Xavier (I think)...and no one else. I'm not sure if the Atlantic 10 even exists anymore either. I know it used to be a pretty good conference in terms of basketball with teams like UMass and Temple who both have a history of pretty good success in basketball. Maybe the Atlantic 10 still exists in basketball, and if it exists in football, then it is pretty bad. The Mountain West and the WAC are two different conferences, but I think they used to be one conference that split in half and then added a few teams each.

And don't even begin to ask me about lesser sports like volleyball, swimming, or any kind of women's sport, because I have no clue about those. Honestly, conference affiliations in anything but football and men's basketball probably make a heck of a lot more sense than those two sports, but I'm not sure about that.

If all of this is extremely confusing and makes little or no sense then I've proven my point. If it were up to me, I am getting close to saying that schools should just always play their rivals every year (UConn vs Syracuse in basketball, Auburn vs Alabama in football, etc.), the rest of the schedules can be filled out as normal, with the bigger schools playing the smaller schools looking to get some exposure, and we should just rank the teams at the end of each week.

When it comes down to the end of the season, we pretty much all know which teams are the best. A lot of times too much emphasis is put on conference membership at the end of the season, and it skews the view of the fans. Just because a team might be a middle of the pack team in a better conference doesn't mean it is better than a top team from a lesser conference (just ask Boise State).

Although without conferences then we wouldn't get the chance to see so many smaller schools in the NCAA basketball tournament due to automatic bids, and then we might not be able to see the upsets and improbable runs of teams like George Mason and Gonzaga...so maybe that isn't a good idea after all.

Conference membership and conference names and conference affiliations are so fluid and have changed so frequently lately, that it is near impossible to keep up. If anyone has a spreadsheet detailing the movement of each school in each sport or some kind of adjustable wall mural to help keep track, then please send me a copy because it has gotten to the point where I am not only unable to keep track, but I am also becoming unwilling to keep track.

Daily Giants Update: A Wednesday night season opener really stinks for a lot of reasons. The first of which is we lost to Dallas. The second reason is that it seems like forever until Week 2. We get Tampa Bay at home on Sunday, and on paper it is one of the easier looking games on the schedule, so a win would be great, especially since Dallas, Philadelphia, and Washington are all 1-0. Obviously, it's still early, but the NFL is a league of unbelievable overreaction because of the time between each game, so let's beat the Bucs and make next week one that focuses more on the positive than on the negative.
Daily Diamondbacks Update: A great 1-0 win last night with Ian Kennedy out dueling Clayton Kershaw was nice to see, and the quick two game series against LA ends tonight with Trevor Cahill and Aaron Harang on the mound. I will not give up hope until this team is mathematically eliminated from postseason contention. A win tonight will put us only 2 games behind the Dodgers. Couple that with a Cardinals loss and we could be four games out of the playoffs with 19 to play. A long shot is better than no shot...