Let's assume for a second you asked the BCS to embrace a playoff-style tournament to decide college football's champion, and your request was rejected emphatically. Heck, even Congress has tried to make that happen and it has found the task nearly impossible. But, the BCS thinks you're a nice guy or gal and tells you it might be possible to make a few changes next season.
Specifically, the BCS has given you the power to realign member conferences and change how its champions are crowned to ensure better teams reach the bowl games. For whatever reason, all the conferences have agreed to allow you to do whatever you want. So what do you do?
If it were up to me, I would focus on changing the Big 12 and the Big Ten conferences.
The Big 12 South - which could also be referred to as the Texas/Oklahoma division, considering all six teams come from those two states - is loaded with four power programs: Texas, Oklahoma, Oklahoma State and Texas Tech. The division is rounded out with one perennially decent team (Texas A&M) and a team that has been improving ever so slowly but still isn't that good (Baylor).
The Big 12 North, meanwhile, is essentially the developmental league for the South. Some of the teams in the northern division have been good in the past - Nebraska, Missouri and Kansas come to mind - but others haven't been good in a while (Kansas State, Iowa State and Colorado).
On the whole, the North's top team has fallen to the South's best in each of the last five Big 12 Championship games, and this year looks to be no different. Through Saturday, the South is 11-5against the North this season and will likely end the season 13-5 after Texas beats Kansas and Oklahoma State knocks off Colorado this weekend. And, if you take out the South's two worst teams - Texas A&M and Baylor - the South's top four will almost certainly end the year 11-1 against the North. Ouch.
This imbalance is a problem, especially since it makes for a disinteresting conference championship game. To fix that, I would propose that the conference drops one of its worst teams - Iowa State - and steals TCU from the Mountain West. This move would immediately make the Big 12 North more competitive. It wouldn't make sense to move teams from the South to the North division, because geography doesn't work that way, but at least the addition of TCU - currently ranked No. 4 in the nation with a 10-0 record - would make things more interesting in the North.
Iowa State, after being cast off by a conference in which it simply doesn't belong, should join the Big Ten (which already has 11 teams, including Iowa). The conference then can rename itself "The Other Big 12," split into two divisions of six, and have a conference championship game just like the Big 12, SEC and ACC.
Right now, the Big Ten sends its best regular season team to the Rose Bowl but deprives fans of the chance to see a conference title game. I don't know who actually watches Big Ten football because it's generally very boring, but I'm sure those who like that style of play would love to see an additional game between the conference's top two teams.
So the new 12-team conference - realistically called the Great Lakes Conference, stealing that name from a D-II conference - will be split into the North and South divisions, as well. The North will be comprised of Michigan, Michigan State, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa and Iowa State; the South will feature Ohio State, Penn State, Purdue, Illinois, Indiana and Northwestern. This alignment is balanced both geographically and in terms of talent, and could also lead to a number of great championship matchups, including a Michigan-Ohio State rematch to decide who heads to the Rose Bowl.
I believe these changes would improve the whole of college football by making two of the power conferences more balanced. Also, I think all BCS conferences need head-to-head championship games to decide who goes to BCS bowls, so having the former Big Ten adopt this strategy is a step in the right direction. Next up: fixing the Big East. Where to begin...
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