A fair number of college football commentators are acting like the power schools will surely transition to a set of four 16-team conferences. (I like to think of them as “double-conferences,” which is what they would be as far as their schedules are concerned.) And many of them glibly state that the inevitable next step will be a true superconference of 32 or perhaps only 20 teams. Personally, for a variety of reasons, I see that as highly unlikely.
Still, I got to thinking: What would a 32-team college superconference look like? Who would be asked to join up? One assumes that they would have to play good football, based on the long term, not just for a couple hot years. But, given that this is mainly about money, success on the field would need to show up on the bottom line. Translation: Big stadiums, a highly recognizable “brand name” for TV, and robust gear sales.
Trouble is, schools play so many games with their books, it’s hard to know … reliably … who is really making a lot of money. But we can get a handle on the football on the field side, using the NCAA Football Power Index (FPI). It took a bit of time, but I assembled a table of top teams based on the years since 2016. (That year, Coastal Carolina was in transition to full FBS, but the list remained pretty much the same after that.) To assure full coverage, I collected data for all the teams that were in the top-32 for at least a couple years in that stretch. I ended up with 65 teams (half the total FBS list). I then averaged their FPI ranks over those years.
So here are the top 32 teams, grouped by their present conferences. Numbers in parentheses are their average ranks:
AAC
UCF (24)
ACC
Clemson (2), Miami (19), North Carolina (29), Notre Dame (8), Virginia Tech (27)
Big-12
Iowa State (23), Oklahoma (4), Oklahoma State (14), TCU (22), Texas (17), West Virginia (28)
Big Ten
Iowa (15), Michigan (16), Northwestern (30), Ohio State (3), Penn State (6), Wisconsin (9)
PAC-12
Oregon (20), Stanford (26), USC (18), Utah (21),Washington (11)
SEC
Alabama (1), Auburn (7), Florida (13), Georgia (5), LSU (10), Mississippi State (25), Missouri (32), Ole Miss (31), Texas A&M (12)
This compilation immediately raises the question: Would the big boys really include Central Florida from the American? They finished in the top-25 FPI for four of the six years I used. Their stadium seats 48,000, but is designed to be expandable to 65,000. That might not be good enough, financially. If the powers did snub UCF, that would open a slot for Washington State (33).
The inclusions are pretty much what you’d expect. What I found more interesting was: Who gets left out? Here are a few:
Arizona State (35), Arkansas (59), Florida State (43), Michigan State (47), Oregon State (64), Tennessee (48), UCLA (51), Virginia (56)
I’m sure my “excluded” list includes other teams that are involved in heated “traditional” rivalries that get the fan bases riled up. These days, some people blow off that sort of thing, but such games can be big money-makers.
All that being said, I do not see something like this ever happening. Which is why I didn’t bother with creating a division setup.