Welcome to the pods of major college football

With the prospect of having college football leagues with as many as 20 teams in the near future, it’s time to form our “pods.” 

The plan that appears on paper to work best is a “pod system,” at least for football. The concept is to create four pods of four teams in a 16-team league and four pods of five teams in 20-team league.

In an 18-team league, the four pods would contain either four or five members (and that can still work). 

Each team would play all the other teams in its given pod every season and then play one or more teams from each of the other pods. Some conferences require eight conference games, some require nine. Either way, each team can continue to schedule non-conference games each year. 

So, if and when the Atlantic Coast Conference moves up to 18 teams (adding West Virginia, Cincinnati, Central Florida and South Florida, let’s say), the pods might look like this: 

Pod A: Syracuse, Boston College, Pittsburgh and West Virginia.

Pod B: Virginia, Virginia Tech, Louisville and Cincinnati.

Pod C: North Carolina State, Wake Forest, North Carolina, Duke and Clemson.

Pod D: Georgia Tech, Florida State, Miami, Central Florida and South Florida.

 

Where is Notre Dame? Nowhere. 

(Notre Dame can no longer have its cake and eat it, too. The Irish are out of the ACC football mix, choosing not to play a full schedule in order to retain its “independent” status. Its stubbornness will be its downfall. ACC teams playing Notre Dame would count as non-conference games.) 

Pods A and C would be paired, as would B and D. The teams from each pairing with the best records move on to the conference championship game. The pairing of the pods would rotate to A with D and B with C the following year. 

The Pacific-12 Conference currently has 12 members, so if the Pac-12 merges with what’s left of the Big 12, to form an 18-team conference, there would be one open spot. The front-runner is Houston. So, that new league’s pods might be: 

Pod A: Oregon, Oregon State, Washington, Washington State and Colorado.

Pod B: Utah, Kansas State, Oklahoma State, Baylor and Texas Christian.

Pod C: Southern California, UCLA, Stanford and California.

Pod D: Arizona State, Arizona, Texas Tech and Houston.

 

With Texas and Oklahoma vaulting from the Big 12 to the Southeastern Conference, the upcoming pod lineup could be:

 

Pod A: Florida, Georgia, South Carolina and Kentucky.

Pod B: Alabama, Auburn, Tennessee and Vanderbilt.

Pod C: Louisiana State, Arkansas, Mississippi State and Ole Miss.

Pod D: Missouri, Oklahoma, Texas and Texas A&M.

The Big Ten Conference could add two teams to become a 16-member league. The most likely newcomers are Iowa State and Kansas, who would exit the Big 12. If so, the pods might be: 

Pod A: Rutgers, Maryland, Penn State and Ohio State.

Pod B: Michigan State, Michigan, Indiana and Purdue.

Pod C: Northwestern, Illinois, Wisconsin and Minnesota.

Pod D: Kansas, Iowa, Iowa State and Nebraska. 

(This is a tricky alignment regarding Michigan, Michigan State, Ohio State and Penn State, impacting traditional rivalry games. An “I” pod and an “M” pod is doable.)

If this realignment should come to pass, it would ripple down to the second tier of college football, and the American Athletic Conference (AAC) would be gutted – losing Houston, Cincinnati, Central Florida and South Florida. 

It’s time to build a new football league.