College Football Relegation - 2012

This is the seventh entry in my series on relegation in college football (I recommend reading the preceding posts first).

More shakeups before the season.

Utah and Colorado to the PAC 10. The goal here is pretty clear: these leagues want to get to at least 12 teams in order to establish a conference championship game, which is another property for the league to license to sponsors like Dr. Pepper and TV networks like FOX. And, more teams means more games to air on PAC 12 Network (your home for early season Washington State vs. Idaho action!) and to stream on their website. Amateurism!

Maryland moves to the Big 10, and the Big 12 does some looting of its own, stealing Tulsa from the SEC and lassoing an ascendant Houston from the Group of 5.

Here's the new reality. The PAC 12, Big 10 and SEC are all very secure, while the Big 12, ACC and Big East are fighting for 2 spots. They all know it, and they are going to start acting accordingly.

Meanwhile, Miami plays its second season under Al Golden as a member of the Big 10.

There was one good team in the Big 10 this season, Ohio State. They went undefeated but were banned from the postseason. The rest of the conference was largely mediocre, as evidenced by the conference championship game, a Wisconsin blowout of Nebraska. Wisconsin, by the way, was 7-5 going into that game. Not exactly a dominant conference champion.

I hate to say it, but if Miami had been in the Big 10, Al Golden might have actually looked decent, especially this season. I can't even imagine the contract extension we would have thrown at Al if he had somehow managed to emerge from this shit show and made the conference championship game. Has anyone ever signed a 40 year extension? We could have been trendsetters.

Relegations:

ACC - Southern Miss

Big East - USF

Big 10 - Miami (OH)

Big 12 - Iowa State

PAC 10 - Colorado

SEC - Kentucky

Iowa State gets 1 year of respite and then is immediately sent back packing. THAT is the law of the jungle.

Southern Miss has the worst year to year decline I saw in all of the research I did for this project, falling almost 100 spots in F/+. They were bad in Conference USA...I imagine they would have been worse in the ACC, although to be fair, their competition would have included Troy, Ohio, FIU, Duke and Wake Forest, none of which were among the Top 70 teams in the country in F/+.

I found a picture of this competition:

Promotions:

Conference USA - SMU

MAC - Syracuse

Mountain West - Utah State

Sun Belt - Ole Miss

WAC - UCLA

At-large - Arkansas State (also in the mix: San Jose State, Kent State, Texas Tech)

Ole Miss fights their way back again, and once again they are in the SEC. UCLA and Syracuse, representing Los Angeles and New York, end up in the PAC 10 and Big 10, respectively, as the Big 10 corners the market in the Northeast with Syracuse, Rutgers and Penn State, as well as Navy and Maryland. The Big 12 goes into the Rocky Mountains with Utah State, while the ACC gets into the Houston market with SMU. Arkansas State is left to the Big East, a conference which later in the offseason announces the end of its run as a football conference starting in 2014. The 2 events are ‘unrelated’.