The Perfection of the Conferences I Grew Up With

Just writing a love letter to the perfection of the conferences when I was growing up is not enough justice. The NCAA conferences I grew up watching made sense then, and it still makes sense today. Of course, at noon on a random Saturday in October, Maryland would be hosting Duke. A night game between BYU and TCU for the Mountain West title, yeah, that makes sense. Houston hosting SMU is on College Gameday; of course, it’s a massive rivalry with the CUSA on the line. The time range I am talking about is 2006-2011, before every school and conference lost its mind in the second wave of conference realignment. Back when, a team on the West Coast traveling to the Midwest or Southeast was a big deal, not a normal conference game in late September. I will take you conference by conference and show how the NCAA used to be a proper league and had proper conferences.

The ACC had Boston College, Florida State, Maryland, Wake Forest, Clemson, NC State, Virginia Tech, Georgia Tech, North Carolina, Miami (FL), Virginia, and Duke. Boston College has always been the outlier here. However, BC isn’t too far from Maryland and the Virginia schools. The first of two eastern seaboard conferences leaves little to be said about the simplistic nature of the art of regional conferences and how they were created.

The Big 12 was Nebraska, Missouri, Kansas State, Kansas, Colorado, Iowa State, Oklahoma, Texas, Texas A&M, Texas Tech, Oklahoma State, and Baylor. When the Fly Over States had a bite to them. With a simple North and South division, with the South being the Texas and Oklahoma schools and the North those above the Mason-Dixon Line. The most well-thought-out of the conferences, it is a shame to see what the Big 12 has become today, all thanks to Texas’s pride and greed. 

The Big East: Cincinnati, Pittsburgh, West Virginia, Rutgers, Connecticut, South Florida, Louisville, Syracuse. When the most out-of-place school is in Florida on the East Coast, you have a pretty good conference set up. The other schools had at least one rival somewhat close. Cincinnati-Louisville, Pitt-WVU, UConn-Rutgers-Syracuse. This was the last stand before the Power 5 truly became the Power 5 and took over. This collection of 8 renegades was the sixth member of the power six, and they had their own automatic bid into the BCS bowl games.

The Big Ten: Penn State, Ohio State, Michigan State, Northwestern, Iowa, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Illinois, Purdue, Michigan, Indiana. Math has never been this conference’s strong suit, as even then, the Big 10 had 11. However, the upper Midwest and only the upper Midwest was always alive with hard-nosed smash-mouth football. There were no divisions, and only the team that could beat the rest of the conference won the Big 10 crown and played in the Rose Bowl. How beautiful it was back then.

College Gameday at SMU vs Houston in 2011

Conference USA East Carolina, Memphis, Southern Miss, UAB, UCF, Marshall, Tulsa, Rice, Houston, UTEP, Tulane, SMU. This Conference now may seem as if it is one of the worst. Still, it used to be only slightly better, as this was the era of ECU beating ranked power five teams, UCF shocking the college football world in 2010 by beating Georgia in the Liberty Bowl, Tulsa and Rice were throwing haymakers at each other to see how the west would be won. It was an entertaining conference that used the East-West dividers, with the Mississippi-Alabama border being the dividing line.

The MAC Buffalo, Bowling Green, Temple, Ohio, Akron, Kent State, Miami (OH), Ball State, Central Michigan, Western Michigan, Northern Illinois, Toledo, Eastern Michigan. Yes, Temple used to be in the MAC. Otherwise, it is the same crazy conference we all know and love today. Who doesn’t love some MACtion on a random Tuesday in November? In 2008, Ball State went 12-0 in the regular season before losing the MAC Championship and the GMAC Bowl in a heartbreaking fashion for a Cinderella season for the program.

2008 Sugar Bowl Utah vs Alabama

The Mountain West includes Utah, TCU, BYU, Air Force, Colorado State, UNLV, New Mexico, Wyoming, and San Diego State. The BCS Buster conference! TCU, Utah, and BYU ran this conference, breaking many of the Power 5 conferences’ hopes of domination. Utah would finish #2 in the BCS in 2008, where they would roll Alabama in the Sugar Bowl. Someone should cover that 2008 season, as it was just as wild as 2007. TCU went to the Rose Bowl against Wisconsin in 2011—just a beast of a conference, looking at the schools now.

The PAC-10 USC, Oregon, Oregon State, California, Arizona, Arizona State, Stanford, UCLA, Washington State, and Washington. A conference that shall fight no more. This is an almost perfect conference as all the schools are along the same seaboard, the same time zone-ish, and it makes sense to be playing each other. The death of the conference was in Utah and Colorado.

The ideal SEC was Florida, Georgia, Vanderbilt, South Carolina, Tennessee, Kentucky, Alabama, Ole Miss, LSU, Arkansas, Auburn, and Mississippi State. What the SEC should be is teams from the Southeastern US playing each other. Not Missouri vs Texas A&M or Oklahoma vs Texas. That’s the Big 12. Plus, the divisions made sense back then, it depended on which side of the Bama-Tennessee border you were.

The Sun Belt: Troy, Louisiana–Lafayette, Florida Atlantic, Arkansas State, FIU, Middle Tennessee, Louisiana–Monroe, North Texas. The “Fun Belt” used to have one powerhouse run in Troy. That was until some of the others challenged the crown. Not known for the best teams, record-wise, the Sun Belt beat each other up. The last one standing got to turn out the lights.

The WAC Boise State, Louisiana Tech, Nevada, Hawaii, Fresno State, San Jose State, Utah State, New Mexico State, and Idaho. Looking back on it, calling this the Boise State conference is a disservice to what this conference was. Not only did Boise State struggle against several teams in the conference, but Nevada and Hawaii won at least a share of the conference crown. So did LA Tech, who have fallen from grace since the death of the WAC. Boise, however, was the BCS Buster when the other schools let 'em be, which was out of their hands most of the time.

There were only four Independents: Notre Dame, Army, Navy, and Western Kentucky before they joined the Sun Belt in 2009. This was the golden era of college football before the Bama dynasty, before schools no longer cared about geographical conferences, we had smaller schools busting through and beating the Power 5 in bowl games that meant something. This era gave us the chaos of the 2007 season, the poetic season of 2008, the rise of the evil empire in 2009, Auburn and Oregon’s magical runs with TCU breaking up the Pac 10 Big 10 party in the Rose Bowl in 2010, the controversy of who should play in the national championship and the death of the most fantastic conference college sports in 2011. This era should be studied to understand why it was so great and made so many stars.