The Super 64, what is it? It is a theoretical idea of 4 conferences expanding to 16 teams and leaving the NCAA to form their own athletic governing body known as the Super 64. It is what many small schools, such as Rice and Tulsa, are very afraid of because they could possibly get left out in the cold, unable to join this league generating so much money. This will go over which schools would go to what conferences and how the conferences would operate. The unfortunate thing about this whole theory is that only one Mountain West Conference team would be in the Super 64.
First off, let's look at who would join each conference.
Big 10 adds its 5 teams: Rutgers, Notre Dame, Syracuse, Nebraska, Missouri
SEC adds 4 teams: Florida St., Miami, Texas, Texas A&M.
ACC now needs 6 teams: West Virginia, Pitt, USF, Louisville, UConn, Cincy
Pac-10 also needs 6 schools: Utah, Colorado, Kansas, Kansas State, Oklahoma, Oklahoma St.
That is the basic idea of which teams would go where. This leaves great programs out, such as Boise St., BYU, TCU, Texas Tech, Iowa State, and Baylor. All these schools probably deserve to be in but because of the way thinks worked out, they were left out. The good news though is that chances are that because there will be a whole new governing body, there probably won't be much laws against getting rid of teams and adding teams. If teams in the Super 64 that aren't in huge markets do horribly, the conference could just decide to get rid of them and add maybe Baylor and TCU to replace a couple of schools. The bad news is that if they stay out of the Super 64 for too long, recruits are not going to want to come their and therefore the program will go down and keep them out of the Super 64.
The subject on how the conferences would operate is after the jump...
The next subject that will be discussed is how these conferences would operate to make scheduling the easiest. One question is that now that these conferences have broken away from the NCAA, just how many games do they want to play during the College Football Season. I personally think it might be a good idea to expand the regular season to 14 games in order to allow for more non-conference games, so let's say there now is 14 games in a season.
The following chart shows the divisions that would be in the Big Ten.
| Northwest | Southwest | Northeast | Southeast | |
| Team 1 | Iowa | Wisconsin | Michigan | Ohio St. |
| Team 2 | Minnesota | Northwestern | Michigan St. | Penn St. |
| Team 3 | Missouri | Illinois | Indiana | Rutgers |
| Team 4 | Nebraska | Purdue | Notre Dame | Syracuse |
The following chart shows the divisions that would be in the SEC.
| Northwest | Southwest | Northeast | Southeast | |
| Team 1 | Ole Miss | Texas | Kentucky | Florida |
| Team 2 | Mississippi St. | Texas A&M | Tennessee | Florida St. |
| Team 3 | Auburn | Arkansas | Vanderbilt | Miami |
| Team 4 | Alabama | LSU | South Carolina | Georgia |
The following chart shows the divisions that would be in the ACC.
| Northwest | Southwest | Northeast | Southeast | |
| Team 1 | Cincinatti | Louisville | Maryland | Georgia Tech |
| Team 2 | West Virginia | North Carolina | Boston College | USF |
| Team 3 | Virginia | Duke | Pittsburgh | Clemson |
| Team 4 | Virginia Tech | Wake Forest | UConn | NC State |
Hey just for fun, think about how good of a basketball conference this would be... just look at the southwest division.
The following chart shows the divisions that would be in the Pac-10.
| Northwest | Southwest | Northeast | Southeast | |
| Team 1 | Washington | USC | Kansas | Arizona |
| Team 2 | Washington St. | UCLA | Kansas St. | Arizona St. |
| Team 3 | Oregon | Cal | Oklahoma | Utah |
| Team 4 | Oregon St. | Stanford | Oklahoma St. | Colorado |
That is what the divisions would look like for the Super 64 conferences geographically. Now, on to how to schedule these divisions. Even though you now have 14 games in the regular season, you still have 8 conference games. First off, you have to play everyone in your division once. That's simple, next it gets very complicated on playing outside of your division. To let you know, I put the divisions in order from west to east to make it easier to understand. Ok, here it goes: You are only allowed to play teams up to 2 divisions away from you, for travel reasons. So for instance, if you are in the Southeast division, you can play anyone except for schools in the Northwest division. Vice Versa for the Northwest division. If you are in either the Southwest or Northeast division, you can play anyone because everyone is at least 2 divisions away from you.
The next question in this is how would you find a conference champion with 16 teams? Simple, you take each division winner and put them in a 4 game play off to decide the conference champion. Each game is held on a neutral site to make it as fair as possible. Northwest winner would play Southeast winner and Southwest winner would play Northeast winner in the first round, the conference championship is after that.
Next step would be to decide a national champion. Each conference champion would be invited to a 4 school playoff to determine the national champion. First 2 rounds are Orange Bowl and Sugar Bowl. The winners advance to the National Title game of the Rose Bowl. All other bowls that want to make the jump and are accepted have at-large bids, no conference tie-ins.
That's a basic concept of how the Super 64 would be formed and how it would work.