Good morning, Uni Watchers, and a Happy Thursday to all. I hope everyone’s New Year is starting off well.
Two weeks ago, I ran the first of four sets of concepts, and last week featured the second set from long-time reader Greg Seher, who has done eighty (!) designs for the eighty college football teams in his concepts, which also includes some conference realignment. When he contacted me, he wrote, “Coming up on the first expanded playoffs, I came up with a D1 realignment that helps organize the system better. Resetting the looks for the 80 teams that make the cut to D1, some looks recognizable with minimal changes, really about creating a standard brand for every school instead of all the alternates and one-off designs each year.”
The first set of concepts were for the American Athletic Conference (AAC) and Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC). Part II covered the B1G and Big XII. Today Greg takes on the “new” Big East and Mountain West Conferences. Enjoy!
by Greg Seher
NCAA D-1A Football
I’m trying to consolidate NCAA top-tier football here by dropping down to 80 schools in 8 conferences. Simply put, win your conference, you get into the 12-team playoff. With 10 schools in each conference you can play all 9 conference opponents, leaving 3 non-conference games. The other current 1-A schools who didn’t make the cut would move down to 1-AA.
This is basically taking the existing power 4 conferences with their realignments (67 schools), plus Notre Dame, the leftovers of the Pac-12, and the most likely schools that would move up. Conferences like the Big Ten and SEC retain their traditional schools, the ACC, Big XII, and Pac-10 look pretty similar, a football sort of Big East, and stronger versions of AAC and MWC. No need for conference championship games with all teams in a conference playing each other.
For the playoff, the top 4 seeds get a bye, and seeds 5 thru 12 play first-round games in their home stadiums based on seeding. At large bids would always be ranked 9 thru 12. The national championship game would be at a neutral site.
To keep the bowl tradition alive I would use 8 big bowl games for neutral site big matchups at the start of the season, which has already started to become a thing. Conferences would have scheduling pairs based on the bowls, so the top 2 teams from each conference play in a big time week 1 (or week zero) matchup, the remaining 8 teams in each conference would pair off with teams from the corresponding conferences as well based on final standings the previous season (for example, the SEC and ACC would have a Peach Bowl matchup for their top teams, so likewise you’d pair teams lower in the standings from those conferences as well). That would leave every team two games on the schedule that are not conference or bowl pairing matchups. The bowls would be Orange (ACC vs. East in Miami), Peach (SEC vs. ACC in Atlanta), Sugar (SEC vs. Big XII in New Orleans), Cotton (Big XII vs. AAC in Arlington), Fiesta (MWC vs. PAC in Glendale), Rose (PAC vs. Big Ten in Pasadena), Citrus Bowl (AAC vs. MWC in Orlando), and Liberty Bowl (East vs. Big Ten and move it back to Philadelphia).
Uniform-wise, the idea is to drop all of these crazy one-off designs and create a solid, identifiable look for each school, home and away. With 80 schools, and keeping their traditional school colors (and uniform design for schools who have a legit standard), it isn’t easy to make all of these schools unique-looking, but I did as much as I could.
Big East Conference
This might have actually been what happened to the conference had they let Penn State in years ago and had stronger football power. I’m adding Notre Dame, who has strong fan bases in the northeast markets of the Big East territory and was a non-football member in the late 1990s.
Boston College
Mountain West Conference
Bringing in the likes of Colorado, Arizona, and ASU strengthens the conference with along with some of its stronger original members returning.
Arizona State
Readers? What say you?
The UNLV roundel is superb.
I could swear we did the GTGFTS previously
20 Jul 1969
Ken McMullen at bat
Jack Aker on the mound
Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin on the Moon
Yankees win in 11, 3-2
NO BETTING PERMITTED
Today that would say BETTING ENCOURAGED
First year of expansion to 12 teams in each league, 6 games per league each day. Only room for 5 games in each league. One west coast game was left off the board.
AL Twins 4 @ Pilots 0
NL Dodgers 3 @ Giants 7
GTGFTU: Buffalo Bills (7) @ Baltimor Ravens (19), Sunday, December 31, 2006, at M&T Bank Stadium, Baltimore, Maryland
Bills wore this abomination of a set from 2002-2010. They played the Ravens 4 times in that span, but only once were the Ravens wearing their black alternates
Today’s GTGFTU pic is making my eyes bleed…
On that GTGFTU note I would like to plead to all concerned to Please, Please, Please NEVER post any Tampa Bay Buccaneers 2014-2019 “Alarm Clock” uniforms in GTGFTU! I still have nightmares about these unis! Thanks for your consideration.
GTGFTU
31 Dec 2006
Ravens over Bills 19-7
The conference realignment makes for an interesting discussion. I really like the uniform concepts. Simple and traditional looks much better than what we often currently see.
Unrelated, but maybe someone can answer. Last week I read of Ohio State wearing a rose helmet stripe. Although not a OSU fan, I have watched at least part of two of their games for 50 years! Yesterday, I didn’t see anything different than before. Did I miss somethin or did OSU not use the rose stripe.
The rose graphics are very subtle. You can only see them if you’re about 2 feet or less away.
You can kinda-sorta make it out here: link
UNM and UNLV look too much alike, I think. UNM uses some turquoise from time to time; that could have been a way to differentiate them.
Wyoming needs their yellow pants, no?
Your sleeve designs for Cincy and ASU are fantastic. The little green shamrock for ND looks out of place.
Not going to GTGFTU but holy cow those Bills unis are awful. I had fond memories of them, given that they were what Buffalo wore when I was as kid and my brother had a Bledsoe home jersey, but wow…
Wyoming should use a yellow helmet and pants, with both jerseys. Sh$% and Pi$% jokes aside, brown and yellow together is much nicer than brown with primarily white. I’ve never been a fan of their white/brown/yellow look, but the white/white/yellow combo in place is OK.
Same with WV. Lose the white a blue pants, stick with yellow.
I really like the sleeve treatment on the ASU jerseys, which surprises me. Nice touch.
Wyoming needs yellow pants on both home and road. It’s a classic look that should stay. White/Brown/Yellow at home and White/White/Yellow on the road.
I’m just stoked the pokes snuck in……. I’d give up watching NFL to see this alignment in NC2A…… maybe
A few things I cannot abide: BYU and Notre Dame with superfluous lettering above the front numbers. A foolish consistency etc. etc.
What did you do to poor Wyoming?? The yellow britches and antique numerals have been the Cowboys’ chef’s kiss for quite a few seasons.
However, the sleeve stripes on the Pitt uniforms I quite like.
Really have enjoyed your redo of the conferences and unis within the conferences. A particular thank you for making that simple change of adding the color yellow throughout the Maryland uniform. It is one of the real oddities that they only have that color as a stripe on their sleeves. You have given respect to that missing color!