College football is just around the corner! In just a week, the 10th ranked Florida State Seminoles and the Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets will kick off the season in Dublin, Ireland. But a college football game in Ireland isn't anywhere close to the biggest storylines of the season to come.
We have conference realignments and the expanded playoff to talk about. The most impacted conferences by realignment are the Big Ten and SEC. These conferences got a lot more competitive and some would say better with the new schools added to the mix.
There was lots of debate on whether conference realignment would be good for the sport. It really takes away from the tradition of having a conference. For example, the Big Ten was predominantly midwestern teams with a couple of east coast schools. Now they've added four west coast teams, making the conference look like it consists of schools from all over the country.
All four of these teams came from the Pac-12 which now consists of two teams. The SEC added two new schools as well: Oklahoma and Texas. With these additions, all of the schools in the SEC still are mostly from the southeastern part of the United States.
With basically no more of the Pac-12, the ACC and Big 12 also underwent some big changes. Both of these conferences added six of the Pac-12 teams that left behind their original conference. Stanford and California were added to the ACC, while Colorado, Arizona, Arizona State, and Utah all departed for the Big 12. It's going to take a little time to get used to these new changes within these conferences.
With the traditional conferences being left behind, there is some excitement to come. The new and highly anticipated matchups that fans could only see if these teams met up in the College Football Playoff. Speaking of the CFP, it has been expanded from 4 teams to 12! It's also not just one representative from each conference, conferences can have multiple teams represented in the playoff.
On paper, it seems as the SEC and the Big Ten will dominate the CFP field. This is what has infuriated critics of conference realignment and the new CFP. It shows a misrepresentation of all of college football because it will pre-dominantly represent the two biggest powerhouse conferences. Currently, 9 of the top 11 teams in the country are either from the Big Ten or SEC.
If the 12-team playoff was enacted last year, 10 of the 12 teams would be from the SEC or Big Ten currently. The other teams were from the ACC and Conference USA. No representation from the Big 12 at all.
There has been talks on further expanding the 12-team playoff to more teams such as 14. If these conferences dominant the field of the CFP, I would have to assume that the 14-team playoff is adopted sooner than later.
Yet, this season is going to be a very exciting one. Matchups such as Ohio State vs. Oregon, Georgia vs Texas, or a rematch of the National Championship, Michigan vs. Washington, will all be displayed in 2024. The are valid arguments for both sides of what makes college football better or worse, but nonetheless 2024 will mark a new era for the sport.
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