FBS College Football is currently suffering an identity crisis. Just one month—June 2021—saw the NCAA’s 9-0 loss before the Supreme Court in Alston, the institution of Name, Image, and Likeness rules that allow athletes to make some money while playing, and a proposal to increase the “participation” of the College Football Playoff by expanding the field from 4 teams to 12 teams. Any one of these developments would normally dominate the offseason discourse. But this July, the apple cart went from shaken to completely turned over when The University of Texas at Austin and the University of Oklahoma announced plans to leave the Big 12 Conference and then accepted invites to the Southeastern Conference.
Although my FBS explainer blog touched on the importance of conferences, I did not touch on the concept of conference realignments: the periods where schools rush to join or leave conferences. It’s arguably the most dramatic thing in college football. It determines which teams will play regularly and which traditional rivalries may go dormant. It also determines which schools will make money, because the networks—currently just ESPN and FOX—pay for broadcast rights based largely on conference. Fans get extremely excited or offended at the “valuation” of their schools, and the media fire off grouchy-old-man #takes like “Conference realignment sucks, and it’s taking away what we love about college football.” Kirk Herbstreit, one of ESPN’s lead college football voices, epitomizes the traditionalist sentiment that realignment is bad and should stop:
My concern is not knowing what this will lead to. I just hate losing the tradition of the sport. I’ve always been, I guess, naïve to it. I’ve always tried to be the guy that’s like “no, we’re going to hold on to our traditions, people care about those traditions, they care about the rivalries.” Clearly, the decisionmakers don’t. We’re now in an arms race and it’s about the money
Kirk Herbstreit on SportsCenter (2021-07-30)
Even before this upcoming current waive of realignment, traditionalists have a lot to gripe about. For the benefit of the football unaware, look at the geography of the current “Power 5” conferences (just focus on the point color):
To the traditionalist, FBS conferences should be regional and essentially permanent. Under their view, the Big Ten (formerly “Western Conference”)’s eastward expansion to New Jersey is objectionable, the Big 12 (successor to part of the “Southwest Conference”)’s addition of West Virginia is ludicrous, and Notre Dame (South Bend, IN)’s relationship with the Atlantic Coast Conference is indicative of a moral failing in college sports. But what kind of organizational system could remain rigid and regionalized in the face of massive population movements and cultural shifts over the past century? It turns out, there is such a system: the federal court system. I will provide a traditionalist, modest proposal to address conference realignment by grafting the organization of the United States Courts of Appeals on to the Power 5 FBS Conferences.
1. Legal Background
The federal court system—at least the Article III court system—is divided into three levels. (It does not have to be a three-level structure under the Constitution, but this is how it’s been since the Judicial Code of 1911, Pub. L. No. 61-475, 36 Stat. 1087.) At the “highest” level is the Supreme Court, which is mandated by Art. III, § 1 of the Constitution and established by the statute now codified at 28 U.S.C. §§ 1–6.
At the “lowest” level, Congress has established inferior trial courts called district courts and placed one in each judicial district. See 28 U.S.C. § 132(a). Judicial districts are defined by geographic bounds. See 28 U.S.C. §§ 81–131. Each judicial district is completely within one state*/**, but one state can have multiple judicial districts. See, e.g., 28 U.S.C. § 118 (“Pennsylvania is divided into three judicial districts to be known as the Eastern, Middle, and Western Districts of Pennsylvania. The Eastern District comprises the counties of Berks, Bucks, Chester, Delaware, Lancaster, Lehigh, Montgomery, Northampton, and Philadelphia.”). *Except the District of Wyoming, which includes the portions of Yellowstone National Park in Idaho and Montana. **There are also judicial districts or equivalents made for most territories and possessions. See 28 U.S.C. § 88 (District of Columbia), § 119 (Puerto Rico), 48 U.S.C. § 1424 (Guam), § 1611 (Virgin Islands), § 1821 (Northern Mariana Islands), and Panama Canal Act of 1912, Pub. L. No. 62-337, 37 Stat. 560, 565, sec. 8 (repealed) (Canal Zone).
“In between” the district courts and the Supreme Court are the appropriately named Courts of Appeals. There is one Court of Appeals for each judicial circuit. See 28 U.S.C. § 43. Judicial circuits are defined by the judicial districts that they hear appeals from. See 28 U.S.C. § 41. Congress has established 13 judicial circuits: 1 “Federal Circuit” that hears appeals from all federal judicial districts (but only for patent-related appeals, see 28 U.S.C. § 1295(a)), and 12 circuits based on geography. Id. Cartographically, the geographic circuits—creatively named the First through Eleventh Circuits and the District of Columbia Circuit—are as follows:
Take a moment to look at these circuits, and you will see that they don’t match well with any other kind of geographic divisions of the US that we are familiar with. New England is divided into two circuits, leaving a tiny First Circuit by both population and area. Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Michigan—three Great Lake, Midwest states—are in three different circuits. Meanwhile Minnesota and Arkansas share a circuit, as do Michigan and Tennessee. Some of the Western states are grouped in the Tenth Circuit, but Montana is stuck in the same circuit as California, Hawaii, and Guam. (Others not pictured: Puerto Rico in the First, Virgin Islands in the Third, Alaska and Northern Mariana Islands in the Ninth).
The reason that these divisions do not make sense today is because they are from a different era. In the first century or so of the Republic, the circuits were shuffled around quite a bit, especially for territories and states West of the Appalachians. See Map of Federal Judicial Circuits, Federal Judicial Center (interactive map showing change in composition over time). But no shuffling has been made to the geographical outline since 1866. See History of Federal Judicial Circuits, Federal Judicial Center (links to each circuit history on right). In fact, when people in Congress considered reorganizing the Circuits completely in 1928, there was “widespread opposition” because “judges and lawyers considered the existing circuits to be geographically-distinct legal cultures”. Landmark Legislation: Tenth Circuit, Federal Judicial Center. The major changes since then have come only from dividing circuits that became cumbersome because of their size: the Tenth Circuit broke off from the Eighth in 1929—Pub. L. No. 70-840, 45 Stat. 1346 (1929)—and the Eleventh Circuit broke off from the Fifth in 1980—Pub. L. No. 96-452, 94 Stat. 1994 (1980).
So to summarize, the current geography of the Courts of Appeals has been largely unchanged for 150 years and has resisted efforts at change because people became attached to the geography for tradition’s sake. That’s exactly what conference traditionalists want for FBS football! So let’s merge these things together.
2. Methodology
For this proposal, I am only applying circuit geography to current “Power 5” football schools, including BYU and Notre Dame. Obviously, the nature of “Power 5” is arbitrary; a Big 12 without Texas or Oklahoma will eventually not be considered a power conference. I had considered going back to the last realignment wave in 2011–14, but I decided that a blog written in 2021 should use today’s standards. The big winners of that decision were Utah, TCU, and Baylor (who were not in an autonomy conference before 2011) and the losers were Cincinnati, South Florida, and UConn (who were in the Big East but have since landed at a “Group of Five” conference or gone independent).
Because not every circuit contains enough FBS teams to make a reasonably sized conference, I needed to group circuits together to make conferences. Grouped circuits had to be continuous—so no super conference joining current Big Ten and Pac-12 schools—and I attempted to preserve or revive traditional rivalries.
I made all the maps in QGIS 3.20. The geography for states and territories I took from the USGS’s National Map’s WFS server. I created a point file of school locations by going to Google Maps and manually obtaining the coordinates of each stadium. (I might have picked the wrong coordinate system in QGIS, because Washington’s Husky Stadium appears way too far from the coast; but it’s close enough for all other schools.) I had already saved .PNGs of school logos to use as point symbols.
The title of this blog is a weak reference to the Judicial Conference of the United States, “the national policy-making body for the federal courts;” its membership is allotted by judicial circuits. See About the Judicial Conference, United States Courts. I am open to better titles.
The cover image I made in GIMP 2.10.6. The football player pictured there is Byron “Whizzer” White, who had one of the most remarkable careers ever. Playing his college football at Colorado, he was a unanimous All-American in 1937 and a runner-up for the Heisman Trophy, college football’s top award. He went to the NFL in 1938, and in his rookie year he led the league in rushing (and was its highest paid player). He then enrolled in Yale Law School, took a leave of absence to play for the Detroit Lions in 1940 (where he again led the league in rushing), and then entered the Navy and served in the Pacific Theatre in World War II. After the war, he decided to return to law school instead of play football. His law career was a success too: He was an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court for 31 years. During that entire time, he was the Circuit Justice (28 U.S.C. § 42) for the Tenth Circuit. See White, Byron Raymond, Federal Judicial Center. Despite his obvious expertise in college football, he was in dissent in NCAA v. Board of Regents of the University of Oklahoma, 468 U.S. 85 (1984), a landmark antitrust case against the NCAA that led directly to the huge television contracts that have been driving conference realignment ever since.
3. Results
Following my methodology, I ended up with 5 conferences. Let’s examine each in order of the circuits involved:
Big East Coast Conference (First, Second, Third, and Fourth Circuits)
Capturing most of the thirteen original colonies, the Big East Coast Conference is a pleasing reconstruction of the former Big East and the current ACC. Two important rivalries are renewed: the Backyard Brawl between Pitt and West Virginia and Maryland’s inferiority complex with Tobacco Road. Penn State—which was an independent for much of its history—loses its recent non-rival Ohio State, but can measure itself up against newblood Clemson. South Carolina’s rivalry with the Tigers is turned into a conference fixture, and the Gamecocks can now battle the North Carolina and Virginia teams without having to do so under the branding of the Belk Bowl.
Southern Athletic Conference (Fifth and Eleventh Circuits)
The Southern Athletic Conference is a pared-down SEC combined with many of the Texas schools formerly of the Southwest Conference (SWC). The biggest traditional rivalries lost are Alabama—Tennessee and Oklahoma–Texas. But it’s not like those would be difficult to schedule out of conference: those rivalry games take place during Third Saturday in October and the day of the Texas State Fair every year. And anyway, Texas picks up its traditional Thanksgiving game against Texas A&M (and real rivalry with every school in Texas), and Alabama gets to remember the 1993 Sugar Bowl against Miami. Speaking of Florida, the Sunshine State finally gets to guarantee that its three major programs play each other every year. It’d be awesome bragging rights.
Bluegrass Big Ten Conference (Sixth and Seventh Circuits)
The Big Ten sheds off all its expansions since 1991—Penn State, Maryland, Rutgers, and Nebraska—but goes a little too far and loses long-time members Iowa and Minnesota. The hardest hit is Wisconsin, who loses its foe in the Battle for Paul Bunyan’s Axe. The addition of Notre Dame though gives everyone in the old Big Ten a new conference rivalry. (Notre Dame only became Notre Dame after Michigan’s Fielding Yost had everyone in the league blackball the Fighting Irish and refuse to schedule them). Tennessee can fill the role of Nebraska—a has-been program that will never return to its glory days.
The addition of the state of Kentucky makes the Big Ten a ridiculously strong basketball conference capable of finishing 2nd in March Madness every single year. It also places a lot of programs around the city of Cincinnati. With 13 members in the Bluegrass Big Ten, the Bearcats would have a strong case to get admitted as a former Big East member and round out the league.
Bigger 8 Conference (Eighth and Tenth Circuits)
At the time of its dissolution in 1996, the Big 8 conference (founded in 1907) had the following schools: Colorado, Iowa State, Kansas, Kansas State, Missouri, Nebraska, Oklahoma, and Oklahoma State. The Bigger 8 Conference brings those schools all back together, renewing plenty of traditional rivalries, most notably Oklahoma-Nebraska, Colorado-Nebraska, and the Border War between Kansas and Missouri.
The Bigger 8 Conference then adds BYU, Utah, Arkansas, Iowa (who was briefly a member), and Minnesota. This creates some intrigue too. The Cy-Hawk Trophy game between the Iowa schools is now a guaranteed event. The precious $5 Bits of Broken Chair Trophy between Nebraska and Minnesota is protected. The city of Provo will establish a rivalry against drunk people from Minneapolis. The biggest loser in this is clearly Arkansas, who loses all of its traditional rivals. But even they get a conference match-up against Nebraska, giving them an excuse to travel to Omaha even if their baseball team chokes. (Speaking of other sports, the Bigger 8 becomes the best college wrestling conference of all time with Iowa, Iowa State, Oklahoma, and Oklahoma State).
Because this ends up with 13 teams, there is always the possibility of expansion to get to an even 14. Colorado State has an argument, as does as Air Force (in Colorado Springs). The best team though might be current FCS power house North Dakota State who has upset a lot of these FBS schools while playing at a lower level, including a #13-ranked Iowa in 2016.
Pacific-10 Conference (Ninth Circuit)
The previous circuit-created conferences were eerily good in my opinion. The Southern Athletic Conference (which is made up of what used to just be the Fifth Circuit) kind of mirrored the SEC. The Bigger 8 Conference (made up of what used to be just the Eight Circuit) aligned closely with the traditional Big 8 Conference.
Now, this is one single circuit that aligns perfectly with a traditional power conference: the Pac-10. The Pac-10 had this exact membership from 1978 until 2011, when it added Utah and Colorado to become the Pac-12. I don’t need to write about what rivalries this creates or restores. This is everything traditionalists want. It’s flawless.
Right now, the Texas State Senate is holding hearings on the future of college sports because of Texas’s move to the SEC. Clearly what we need is the United States Senate on the case, because Congress figured out the perfect way to divided the country for football conferences back in 1866. So Kirk Herbstreit, call your representative if you really want to save the sport.
This was Just My Blog.