Mountain West, Pac-12 Should Combine For A Football Season
Uncertain times call for creativity.
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If California can’t play now, let’s make a trade.
Any and all topics regarding how and when college football will be played are all over the place. With that, there have been a lot of creative ideas like swapping games, conference only seasons, or even a condensed season.
This latest idea is a pretty big one and probably one that will never go through but it will certainly be fun to think about.
Right now, California schools are in flux about what campus-life will look like in a few months. That means football may not happen or happen in a very different format.
We are here to help out and create a one of a kind 2020-21 college football season out West. The big picture would be to split up the California schools plus Hawaii into one league and the rest of the non-California schools from the Mountain West and Pac-12 in a league.
It would be for one year and would be very interesting. Hawaii would be included with the California schools because right now they have a mandatory 14-day quarantine for those who come to the islands. That would make it tough to play college football.
With this setup, the California plus Hawaii model would be a spring football league.
The other would just be the schools that are not in California play a season against each other for a 12-game season.
Non-California Conference
| Pac-12 | Mountain West |
| Arizona | Air Force |
| Arizona State | Boise State |
| Colorado | Colorado State |
| Oregon | Nevada |
| Oregon State | New Mexico |
| Utah | Utah State |
| Washington | UNLV |
| Washington State | Wyoming |
With there being eight teams from the Mountain West and eight from the Pac-12 so those could be divisions with each conference. This would provide a two-division setup that would look and act like each of their own conferences and do five crossover games to get to a 12-game schedule and then a championship game.
To keep things as similar as possible we can keep games that are already on the books. Then for the rest, the attempt would be to schedule games that are regional or close games.
This set up really favors Mountain West teams to get five Power 5 teams on the schedule as compared to the Pac-12 playing five teams from the Group of Five. Desperate times mean that compromising would be on the table.
Plus, having this set up would bring back some old WAC and Mountain West matchups with Utah, Arizona, and Arizona State playing rivals from years and years ago.
It would be a fun setup and a way to have a semi-normal college football season in the fall.
UP NEXT: California and Hawaii model
The rest of the teams out from the Mountain West and Pac-12 would play in the spring with the hopes that those student-athletes could play some sort of a season among the California schools.
There would be eight teams in this new set up. Plus, to get more than seven games, some non-conference games could go up against the FCS schools in the state to try to get to 10 games.
California + Hawaii
- California
- Fresno State
- Hawaii
- San Jose State
- San Diego State
- Stanford
- UCLA
- USC
This would be an interesting set up out West but it would provide high-quality football out West in the spring and still give these athletes a chance to play.
To add more games there are four FCS programs that could play some of these games. Having these FCS teams join for a slate of eight FBS teams would not be fair to them or the school.
- Cal Poly
- Sacramento State
- UC Davis
- San Diego
To allow these FBS teams to play nine games they obviously would need to play two against these FCS teams. That would mean these lower-division programs would play four FBS games each, which is still a lot for them.
There also should be title time against the top two teams to allow them to play 10 games.
An alternate idea to get to 12 games is to have the Mountain West and Pac-12 teams play each other twice. So, six games vs. the same conference, three against the other conference, and then two FCS games.
For a title game, it could possibly be a Mountain West vs. Pac-12 matchup which could limit on a rematch, or going with best conference record overall for the top two teams overall.
These ideas do not seem all that far fetched but it will take a lot of compromise from the conferences, non-conference games that are not included, and also television networks to all come together on the same page to host a semi-normal college football season.
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