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The original was posted on /r/cfb by /u/PocketPillow on 2024-03-19 01:16:27.

I’ve thought a lot about how to rebuild the PAC nationwide. Markets, TV Ratings, Academic Rankings, and Travel Schedules. In the end I decided to Keep It Simple Stupid. Take the teams that produce the most revenue, filtering out by qualifying athletic department number of sports. Keep going until you have a conference that makes sense on paper and then stop.

Here’s what you get:

  • Sort FBS Athletic Departments by Reported Revenue
  • Filter List by Minimum Athletics Supported
  • Add a minimum of 8 schools, maximum of 18 schools.
  • Cut list when regional divisions are achieved.

Results in Adding:

  • Air Force
  • Boise State
  • Colorado State
  • Eastern Carolina
  • Fresno State
  • James Madison
  • Memphis
  • Tulane
  • SDSU
  • UConn
  • UNLV
  • USF
  • Wyoming

That is the addition of 13 schools, for 15 total. This results in 5 3-team regional pods:

Northwest Southwest Midwest Southeast Northeast
Boise State Fresno State Air Force Memphis ECU
Oregon State SDSU Colorado State Tulane James Madison
Washington State UNLV Wyoming USF UConn

Scheduling from there becomes simple:

  1. Play 2 regional pod opponents every year.

  2. Play 12 other opponents every other year.

    • This results in an 8 game conference schedule
    • This results in all opponents playing home-and-away at least every 4 years

  3. Schedule 1 Away-Game “buy game” against P4 schools every year

    • This will boost revenue and schedule profile

  4. Schedule 2 Home-and-Home with regional G5 Opponents (or P4 if they agree to Home-and-Home)

    • This will limit travel costs

  5. Schedule 1 Home Game per year against FCS Opponent to increase home games.

    • This results in 6 Home Games every year.

So for Oregon State they could have a schedule 2027 such as:

  1. @ Ole Miss (Buy game)
  2. @ Oregon (Home-and-Home regional)
  3. vs New Mexico (Home-and-Home regional)
  4. vs Portland State (FCS regional)
  5. @ Washington State (Annual Pod)
  6. vs Boise State (Annual Pod)
  7. vs Fresno State (Conf. Rotation)
  8. @ UNLV (Conf. Rotation)
  9. vs Air Force (Conf. Rotation)
  10. @ Tulane (Conf. Rotation)
  11. vs James Madison (Conf. Rotation)
  12. @ UConn (Conf. Rotation)

6 Home Games, 6 Road Games.

The Conference Championship Game would simply be the two teams with the best record. This conference would produce a quality Conference Champion that would command enough respect to warrant a playoff spot in the CFP.

Additionally, it would command a media contract far superior to the current G5 contracts by touching all the regions of the US and having schools that generate good revenue in many different sports.

UNLV and the existing Pac-12 bowl ties could make the Las Vegas Bowl the top bowl tie-in for the top ranked Pac-15 team to not be in the playoff every year. With the decreased number of teams from the SEC and Big Ten going to bowl games thanks to the playoff, I would angle to make the Music City Bowl a tie-in for the conference as well. This would be a great split, putting a Big Ten team in one bowl and an SEC team in the other.

End result:

  • Pac-15 Champion - College Football Playoff
  • Runner up - Las Vegas Bowl vs Big Ten/SEC
  • Third Place - Music City Bowl vs SEC/Big Ten

All three of your top teams get to play P4 opponents in bowl games this way.

So you have a conference with quality athletic departments, regional play for rivalries, realistic and meaningful end of season goals, and actually playing all your conference foes regularly.