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The original was posted on /r/cfb by /u/Cybotnic-Rebooted on 2025-07-31 20:40:42+00:00.
Hello! In 1862, the US government passed and signed off on the Morrill “Land Grant” Act of 1862, giving money to states to establish colleges for Agriculture and Mechanics across the country, being one of the first forms of truly public higher education in the US. So… what if we removed it? What schools would vanish from the college football landscape because of it?
It’s at this point that I must admit I have lied to you. Sorry, but we aren’t actually going to be completely removing the Morrill Act. Instead, we are changing how it was implemented across the country, because, usually, there were 2 implementations: Either A. The state put the land grant money into establishing an entirely new college for Agriculture and Mechanics (they did this in states like Michigan, Mississippi, and Utah), or B. They put the money into putting an Agriculture and Mechanics department into their already existent college (think how U of Georgia, U of Illinois, or U of Nebraska are both land grant and flagship schools)
We are changing history to where all states go with the 2nd route, combining their flagship state campus for liberal arts and the sciences with the agriculture and mechanics schools. Here’s a map, if you are curious of which state is what. And this isn’t quite as easy as removing every school with “State”, “Tech”, or “A&M” from the list. Well, okay, it is easy for A&M, but, for example, Ohio State, Louisiana State, and Pennsylvania State are both flagships and land grants, while Florida State, Arizona State, and Georgia Tech aren’t land grants despite their names.
Now for some of these, the elimination is simple. Alabama, Indiana, Iowa, Michigan, Mississippi, New Mexico, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Utah, Virginia, and Washington are pretty clear who would be eliminated, as the seperate land grant college was established/absorbed by the state at the same time or after the founding of the flagship school. However, a couple are weird. Texas was planned before the founding of A&M, but established after A&M was. And then you have Colorado, Kansas, and Oregon, where the flagship schools were both planned and established after the land grant schools.
There is a very clear argument to be made that in this timeline, it would be Colorado, Kansas, and Oregon being eliminated, instead of Colorado State, Kansas State, and Oregon State. There is also an argument to be made, however, and one that I’m personally inclined to, that if those were the sites chosen, they would eventually be named “University of _" instead of "_ State University”, like in our timeline. So, for this hypothetical, the University of Colorado is in Fort Collins, the University of Kansas is in Manhattan, and the University of Oregon is in Corvallis
This change eliminates 16 programs from the FBS level: Auburn (This is probably the most interesting story out of all of these, as it was originally established as a private school that was on the brink of bankruptcy before the Alabama government bought them to use as their Land Grant school), Clemson, Colorado State/Boulder, Iowa State, Kansas State/Lawrence, Michigan State, Mississippi State, New Mexico State, NC State, Oregon State/Eugene, Oklahoma State, Purdue, Texas A&M, Utah State, Virginia Tech, and Washington State
Here’s a mock of what regular conferences might have looked like in this timeline.