Geographically Better Conference Realignment for CFB 25!!!

[Neinhardt]

Geographically Better Conference Realignment for CFB 25

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Heyo, everybody! This is my first post on Operation Sports and I wanted to share with you all my new preferred way of organizing my dynasty conferences in CFB 25. I hate how conferences today are just about the money, with little to no thought of traditions or how close schools are to each other. So I worked on this realignment trying to keep schools in conferences close to each other and to keep a majority of the rivalries alive.

The conferences are aligned to have the power five conferences with a secondary conference for each and then what I like to call the "basement" being the independent. This tiered conference system is to help work in a relegation factor into my dynasties so that it keeps things fresh and usually keeps high-tier schools competing with one another. Bad teams will fall and higher overall teams will jump into those Power Five conferences. I also wanted to bring back divisions as it helps sort schools even more.

Because all of these conferences have a tier 1, 2, and 3 system there needs to be a way to relegate each conference so that the best of the best are in tier 1, and average are in tier 2 and the worst schools in the country are in the basement at tier 3. I haven't finalized a way that I like to relegate teams, so if anyone has a cool idea to do so, then I am all ears. But for now, I am focusing on keeping the higher overall/higher star schools in the Power 5 conferences. Once a school in a tier 2 conference that I feel could hold its own in a power 5 conference, I put them up into their designated Power 5 conference and drop down the school that I think has done worse in recent years of the dynasty and isn't having a good impact on the conference or the school. This goes for a tier 3 school in the independent with them holding their own in a tier 2 conference and taking one school down into the basement to replace the vacant spot. For schools in the independent, I make sure they're going into the right conference if they're getting promoted. I have labeled the schools in the independent to the corresponding conferences they would go to below, so if you're doing the relegation this way, make sure you know where each school goes to.

For Conference Rules when you're doing this realignment, I set Power 5 conferences to have 8 conference games, with a championship decided by division winners. Secondary Conferences have no divisions and play 6 conference games (as I like for these teams to play more out-of-conference games), with a conference championship decided by the highest teams in the conference. For the Independent, you can't change any rules therefore you can't set conference games or a championship, so those teams are kinda floating in the wind until they're able to join a tier 2 conference.

This is how I setup the conferences but do whatever you like, change things up, make power 5s play all 12 games in the conference, or not give tier 2 conference championship games, do whatever! I wanted to post this and share what I think is the most fun I have had playing CFB 25 and keeping my dynasties interesting and very fun. Use this as a starting point for your dynasty or if anyone has some cool ideas to reshape this go ahead and leave a reply. I hope you enjoy this realignment!

***Quick Update***
I reworked a few of the Power 5 Conferences because of some odd looking positions in some divisions. Here are the changes-

ACC Complete Rework-
Atlantic Coast -> Blue Ridge (Based on the Blue Ridge Mountains going through the Carolina's and Virginia)
In the Blue Ridge Division is, App St, Duke, Liberty, NC State, North Carolina, Virginia, Virginia Tech, and Wake Forest.
Appalachia -> Liberty Belt (Based on the History of the region and not wanting to call it some odd New England name)
In the Liberty Belt Division is, Boston College, Maryland, Penn State, Pitt, Rutgers, Syracuse, Temple, and West Virginia.
These Changes feel better than what was posted before and I know I did say I didn't want a North/South type of conference, but in the end it has a better feel and look than before, so I'm going with it.

PAC12 Small Rework-
Fresno State swaps with Washington St.
Fresno is closer to the coast than Washington St. is, and although both Washington teams are now seperated I feel that the position they're both located in is better this way.

BIG10 Small Rework-
Indiana swaps with Notre Dame.
The small difference between these teams to East and West is why it's been difficult to place either or in the same or other division but, I am happy with how this looks and works out in my dynasties.

SEC Small Rework-
Auburn swaps with Georgia
When I built this conference I didn't really distinguish between east, west, south, or north, but I changed my mind on that. Now the Deep South is the West and the Sunshine Coast is the East. This forces Georgia to swap with Auburn.

Power 5 conferences are 16 teams each
* ACC
* Big Ten
* Big 12
* Pac 12
* SEC

Second Tier Conferences are 10 teams each (MWC has only 9)
* American (ACC Tier 2)
* MAC (Big Ten Tier 2)
* C-USA (Big 12 Tier 2)
* MWC (Pac 12 Tier 2)
* Sun-Belt (SEC Tier 2)

Third Tier Conference "The Basement" has 5 teams one from each conference
* FBS Independent
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ACC-

Blue Ridge-
* App State
* Duke
* Liberty
* NC State
* North Carolina
* Virginia
* Virginia Tech
* Wake Forest

Liberty Belt-
* Boston College
* Maryland
* Penn State
* Pittsburgh
* Rutgers
* Syracuse
* Temple
* West Virginia
--------------------------------
Big Ten-

Mid West-
* Illinois
* Indiana
* Iowa
* Iowa State
* Minnesota
* Northwestern
* Purdue
* Wisconsin

Rust Belt-
* Cincinnati
* Kentucky
* Louisville
* Michigan
* Michigan State
* Notre Dame
* Ohio State
* Toledo
--------------------------------
Big 12-

Great Plains-
* Arkansas
* Kansas
* Kansas State
* Missouri
* Nebraska
* Oklahoma
* Oklahoma State
* Texas Tech

South Central-
* Baylor
* LSU
* SMU
* TCU
* Texas
* Texas A&M
* Tulane
* UTSA
--------------------------------
PAC 12-

Pacific Coast-
* Cal
* Fresno State
* Oregon
* Oregon State
* Stanford
* UCLA
* USC
* Washington

Western Rockies-
* Arizona
* Arizona State
* BYU
* Boise State
* Colorado
* Utah
* Utah State
* Washington State
--------------------------------
SEC-

Deep South-
* Alabama
* Auburn
* Geogria Tech
* Memphis
* Mississippi State
* Ole Miss
* Tennessee
* Vanderbilt

Sunshine Coast-
* Clemson
* Florida
* Florida State
* Georgia
* Miami
* South Carolina
* UCF
* USF
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Tier 2 Conferences *

American-
* Army
* Coastal Carolina
* Charlotte
* East Carolina
* JMU
* Marshall
* Navy
* Old Dominion
* UConn
* UMass

MAC-
* Akron
* Bowling Green
* Central Michigan
* Eastern Michigan
* Kent State
* Miami (OH)
* Nothern Illinois
* Ohio
* Western Kentucky
* Western Michigan

C-USA-
* Arkansas State
* Houston
* Louisiana
* Louisiana Tech
* North Texas
* Rice
* Sam Houston
* Texas State
* Tulsa
* UTEP

MWC-
* Air Force
* Colorado State
* Hawai'i
* Nevada
* New Mexico State
* San Diego State
* San Jose State
* UNLV
* Wyoming

Sun-Belt-
* FAU
* FIU
* Georgia Southern
* Georgia State
* Jax State
* Mid Tenn State
* South Alabama
* Southern Miss
* Troy
* UAB
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Basement Tier 3 - Independents
* Ball State (from Big Ten/MAC Conference)
* Buffalo (from ACC/American Conference)
* Kennesaw State (from SEC/Sun-Belt Conference)
* New Mexico (from Pac 12/MWC Conference)
* UL Monroe (from Big 12/C-USA Conference)

[JoshuaN125]

Probably the best I've seen. Well done!

[Squeezee12]

Pretty good looking set of regional conferences.

I ran a test dynasty and you can eliminate Independents. Just a suggestion if you wanted to do so to get those 5 remaining in tier 2 conferences.

[bigwill33]

Duke is like 8 miles from UNC. They and NCSt and Wake are all within a short distance of each other. None of them are coastal or Appalachian. But they’d likely never be separated, or give up their yearly rivalries.

[Neinhardt]

Quote: Originally Posted by bigwill33

Duke is like 8 miles from UNC. They and NCSt and Wake are all within a short distance of each other. None of them are coastal or Appalachian. But they’d likely never be separated, or give up their yearly rivalries.

Yah, the ACC was a bit tricky to finalize on, I could've made it a north/south divisions but I didn't like the look how the division looked and wanted to give the divisions their kind of own identity and I grew up in central Pa and loved the appalachian mountains and wanted to implament them and the coastline too. Just tricky to decide who to put into the app side and who to put in the coastal side.

[Neinhardt]

Quote: Originally Posted by Squeezee12

Pretty good looking set of regional conferences. I ran a test dynasty and you can eliminate Independents. Just a suggestion if you wanted to do so to get those 5 remaining in tier 2 conferences.

Yah I was testing around wether I would or wouldn't involve the independent but I eneded with it being in so that it could add a type of fear of falling so far that you ended up in no conference and was forced to try and regain that membership into a tier 2 conference.

[Limasbravo]

Looks good. I myself go a little further than you for geography and have the criteria that schools from the same state MUST be in the same conference.

[studbucket]

I'm the same as Limasbravo. Here were my conferences:




7/10 of the conferences have divisions as well, and all have conference championship games.

After 4 seasons, it's interesting. The Midwest, Northeast, and Texas+Oklahoma conferences are all doing well. The Mountain Southwest, Rust Belt, and Gulf Coast conferences are all D+ or lower rated.