How the conference realignment should actually look according to one expert

Not may are fans of the direction that college football is headed

The Pac-12 is about to embark on what will be one of the best football season's in conference history, but there is a caveat to the special season we are expecting to have.

After the 2023 season, both USC and UCLA will be leaving the conference and joining the Big Ten. A move that has changed the landscape of the Pac-12 in a couple ways. For starters, losing the Los Angeles market is less than ideal when you are attempting to negotiate a media rights deal, which is something that has been an ongoing discussion for the past year.

Secondly, the conference while it can stay at 10 schools is expected to add at least two programs to get back to 12. San Diego State and SMU have both been confirmed as the likely fits, with programs such as Boise State and UNLV being considered as long shots. 

Expansion has been an extremely popular topic over the past year, but David Ubben of The Athletic revealed he is not a fan of how realignment has changed the sport. So much so that he released what he believes the conferences should actually look like, with the Pac-12 retaining USC and UCLA while giving the boot to four programs. 

Ubben revealed he wants more balance, more logical geographically, and isn't a fan of conferences not having the amount of teams that their name indicates but most importantly values common sense. 

In a world where realignment has gone wild, let’s lay out a vision for a college football landscape driven by common sense. In short: It’s time to take some modern sensibility, hop into our time machine and head back toward 1970s geography, turning the Power 5 into a Power 8.

Let's take a look at which programs would make the cut for what Ubben re-named the Pac-8, and where the others ended up.

The return of the Pac-12

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Schools:

1. CAL
2. Oregon 
3. Oregon State
4. Stanford
5. UCLA
6. USC
7. Washington
8. Washington State 

Pretty similar to the original Pac-8 minus Idaho and Montana who were members until sometime in the 1950s. This would maintain that every program in the conference is somewhere in a state on the West Coast with no inland programs. This obviously includes the Pac keeping the two Los Angeles schools while also keeping the other biggest brands in the conference such as Stanford, Oregon, and Washington. 

What about the rest?

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Schools:

1. Arizona
2. Arizona State
3. Colorado 
4. Utah 

In this scenario, these four would be removed from the Pac-8 and would join what Ubben called the Western Athletic Conference. Joining them would be programs such as Fresno State, Big 12 member BYU, likely Pac-12 member San Diego State, and Pac-12 hopeful Boise State. This is more of a lift for the latter four programs as they all (outside of BYU) will get to be in a Power conference. Can't imagine the four corner schools would love this conference.

Other interesting programs on the move

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Schools:

1. Notre Dame
2. SMU
3. Tulane 
4. Hawaii
5. Colorado State
6. UNLV

In this scenario Notre Dame is actually in a conference as they were included in the Big Ten. Ubben explained that in this realignment exercise, every conference would have their TV rights negotiated together, which means independence no longer makes sense and everyone is on an even playing field. Instead of joining a conference on the West coast, SMU would be a part of the revived Southwest Conference with programs like Texas, Arkansas, and Texas A&M. 

The four programs in UNLV, Tulane, Hawaii,  and Colorado State have all been viewed as Pac-12 candidates at one point, but none of them were included into a Power 8 conference by Ubben.