Team Prestige, Fitting In, & Promotion/Relegation

[byufan4ever]

It's been a while, but I'm pretty sure that I've done something like this some years past. I've been thinking a lot lately about where BYU fits in and I know that this would never happen in a million years, but let me have some fun and dream.

Here's the idea. I've taken what I will call each team's prestige from this article. I know that this article is 5 years old, but there just aren't many prestige rankings out there and I felt that this one is fairly thorough and accurate as of it's date. Since this takes into account the entire history of college football the last 5 years shouldn't have moved the needle too much for too many teams. The author explains that the ranking was determined from: Recent History (2001-2016), Ancient History (pre-2001), Recruiting Pull (Scout's team rankings from 2013-2017), Player Development (NFL draft picks from 2008-2017), and Fan Engagement (average home attendance from last 5 seasons + number of followers on each team's official Twitter account).

I then created West and East conferences by dividing the country down the Mississippi River. I started with the number one team on the list and plopped them on the corresponding West/East conference and worked my way up through the list. When a conference reached 12 teams a new conference below it was created. I did this for all 130 teams.

BYU ranked #44 in Team Prestige (as of 2017). As you will see in the images below that puts them in the second tier West conference. That is still some pretty good company: Stanford, Washington, Oklahoma St, Arizona St, Utah, Baylor, Texas Tech, California, Boise St, Minnesota, and Arizona.

Teams would play everyone in their conference once for an 11 game season and everyone would have the same basic SOS (not accounting for home/away games) within their conference. At the end of each season the top team from each West conference would face off against the top team from the corresponding East conference for an overall champion at that tier.

Now the real beauty of my system is that it would use a promotion and relegation system similar to what most soccer leagues outside of the MLS do. Using the existing ranking system as an example of end of season standings Missouri and Penn St. would automatically be relegated from the tier 1 conferences with Stanford and Wisconsin taking their places. TCU as the second-to-last place finisher in the West Tier 1 conference would face off against Washington as the second best finisher in the West Tier 2 conference to decide the final promotion and relegation. On the East side Miami (FL) would do a playoff against Virginia Tech.

I like this because it creates a fluid system where on the field results determine which conference each team is in. BYU may currently be a second tier West team, but if they truly want to play with the best of the best then they will have to earn it. If they go through a rough patch they may get relegated, but they'll be among similar type teams.