In NCAA Football 12 players have an extraordinary amount of control over the college football landscape. Many diehards and purists have pursed their lips and grumbled over a wave conference realignments that forsake traditions and regional sensibilities for television contracts. NCAA 12 is their chance to put things right in the world. Their world.
Under previous versions you could swap conference memberships but the size of their ranks could neither increase nor decrease. Now, you may expand or shrink conferences anywhere from 16 to four members. You may not delete or rename conferences or give them new logos. Theoretically, I think, you could have 11 four-team conferences and a pool of 76 independents.
Once you set your conference memberships, the game allows you to designate whether the league is an automatic BCS qualifier and, if so, to which of the four games it sends its conference champion (or second choice, assuming its champion is a BCS No. 1 or 2.) You may even control for days of the week in which that league plays (Saturday only, Thursdays permitted, or any day), and whether night games in November are permitted, two scheduling rules peculiar to the Big Ten.
Finally, if you have 12 or more teams, you then sort the divisional membership, rename the divisions, and then set aside interdivisional matchups that the schedule will guarantee every year, to protect rivalries such as Alabama and Tennesse, or Auburn and Georgia.
When my review copy arrived, and after I first plunged into Dynasty and began altering the conferences, I figured I would just restore the ACC to its original membership and have a charming what-if trip back to Tobacco Road. I spent the next five hours completely remaking each conference, puzzling out which protected matchups had the most tradition, whose bowl tie-ins made the most sense, and where title games in my new mega-conferences should be played. It was a perfectly
perfectly hallucinated reality, one I’m delighted to share with you below.
I really want to create a 16-team Land Grant Superconference, with divisions named the Farmers and the Mechanics, but maybe I’ll do that for Online Dynasty. For now, in my perfect model-railroad world of college football, here’s who plays where:
Atlantic Coast Conference
Members: Clemson, South Carolina, North Carolina, N.C. State, Duke, Wake Forest, Maryland and Virginia.
BCS Automatic? Yes, the champion gets an automatic BCS berth, but it is not tied to a specific bowl.
Scheduling: Saturday games only, with night games permissible in November.
In my game, the ACC is essentially unchanged over its entire lifespan. (Though Virginia joined the league in 1953, it was not a charter member and did not play the first football season).
The final Saturday sees the great rivalries in full bloom: Clemson and South Carolina’s all-out warfare; Maryland and Virginia’s border skirmish, Duke and North Carolina’s classic private-public rivalry, and State vs. Wake Forest, the farmers and the Baptists, forming the allegory of this conference’s home state.
Big XVI
Big Eight Division: Colorado, Iowa State, Kansas, Kansas State, Missouri, Nebraska, Oklahoma, Oklahoma State
Southwest Division: Arkansas, Baylor, Houston, Rice, Texas Christian, Texas, Texas A&M, Texas Tech
BCS Automatic? Yes, the champion gets a bid to the Orange Bowl, the Big Eight’s original tie-in. The conference title game is played between the champions of each division and is held at Mile High Stadium, Denver.
Protected Matchups: Texas-Oklahoma; Arkansas-Missouri; Texas A&M-Nebraska; Baylor-Colorado; TCU-Kansas; Rice-Iowa State; Texas Tech-Oklahoma State; Houston-Kansas State.
Scheduling: Thursday games permitted; night games in November permitted.
