This could be a response to "What do you want to see next" but it is too long to post as a response.

I know that sounds like heresy and I know that football pays the bills for most of the athletic departments. However, branding is the next most important element in driving additional exposure and ancillary revenue through merchandise sales like hats, t-shirts, license plate holders, etc.

One of the best ways to expand your brand is to have it exposed year round. Look at what the NFL has done to keep your eyeballs on them - televised combine, televised draft, schedule release. They are presenting something to you every month.

Also, the idea of a football super conference was tried by the SEC (I think) but got nowhere. Egos are too big in college football. No team wants to finish 16th in their league when they might be the 16th best team in the country.

Finally, the football schedule is too grueling and the number of CFP spots is limited. The B1G indicated earlier that qualifying as many teams for the CFP was going to be a priority in the scheduling process (and there goes PSU off our schedule). You are going to need some Washington Generals on your schedule (for those younger than 35, the Washington Generals were the standard “opposition” for the Harlem Globetrotters, who won every game against them). So let’s welcome some non-threatening football types

Phase One

OK, so you’ve got your conference base and just added USC/UCLA (maybe Oregon and Washington). So that gives you 18 teams something like this (this is based on football prowess and brand):

A Tier – Ohio State, Scum, USC, PSU, Oregon and Wiscy

B Tier - Nebraska, UCLA, Washington, Sparty,  Iowa,  Illinois

C Tier – Rutgers, Maryland, Northwestern, Indiana, Purdue, Minnesota

The A tier teams would be shooting for CFP berths (automatic and wildcard) with a schedule that promotes that.

Phase Two

So this is where it gets interesting. This phase takes on a basketball feel. The idea is to have your brand year round. If football is September to January and basketball is November through April, you’ve got 8 months of nonstop media coverage. So my next candidates are strong basketball, OK football schools.

My next two would be UVa and UNC. And the surprise third one would be Kansas. So now you are up to 21 teams. The basketball tiers would look like this.

A Tier – Kansas, UNC, UCLA, Sparty, Maryland, Indiana and Purdue (?)

B Tier – Ohio State, Scum, UVa, USC, Minnesota, Iowa, Illinois, Wiscy

C tier – Northwestern, Rutgers, Oregon, Washington, Nebraska, PSU

I don’t know much about Oregon or Washington basketball but I don’t think they are A tier material.

Phase Three

So we have a few months left in the year to fill and we have a strong interest in the B1G for the entire student athlete experience, not just football and basketball. So, I would look to the old Sears  Cup, now the Directors Cup  for schools with overall team success beyond just football and basketball.

The top finishers over the last 25 years that are not mentioned above or not in the SEC are Stanford,  Cal and Arizona. I would bring on Stanford and Cal and leave a place holder for Notre Dame, who I think would join the B1G if this list came to fruition (otherwise they would just play a round robin with the service academies).

That 23/24 team league would be a who’s who of football, basketball, overall athletics and academics

Bonus phase

Anyone know how many teams the NCAA requires to form a conference? That’s right 8. So if you got to 24 teams you could have the BIG League with 3 conferences and potentially 3 conference champions in the CFP.

I wanted to get this in before the off season is officially over.