A Top 40

So a lot of people watched with eager anticipation as 3 ESPN analysts did their top 40 "draft" to make a new super division of college football comprised of the most elite programs in the nation. One major flaw with their system was that it revealed some obvious biases in those drafting, and there was no contingency plan to deal with bad picks. If a guy wanted to draft somebody, nobody could stop him from doing it. Pat Forde selected a majority of his teams from the Big 12 and Pac 10. He attended a Big 12 school. Mark Schlabach picked a plethora of SEC and non-BCS teams. He's a Georgia Bulldog. Ivan Maisel was a little more balanced, but leaned slightly towards the ACC and Big 10. Haven't figured out why a Stanford guy would do that yet...but he did nonetheless.

Well, 3 of my co-workers and I got together and picked our top 40. Essentially we all came to the table with our own individual top 40. All of the teams that made everyone's top 40 were immediately added to our collective top 40. Then we looked at teams that 3 of the 4 of us picked, discussed to see if anyone changed their minds after hearing some arguments, and voted on those again. If 3 of the 4 of us still picked them, they went into the top 40. At this point we had 37 universities and 7 more that at least 2 of us had picked. We discussed and debated the merits of the teams. We eliminated 2 and had our final 5. Each of us then voted for 3 teams. After that we had 39 teams in, and 3 teams tied with votes for the final spot. We eliminated 1 of the 3 and had a final vote for the final spot. Our main criteria were as follows: overall program winning percentage, heisman trophies, conference championships, national championships, "on the rise" status, how much of a program's success rides on one coach (and if he leaves, what will happen?). Some programs have been down for a few years after a glorious past, while others have been up for a few years after an ignominious past. We tried to balance all of these and come to a consensus. Let me be clear: there was no consensus on the 40th spot: some argued Maryland, others Kansas, and the spot finally went to Iowa. We had 34 of those from the ESPN list, but came up with 6 different programs (do the math). Here is our list:

*-team that was not on ESPN's list
Pacific:
Arizona State
Boise State
BYU
California
Oregon
Stanford*
UCLA
USC
Utah
Washington*

Midwest:
Arkansas
Colorado*
Iowa
LSU
Nebraska
Oklahoma
TCU*
Texas
Texas A&M
Wisconsin

Southeast:
Alabama
Auburn
Clemson
Florida
Florida State
Georgia
Georgia Tech
Miami
Ole Miss
Tennessee

Northeast:
Boston College
Michigan
Michigan State
Navy*
Notre Dame
Ohio State
Penn State
Pittsburgh*
Virginia Tech
West Virginia

The 6 schools that did not make our cut that were on ESPN's list were: Kansas, Missouri, Oklahoma State, Oregon State, South Carolina, and Texas Tech. One common thread of those 6 is that most of their program's successes have come under their current head coach. Kansas hasn't won a conference championship in 40 years. Mizzou hasn't done much of anything until Pinkel arrived. OK State had a couple of decent RBs in the 80's in Thurman Thomas and Barry Sanders, but besides that it's all been Mr. I'm 40. Oregon State hadn't done a thing until Riley and the Rogers brothers showed up. South Carolina did have Holtz before the Old Ball Coach, but even they haven't sniffed an SEC Title under either of them. What happens to Tech when Leach leaves? Has he built a program or has he built a system that will die when the head gets chopped off? 3 years ago this would have been a different list. 3 years from now it would also probably look different. This will never happen, but it's fun to try it out.

I personally believe the best solution would be to cut I-A to 80 teams, take the bottom 40 from I-A and the top 40 from I-AA and make a new I-AA, and the rest of teams in I-AA become I-AAA. Divide them all into 8 conferences. The top 2 from each conference go to a 16-team playoff. The bottom 2 in each conference drop down a division and are replaced with the 16 playoff teams from the division below. That way, mediocrity is not tolerated. 2-10 Iowa State does not get more money each year than two-time BCS Buster Utah, just because they have some powerful buddies. I have tried to come up with my top 80, but then I do stupid things like buy a foreclosure and have to put all of my spare time into fixing it up...thus, you are all left hanging by a thread, awaiting my perfect solution!