With the 24-team playoff now a reality, and conference championship games eliminated, some head coaches are starting to wonder why they’re even associated with conferences anymore.
Missouri head coach Eli Drinkwitz is one such coach who, at his Tuesday press conference, asked reporters the question.
“Times are changing, so you’ve got to adjust with the times,” Drinkwitz asked on Tuesday. “But my question is, why are we associated with conferences anymore if we’re not playing for a conference championship? If the point now is just to be playing into a sea of 24, are we just doing it for scheduling affiliation? If we’re just doing it for scheduling affiliation, is there a reason to be flying all the way across the country to play games from a national perspective?”
Drinkwitz isn’t alone in those observations. Wake Forest head coach Jake Dickert also questioned the need for large, multi-team affiliations.
“It can benefit a team like us; it can hurt a team like us,” Dickert said. “So, there’s a lot of situations. You can play all sides of the coin. But to not say we’re going to have conference champions, why do we have conferences? I know there’s a lot of things that go into all that. Just feels odd.”
Dickert continued, “The new playoff format, I think, forces everybody’s hands into this. I don’t know my feeling. I don’t like it, personally. Right now, you’re like, ‘Man, all of the championship games are going away.'”
For sure, times are changing.
The benefit of being in a conference has been evident up until now.
Winning your conference is an automatic bid for getting into the playoffs. In addition, if you were a member of the Power 4 (SEC, Big 10, ACC, and Big 12), being in a conference meant playing against enough ranked and elite opponents that you wouldn’t have to worry about strength of schedule.
However, as Drinwitz notes, now that teams are just playing into a “sea of 24,” those benefits seem somewhat outdated. Granted, the top four spots in the expanded CFP are still reserved for the Power 4 champions. Now that the conference championship games are eliminated, the process for determining a league’s champion reverts to the old voting system that existed before the conference championship games.
That certainly takes some of the luster out of the process.
Perhaps most importantly, Notre Dame, a team that doesn’t even play in a conference, is eligible for the bye and home field if they finish in the top four.
Drinkwitz’s point about travel is also well-taken. The ACC, Big 12, and the Big 10 have teams on both coasts. The SEC doesn’t have any West Coast teams, but it is a far larger league than it was five years ago.
Why spend millions on travel when you can put together a schedule with ten competitive opponents locally and save tons of money?
These questions and others are now coming to the fore.
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