I suppose the simplest plan would be to line up the schools in a north/south alignment. WASH schools. ORE schools and NoCal schools in one, the others in the other. Then split the geograghical schools in half so teams would play against a team in that region yearly, with 3 non divisional conference games. This way, if you take Oregon for example, their schedule would look something like Non Conference Non Conference Non Conference Non Conference @Cal Wasu Col @USC @UW Stan @ASU OSU To simplify for my feeble mind I will use the same dates. Then the following year Non Non Non Non Cal @Wasu @Uta UCLA UW @Stan UA @OSU Then flip the home and away games from the first season in season 3, and then flip the home and away games from the second season. Repeat every year thereafter. That way you play every team in the conference every other year, and if you count Colorado and Utah as the same market, you get a game against each tv/recruiting market each year (Utah and Colorado would of course not be the same tv market, but same region) and you get a game in each recruiting market every other year.
My plan above makes the most sense. I liked the zipper option, but after reading some things about it in the ACC forums, I am not a fan. They all hate it because no one ever seems to know who is in what conference throughout the country. North/South or East/West. Either way my schedule provides a way for teams to stay relevant throughout the conference territories. At least this way you are playing every region, every year. And every team, every other year.
Here's a good article about the situation. Sounds like all the options are on the table. http://espn.go.com/blog/pac10/post/...-divided-what-will-pac-10-divisions-look-like
I propose a crazy alignment if we're willing to split up rivals. Change the divisions each year based on previous year's results. Doesn't necessarily guarantee division parity, but slightly better than set divisions would (see Big XII North). Each sport is unaffected by the other: 1st 4th 5th 8th 9th 12th 2nd 3rd 6th 7th 10th 11th So based on last year (pretending that Utah and Colorado's records reflect Pac-10 play), divisions would look like: Oregon Oregon State Stanford Washington UCLA Washington State Utah Arizona USC Cal Arizona State Colorado
Interesting facts: Utah has won nine consecutive bowl games, two of them against Pac-10 teams, and are the last football team to beat Alabama, the current National Champions.
Seems like a less radical way to achieve something similar is to ditch conferences and simply set up the schedules based on last year's records to give everyone similar schedule strength. With some schedule tinkering (when needed) to also have teams play as many different teams as possible over a two-season span.
