This is an extremely long episode, but also some of the most fun I’ve had on an episode, and also some of the most nervous I’ve been doing an episode.
I could go on and on, but the show notes are going to be complicated enough already. Long covid sucks. Depression sucks. Anxiety sucks. A whole lot outside of my own body sucks, too, and dealing with it all in concert really and truly sucks. I walk a lot, because I haven’t been running for a real long while now, and I listen to a bunch of music and podcasts, like a normal person in the City of Mind Your Business.
I think a lot about the concept of Pixar’s Inside Out, a cast of voices in your brain representing your emotions. It kind of builds on my favorite science film from school (it was an old film then, and still goes pretty hard), Hemo The Magnificent, which includes a team working around the body, including a funny little guy with a mustache as the executive functioning in the brain. Moderate love as well to Osmosis Jones, as well, a movie I’m not sure holds up as well and don’t really plan to find out, but had its time and place and was one of the better rainy-day movies during my summer at Harlem RBI.
Anyway, I think of dealing with mental health as something like dealing with some form of bad guys who come in and start making a ruckus. That’s why the headphones are important, because they can provide at least a little escape from when it gets so bad that you can hear it in your head – that you hear nothing but that.
I’ve been listening to Ryan Nanni and the rest of Shutdown Fullcast for years, and it hit me that this was a different kind of thing not only than doing a regular episode, or one with another podcaster I listen to. Shutdown Fullcast is, as stated in its own introductory words each week, the Internet’s Only College Football Podcast. Which was the inspiration for 13 episodes of the Not A Football Podcast strain of Willets Pod. As was their show itself, which runs the gamut from being prime builders of 21st century college football fandom lore to Glenallen Hill’s fear of spiders, and a dude who rode a jetski across the Irish Sea.
Really, I prepared for this show, nervous as all heck (you can tell, because I prepared for this show) and that afternoon listened to last week’s Fullcast, and heard my faves talking about weird baseball injuries? And saying nice things about the sport? It messed me up like Hill messed up Steve Woodard, because this was already gonna be a long episode due to the content of our game… but, it was fine. Because of course Ryan didn’t accept the invitation to come on the show so that he could come tell me to my face what a schmuck I am, and expose the truth of that matter to the world, at long last.
After that Nashville winter meetings where I’d driven to Huntsville to see rockets, I still vividly remember sitting on the floor of the airport and doing a whole thread about feeling like I didn’t belong, and ticking off folks who I thought did each of the things that I might be moderately good at – way better than me. But that’s also a lousy way to think about things. In the actual industry, there’s a sense of “trying to get ahead,” which, even if it wasn’t what I was after, is pervasive. I don’t want to compete with Shutdown Fullcast or anyone else with this. We’re going to do stuff that makes us happy, and this episode — with opening day tomorrow, let’s call this the official year one finale — made me happy for two hours. I hope it does for you, too, and I’m so excited for the year ahead, and all the fun we’re going to have together. —J
So, this episode’s premise is a college realignment draft, spinning off from a project that I started at the beginning of last season, and sparked into “let’s do this now” by Shutdown Fullcast spending multiple offseason episodes showing how difficult it is to squeeze all these schools together and still preserve rivalries and traditions that make the sport so rich. (Spoiler: really, really difficult.)
My idea was for 19 conferences, with seven teams each, and the alignment determined not in a Hyatt ballroom somewhere, but on the field. The team with the most wins over the past X number of years (I think I made it 20 for the purposes of this exercise, but can’t find the list I used) starts by making its own league.
How do they do it? Let’s use the example of the school that had the first pick on my board, an Ohio state university.
Ohio State brings along the two teams it has played against the most: Michigan and Illinois. Each of those schools then gets to “bring a friend,” its most-played opponent still available. That’s Minnesota and Northwestern, respectively. Then close it out with two more picks from Ohio State: in their case, Indiana and Wisconsin.
Filling out the entirety of FBS required adding a couple of schools to FBS to get to the multiple of seven. Best of luck to them in this world. Here is what your 2022 college football conferences would’ve looked like under this selection algorithm:
Ohio State, Michigan, Illinois, Minnesota, Northwestern, Indiana, Wisconsin
Oklahoma, Oklahoma State, Texas, Kansas, Baylor, Kansas State, Missouri
Boise State, Fresno State, Nevada, San José State, UNLV, Utah State, Hawai’i
Alabama, Tennessee, Mississippi State, Vanderbilt, Ole Miss, LSU, Kentucky
Georgia, Auburn, Georgia Tech, Florida, Duke, South Carolina, Clemson
Oregon, Oregon State, Washington, Washington State, Cal, Stanford, UCLA
USC, Notre Dame, Arizona, Navy, Arizona State, Utah, Colorado
TCU, SMU, Texas A&M, Rice, Arkansas, Texas Tech, Houston
Virginia Tech, Virginia, West Virginia, North Carolina, Pitt, N.C. State, Miami (Florida)
Florida State, Wake Forest, Maryland, Boston College, Penn State, Memphis, Southern Miss
BYU, Wyoming, Colorado State, New Mexico, Air Force, UTEP, San Diego State
Cincinnati, Miami (Ohio), Louisville, Kent State, Tulsa, East Carolina, Temple
Iowa, Purdue, Iowa State, Michigan State, Nebraska, Northern Illinois, Ball State
Toledo, Bowling Green, Western Michigan, Ohio, Central Michigan, Eastern Michigan, Marshall
Central Florida, South Florida, Tulane, Connecticut, Army, Akron, Florida International
Louisiana Tech, Arkansas State, North Texas, Louisiana-Monroe, New Mexico State, UAB, UTSA
Troy, South Alabama, Florida Atlantic, Louisiana, Middle Tennessee State, Georgia Southern, Appalachian State
Syracuse, Rutgers, Buffalo, Massachusetts, James Madison, Old Dominion, Liberty
Western Kentucky, Jacksonville State, Sam Houston State, Georgia State, Texas State, Coastal Carolina, Charlotte
The conferences would change over time, reflecting contemporary powers in the game while staying true to college football history by emphasizing rivals on the schedule.
Each team would play six games in conference, one game against the previous year’s equivalent finisher from four other divisions (thank you, NFL scheduling matrix), and the option for one neutral-site game that they schedule themselves, the only nod here to Notre Dame.
It’s a shorter season, but a longer playoff, with each of the 19 conference champions getting an automatic bid, plus however many at-large teams you want to have filling out a preliminary round that narrows the field to 16 and proceeds as a bracket from there. To me, five at-larges and eight byes makes the most sense. The maximum amount of games that a team could play in a season would be 16 — if they played both the 11th regular-season game and the preliminary playoff round. More likely, a championship team would play 15 times, as Georgia did the last two seasons.
Will it ever happen? Of course not. But it was fun, just like these conferences that we came up with through our draft on the show. (Don’t read any further if you don’t want the spoiler!)
Southern
Alabama, Auburn, LSU, Ole Miss, South Carolina, Penn State, Troy, Tulane, Tennessee, Texas
Georgia, Clemson, Florida, Coastal Carolina, Florida State, Virginia, Georgia Tech, N.C. State, Arkansas, Mississippi State
Midwestern
Ohio State, Iowa, Purdue, Boise State, Miami (Florida), Nebraska, Kansas State, Duke, Pitt, Illinois
Michigan, Michigan State, Appalachian State, Indiana, East Carolina, Wisconsin, Minnesota, West Virginia, Missouri, Virginia Tech
Western
Oregon, Oregon State, Hawai’i, Washington State, Air Force, Stanford, Colorado State, UNLV, Vanderbilt, Northwestern
USC, UCLA, Fresno State, Oklahoma, San José State, Texas A&M, Arizona, UAB, Washington, San Diego State
Major Independents
Notre Dame, California, Maryland, Arizona State, Utah, Colorado, Arkansas State, Central Florida
Hope you enjoyed this even a fraction as much as I did, and can’t wait for opening day and the real start of our second year of Willets Pen. Thanks so much for being a part of year one!
The Road To The Alabama Truck Nuts Bowl