Wednesday, September 26, 2012

Republic of Texas Athletic Conference

With the recent changes in the major collegiate athletic conferences, it came to my attention how many FBS teams are in the state of Texas.  There are at least 10 FBS teams from Texas that I can come up with off of the top of my head.  These teams could easily form an athletic conference all to themselves and never have to leave the state for conference games.  Of course, I believe the Southwest Conference and the Big 8/12 had a lot of Texas teams, but there were always at least half or more teams in the conference who were from out of the state. 

A Texas conference would be ALL in the state.  That tells you how much football goes on in Texas.  And I'm just talking about the NCAA FBS teams... not the FCS or DIV II. 

That is a lot of football.

They could even split a Texas FBS conference and have a championship game.  It would split into 2 divisions fairly evenly:
Texas     Texas A&M
TCU       Texas Tech
Houston   Baylor
Rice      UTEP
Texas St. North Texas

I doubt that the geographical advantages would outweigh other disadvantages.  Playing only a few games out of the state a year might drop the rankings of all the teams.  At least with multiple conferences represented in the state you have a chance for more higher ranked teams.  Then again, with the number of weaker FBS teams, the strongest 4 or 5 might rank higher than they currently do with all the competition in their present conferences.

Kind of weird to think there could be a Republic of Texas conference, but it would be cool, in a way.

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