NCAA 2014 Power Conference Rundown

With the introduction of the College Football Playoff, and the NCAA cementing the power of the new Big 5 Power Conferences, lets take a look at these conferences ahead of the 2014 NCAA Football Season.

2014 Power Conference Rundown

SEC: Yes, they are still king, but with reservations! They consistently out-recruit every other conference. They play in large, raucous stadiums and they were champs for over 10 years. However, Alabama lost two games in one season for the first time in recent memory and LSU once again lost several of players early to the NFL. The second tier of the conference is also quite good, with South Carolina and Missouri holding court for top dog in the East. Georgia and Florida have to regroup and hopefully provide stiffer competition. Two of the wildcards in the SEC are Ole Miss and Tennessee, who have fallen on tough times but may have regrouped at just the right time to cause some chaos in their respective divisions. Bo Wallace at Ole Miss now has the mantle in his lap and one more chance to prove the Rebels are for real. The Vols, meanwhile, have coach Butch Jones steering them in the right direction for the first time since the Lane Kiffin disaster. Make no mistake though, Butch Jones won’t get many chances to err before the Tennessee faithful start looking for his replacement.

ACC: Yes, the Florida State Seminoles are the top dogs of the college ranks and are expected to contend and maybe even repeat. That doesn’t mean the ACC lacks a team that can give them a run for their money; I am sure that Clemson, for one, would dearly love to deliver on last year’s massacre at Death Valley. Newcomer/upstart Louisville is also capable, but without Teddy Bridgewater and head coach Charlie Strong, the road gets a little murky. North Carolina is headed in the right direction and Virginia Tech will not stay down for very long before head coach Frank Beamer stamps out another powerhouse. Pitt and Syracuse enter their second season with the ACC and it’s go time. They have to peel off the shackles of the old Big East and prove their worth. A bowl appearance is just not enough for these storied schools!

BIG TEN: This conference needs an identity retro-fitting! The Maize and Blue of Michigan have turned into an unknown quantity. Then there’s former Big Eight powerhouse Nebraska, able to compile 9-4 records in a single bound !! Purdue and Indiana can’t find the basement stairs, and let’s hope the celebration of Penn State’s revival is not too premature. There are two newcomers as well to swell the TV ratings, but it’s not expected that Maryland or Rutgers are going to be ready for the Big Ten Championship for awhile. That leaves us with last year’s protagonists, Ohio State and Michigan State. Braxton Miller was injured earlier this month and is done for the season, and now the Buckeyes have to make some major adjustments. Meanwhile the East Lansing, Michigan boys are primed for that next step. Coach Mark Dantonio believes he has the tools to take the Spartans to the promised land and polish some of the tarnish off of the Big Ten.

BIG 12: This is the Wild West at its best. Longhorns and Sooners and Cowboys, OH MY !! However the champion Baylor Bears are the slinging-est of them all. The fact that UCF took them to the woodshed in the Fiesta Bowl shouldn’t make a whole lot of difference to this Art Briles team. Charlie Strong and his Texas Longhorns are probably a year or two away, and the other two contenders to watch will be Oklahoma and TCU. Bob Stoops is coming off of a huge Sugar Bowl win over Alabama, which will build some momentum for the Sooners. Meanwhile, Gary Patterson has re-tooled his Horned Frogs to put TCU back into the conversation. DO NOT underestimate Bill Snyder and the K-State Wildcats who somehow, some way, will be there at the end of the season. West Virginia must have a decent campaign or Dana Holgerson could be one of the first coaching casualties of the season.

PAC 12: This is the WILD WILD WEST, only better. We have some of the finest coaches and innovators in any conference and the results will go a long way to pushing this conference into the limelight. All of the Pac-12 coaches are held in high regard, and they’ll go a long way to making this conference the most interesting in the nation. What happens with these offenses could change college football. Quarterbacks Connor Halliday at Washington State and Brett Hundley at UCLA hold a lot of promise and could be the x-factors of the Pac-12. Perhaps they will all beat each other and not be a factor in the final selection process. Only time will tell.

Of course, to mention the other six conferences in one fell swoop of the keyboard would be doing the system a harsh injustice. However, that is the reality of our times. No more will you see a Boise State or Northern Illinois burst onto the playoff scene and make some legitimate noise against the established hierarchy. The MAC, Sun Belt, C-USA, American, Moutain West and independents (aside from Notre Dame) have virtually no chance to compete within the framework of the new playoff system.

It could be argued that they should never have been there anyway. With the requisite three games played outside of your conference, a Marshall or Cincinnati would have to destroy a major player or two and totally dominate their entire conference without a hiccup; even then it would be chaos on selection Sunday to contemplate that a major conference champion would be left out of the mix for an upstart mid-major conference champion to take “their” spot. That is the new reality of the playoff system with only four teams! There will be no OMG factor anymore as the top teams steamroll to the playoffs and the lesser conferences get slotted into the lesser bowl games like they did not that many years ago. On the bright side, now we have more bowl games to watch!

As for independent Notre Dame, they are so mired in controversy right now, with four athletes dismissed for academic impropriety, that the Irish seem on the verge of irrelevance with a truly tough schedule ahead.

For those who are curious or would like to speculate, here are my picks for the Final Four playoff spots. We can all have a laugh at my expense later in the year.

Florida State, Alabama, Oregon and Michigan State. The long shot here would be Baylor!

Pete Thamel of si.com picks Florida State, Alabama, Oregon and Ohio State

Andy Staples of si.com picks Florida State, South Carolina, UCLA and Michigan State

If you have a guess, leave it in the comments. We’ll save it until the end of the season and see how many get close.