College football 2024 vs. 1984: An in-depth look at the conference ...
College football fans might have to take a quiz before the 2024 football season.
Who is in what conference now? Oregon, UCLA, USC and Washington are in the Big Ten. Texas and Oklahoma are in the SEC. Arizona, Arizona State, Colorado and Utah are in the Big 12. On Friday, the ACC added Cal, Stanford and SMU. This is the new college football – and it has shaken up the traditions and regional feel of the sport to its core.
With that in mind, here is the question. Would you take the next 40 years of college football, which means more realignment and inevitably of two super-conferences? The push to make college football identical to the NFL continues.
Or would you rewind to the 1984 – the year – with the old-school traditions and regional safety blanket of playing in your rivals in your backyard? Teams were in the right conferences, and imagine that with today’s television and streaming options. Wouldn’t that be better?
It’s one of those red pill, blue pill games that we like to play.
We looked back at the major conferences and the national championship picture in 1984 and compared them to what college football fans will experience next season.
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ACCBack to 1984: Maryland – led by quarterback Frank Reich and coach Bobby Ross – won the eight-team conference. Clemson was under NCAA probation. Football season was always a nice appetizer for basketball season – and that 1984 basketball season featured Michael Jordan, of course.
ACC in 1984 SCHOOL 2024 CONFERENCE Clemson ACC Duke ACC Georgia Tech ACC Maryland Big Ten NC State ACC North Carolina ACC Virginia ACC Wake Forest ACCThe future in 2024: Florida State, Miami, Virginia Tech, Boston College, Syracuse, Pitt and Louisville all joined the conference in an eventual Big East mashup.With the addition Cal, Stanford and SMU, the ACC would have twice as many teams at 17. Notre Dame also has a five-game arrangement with the conference. Maryland is gone, however, and it’s no longer the nation’s best basketball conference.
Which one is better? Ask North Carolina fans when they have that Tuesday night basketball game in Palo Alto, Calif.
Big 12Back to 1984: It was the Big Eight in those days. Nebraska-Oklahoma rivalry was as good as it gets. Those two schools won every conference championship from 1977-88 before Colorado broke the streak in 1988. There were no schools from the state of Texas in the conference.
Big Eight in 1984 SCHOOL 2024 CONFERENCE Colorado Big 12* Iowa State Big 12 Kansas Big 12 Kansas State Big 12 Missouri SEC Nebraska Big Ten Oklahoma SEC Oklahoma State Big 12*Denotes joining Big 12 in 2024
The future in 2024: Nebraska and Oklahoma are gone. So is Texas – which joined the conference in 1996. The Big 12 has four Texas schools (Baylor, Houston, Texas Tech, TCU). Utah and BYU – which were in the WAC in 1984 – also are in; along with UCF, which was a Division II independent that season. Arizona, Arizona State, Cincinnati and West Virginia round out the coast-to-coast conference.
Which one is better? Nebraska and Oklahoma combined for a dozen national championships in the conference. Colorado is the only other school with a national title while playing in the conference. The pressure is on Deion Sanders now, right?
Big TenBack to 1984: The Big Ten played nine conference games and no conference championship game. Ohio State made the Rose Bowl – but the Buckeyes beat just one ranked team that season.
Big Ten in 1984The future in 2024: Penn State, Nebraska, Maryland, Rutgers, Oregon, UCLA, USC and Washington give the Big Ten an 18-team super conference that will have programming that will stretch from noon until the early hours of Sunday morning.
Which one is better? How many old-school Big Ten fans would prefer to be done by 7 p.m. ET with the satisfaction of knowing they played everybody in the conference?
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SECBack to 1984: Florida finished 9-1-1 but was given a postseason ban, and LSU went to the Sugar Bowl as a result. The SEC only played six conference games that season.
SCHOOL 2024 CONFERENCE Alabama SEC Auburn SEC Florida SEC Georgia SEC Kentucky SEC LSU SEC Mississippi State SEC Ole Miss SEC Tennessee SEC Vanderbilt SECThe future in 2024: The SEC will have 16 teams with the additions of Oklahoma and Texas. South Carolina, Arkansas, Texas A&M and Missouri have been the other schools to join the destination conference.
Which one is better? The classic version of the SEC before the conference championship game and dominance in the BCS and CFP eras, but the six schools with national titles – Alabama, Auburn, Georgia, Florida, LSU and Tennessee – are among the originals. A lot of SEC traditionalists might be fine going back to that.
IndependentsBack to 1984: Boston College was a 10-win team, and Doug Flutie won the Heisman Trophy. Miami, Notre Dame and Penn State combined for five national championships as independents in the 1980s. The Hurricanes won two more as a member of the Big East. Florida State – which won three national titles after joining the ACC – is the only school on this list that won a national championship in its current conference.
Independents in 2024The future in 2024: Notre Dame remains the last major independent standing, and the Irish have a five-game arrangement with the ACC. Army, UConn and UMass are the only other independent schools.
Which one is better? This was fun, but it’s better to have all those independents playing in major conferences.
Conference in trouble Pac-12Back to 1984: The Pac-12 was the Pac-10, and it was beautiful. USC, Washington and UCLA all finished in the top 10 after a hotly-contested conference West Coast race. The Trojans beat Ohio State 20-17 in the Rose Bowl. That’s not going to feel the same when those three schools are in the Big Ten.
Pac-10 in 1984The future in 2024: The Pac-12 might not exist. Cal and Stanford are now members of the ACC, and Oregon State and Washington State are being courted by the Mountain West Conference and American Athletic Conference. It's a bleak picture for a once proud conference.
Which one is better? Ask all of these schools at the 10-year realignment reunion in 2034 after they get off another long flight.
Defunct conference SouthwestBack to 1984: The nine-school conference had eight of its nine members in the state of Texas. Arkansas was the other school, of course. SMU won the SWC that season in the post-Pony Express era – three years before being handed the Death Penalty by the NCAA.
Southwest Conference in 1984The future in 2024: With the move to the ACC, SMU now becomes the eighth school that made it to a different power conference. Rice – which is in Conference-USA – is the lone school that has not leveled up.
Which one is better? Arkansas, Texas and Texas A&M will be exciting in the SEC, but how many times will announcers say, "An old-school Southwest Conference rivalry" when they meet up? This conference was hyper-regionalized in the 1980s – maybe too much.
The national championship chaseBack to 1984: Washington and Nebraska were both ranked No. 1 in November before losing. That opened the for BYU out of the WAC. The Cougars were ranked No. 1 heading into bowl season, and they beat unranked Michigan 24-17 in the Holiday Bowl on Dec. 21, 1984. That was enough to hold off No. 4 Washington, which beat No. 2 Oklahoma 28-17 in the Orange Bowl.
BYU won the national championship as the only 13-0 team in the nation. Since that season, the national championship has been won by a power conference champion every year except 1988 – when Notre Dame won its last national title.
This season in many ways was the launch point toward the College Football Playoff – even if it took 30 years to get that in 2014.
The future in 2024: The four-team CFP lasted a decade. This will be the first year of the 12-team College Football Playoff – an unprecedented moment for the sport which has evolved from choosing national champions in polls to the BCS, to the four-team playoff era to this. It will create more excitement for the sport – but will it take away from the regular season?
Which one is better? Without seeing the 12-team College Football Playoff, that model is better. It’s not perfect – potentially losing the Pac-12 is going to alter the automatic qualifiers an at-large bids, and there is always going to be questions about who truly belongs in the playoff. But you get a championship game with one national champion. That is something that was always in doubt in 1984.
