My College Football 26 Dynasty Mode Conference Setup

Of all the awesome features College Football 25 gave us, having the freedom to customize conferences in almost any way possible in dynasty mode was probably my favorite. As someone who hates current-day conference alignment, this feature allowed me to shift things back to groupings that actually make sense, instead of the idiotic reality of Oregon and Rutgers being in the same conference.

With the release of College Football 26 just days away, I'm super excited to see that EA's taken custom conferences an even higher level. No matter how you organize your conferences, users now have the ability to set protected opponents for each program, helping preserve the rivalries you care about:

I've kept things pretty much the same as last year's setup, save for some minor tweaks, and the additions of Delaware and Missouri State to FBS. If you're looking for some inspiration on your conference setup, this is how mine will look. Here are the foundations I worked off to create it:

• This is a hybrid between how conferences looked pre-2011 conference expansion, a touch of how things looked post-2011 conference expansion, and a handful of teams I've thrown into new conferences because of pure personal preference.
• Every conference has two divisions, eight conference games, and a conference championship. I know that everyone –including myself– became out on the idea of divisions at some point in the four-team playoff era, but I've changed my tune. Divisions didn't always give us the two best teams in a conference title game, but they kept things more organized, while also giving us some extremely weird shit. I need that in my college football.
• Every power five conference –Big Ten, SEC, Big 12, Pac-12, ACC– is back to their rightful number of teams: 12. Some are back to a previous era, while others welcome in new faces.
• Every other conference –American Athletic, Conference USA, Sun Belt, MAC, Mountain West– has 14 teams and some major shakeups. I tried my best to make these moves as logical as possible. Let's get into it!

Big Ten

I don't love the idea of Notre Dame ever officially joining a conference, but adding them to the Big Ten made the most sense if I wanted every power conference at 12 teams. It works geographically, and some of their most storied rivalries [Michigan, Michigan State, Purdue] are already there. I think we've got a good balance here.

Big 12

This is what the Big 12 is supposed to look like.

SEC

Why would you ever mess with this?

Pac-12

The OG Pac-10 is back, joined by Boise State and Utah. I don't think I need to justify Boise being the only team to jump up to one of the power conferences, given their track record over the past 20 years. Their addition –plus Colorado being in the Big 12– means Stanford has to move to the south.

ACC

We're bringing back Jefferson Pilot Sports with this one:

American Athletic Conference

To Cincinnati, Louisville, Pitt, Rutgers, SMU, Syracuse, TCU, West Virginia, and UCF fans upset about being booted from their current-day conference: Sorry, but decisions had to be made for the greater health of college football. Here's the bright spot: This is a legitimate power conference, and the spiritual successor to the old Big East. Army joins Navy to add another option attack into the equation, Houston, TCU and SMU bring Texas into the fold, while UCF and USF hold it down for Florida.

Mountain West

The classic Mountain West you know and love, with some slight differences. New Mexico State finally finds a permanent conference to call home, while the addition of UTEP makes more sense than you think. El Paso is less than an hour away from Las Cruces (where NMSU is).

MAC

Re-adding Marshall (1997-2004) and Temple (2007-2011) to a conference they've already played in made them the most reasonable choices for a 14-team MAC.

Sun Belt

I traded App State back from the American to the Sun Belt where they belong. I want the new Sun Belt to be a clear step above Conference USA, and the additions of Tulane, Jacksonville State, Liberty, and Western Kentucky help accomplish that.

Conference USA

If there was a way to logically have a division full of Texas programs, I would've done it - but the Oil™ division is about as close as you're gonna get. C-USA has always felt like a grab-bag of southern/Texas teams, and I think this collection is reasonable enough.

Independents

Delaware and Missouri State are FBS' newest additions. They join the rest of last year's misfit toys in the independents pile.