Realigned and it feels so good: Josh Pate’s fixed conference lineups are beautiful

College football realignment has sent shockwaves throughout the sport. Teams on the West coast are playing in East coast conferences and programs traditionally known for dominating the Group of Five are trying their hands at competing in the Power Four. Not to mention, conferences are ballooning way past a dozen schools each. It's hard to make sense of it all.

But what if someone could end the madness and unilaterally reorganize the sport into conferences that are geographically (and numerically) more logical? Well, CBS Sports' Josh Pate made his case Monday for a college football world where traditional rivalries are reestablished and natural affiliations restored.

Pate revived three major conferences that essentially died out over the last 25 years - the Big East, Southwest and Pac-10 - effectively attempting to bring back the glory era of the sport. The Big Ten (currently 18 teams) and Big 12 (16 teams) are whittled back down to appropriate sizes in this new model while the SEC and ACC are geographically sensible again.

Josh Pate's conference re-assignments restore college football to its former glory

Pate established rules for each conference to follow including a 10-team cap and a required round-robin schedule. Let's take a brief look at how things shook out for each new league.

First, in the SEC, six current teams are removed (Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Vanderbilt, Missouri and Texas A&M) which essentially reverts it back to its 1992 form. Geographically, the conference is contained to the literal Southeast of the country and key traditional rivalries are retained.

The Big Ten had eight teams cut (including those added this season from the West coast) and redistributed, keeping the heavy hitters like Ohio State, Michigan and Wisconsin around. The conference reflects its original roots while keeping major matchups in the spotlight.

Pate revived the old Big East, Southwest, Big Eight and Pac-10 conferences using a majority of teams that departed for greener pastures in the Big Ten and SEC over the last quarter-century. Old rivalries were restored like Nebraska-Colorado and Pittsburgh-West Virginia. These are the kinds of games fans have been dying to see return.

The ACC remained relatively the same except for the return of Maryland, which virtually made zero sense to see leave for the Big Ten in 2014. But its the independent category that makes things even more interesting.

Pate interestingly decided Notre Dame should be joined by BYU, Northwestern and Vanderbilt as programs that can decide their own scheduling fates. Current independent UConn was sent back to the Big East (where it belongs).

This is the kind of conference alignment many fans would want to see return to college football. Classic matchups would no longer be nostalgic and the College Football Playoff (of which Pate leaves the format up for debate) could be filled out nicely by strong at-large teams from different conferences. Everything else in our lives seems to be embracing the vintage vibes nowadays, why shouldn't college football?