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TON1C · 09-30-2024, 05:19 PM

Alrighty, thanks to the findings of jaredm and others in another thread, I took another stab at these custom conferences and was able to get them in a much better spot! I'll leave my original post in a spoiler tag below, those will still work but I think these are a lot better and fix a couple of scheduling bugs as well (most importantly the unbalanced home/away conference games bug).

They follow the same principles as the previous custom conferences and my goals based on region, history and rivalries. Now they have the added benefit of divisions for 9 of the 10 conferences and with the way I set everything up, divisions essentially become mini-conferences. Full benefits include:

Full custom conferences and divisions based on region, rivalries and history (generally in that order)
P5 and G5 separation
Guaranteed rivalry matchups every year
Each team will play 8 conference games
Each team will play the other 6 teams in their division, then 2 teams from the other division
Each team will have 4 home and 4 away games
The only exceptions to the above are for the MWC. It has 8 teams and each team will play the other 7 teams in the conference.

Setup

Set up the conferences and divisions as below.
Set each conference to have a championship game and to be played by the top teams from each division.
Set each conference to play 8 conference games (7 for MWC)

Custom Conferences:

Spoiler

I spent a good bit of time testing these out way in the future and it all looked great and worked as expected. These are an improvement over the past version (which you can find below) and also circumvent a couple of bugs related to custom conferences and scheduling.

Hopefully for CFB26 we will have:

Ability to add, edit and delete protected rivalries
Ability to set number of weeks in the season
Ability to choose which week conference games start
The bug(s) fixed that cause teams to not play enough conference games, even if that means filling in more non-conference games against FCS schools
Proper home vs away conference game balancing
Better scheduling when conferences have divisions to prioritize playing each team in your division once, then the teams from the other division

Cheers - enjoy!

Original Post:

Spoiler

Just wanted to share my custom conferences that I've been using. I've spent dozens of hours trying all kinds of configurations, combinations and permutations and unfortunately there are some major issues with the scheduling system in general, regardless if you use custom conferences or not. Unfortunately they probably aren't getting fixed until CFB26 so we have to do our best with what we have until then. Unfortunately you'll still have the issue where you may have too many home or away conference games but afaik there's no way to fix this. The biggest issue with custom conferences is that sometimes teams will not play the correct number of conference games for some reason. I've tried to narrow it down and won't bore you with the details (unless someone is curious and really wants to know).

The below custom conferences and settings will work as best as something can for right now. Each team will play the correct number of conference games (either 9 or 10 depending on conference). I've tried making even small adjustments to the number of games or swapping a couple of teams around and it caused the conference games played bug to happen so it's best to set everything up EXACTLY this way, otherwise I take no responsibility for any changes

Power 5 schools will all play 9 conference games while Group of 5 schools will play either 10 conference games or 9 conference games in the case of the Mountain West as they only have 10 teams in the conference. Three of the five G5 conferences will play each team in their conference every year which I think is really cool.

Like many of you here, I was a fan of college sports long before all of the modern conference realignment and personally don't like the way that's trending. So my goal with the custom conferences was to essentially divide the country into 5 regions that make sense geographically, historically, and culturally - generally in that order. I also tried to get schools in the same state to be in the same conference, partly to make the hardcoded protected rivalries a bit easier on the schedule. I also got rid of independents because I think each team should have to belong to a conference. I then separated each region into P5 and G5. They are mostly pretty straightforward but there are a few exceptions and some tweener schools. You can try to swap them between P5 and G5 but do so at your own risk because in my experience even the smallest change caused scheduling bugs to start showing up.

Set the custom conferences with the below teams and EXACT number of conference games
No divisions
I've also chosen to have the conference championship game be hosted by the top team in the conference at their home stadium which I think is cool but a neural site should be fine
When entering week 1, be sure to randomly generate the schedule at least once and do so as many times as you'd like until you get the general schedule you're looking for. I didn't try manually making any matchups so use at your own risk.

Custom Conferences:

Spoiler

I spent way too much time looking at maps but it was also a good refresher on US geography. I spent a ton of time tweaking and testing this and this was the best that I could do with the limitations that we have.

Hopefully for CFB26 we will have:

Ability to add, edit and delete protected rivalries
Ability to set number of weeks in the season
Ability to choose which week conference games start
The bug(s) fixed that cause teams to not play enough conference games, even if that means filling in more non-conference games against FCS schools
Proper home vs away conference game balancing
Better scheduling when conferences have divisions to prioritize playing each team in your division once, then the teams from the other division

Just wanted to share in case anyone else was interested in using since I spent so much time on this and was really happy with how it turned out overall - enjoy!

TON1C · 10-03-2024, 04:48 PM

Posted an update thanks to findings from jaredm and others in the other thread and was able to really improve these and as a result fix the issue with home/away conference games as well. Enjoy!

sdsuphilip · 10-03-2024, 05:02 PM

I have a powerhouse Rice dynasty going, I moved them to SEC and Miss State goes to AAC. However after I made this move I only have 6 conference games, what do I do?

TON1C · 10-03-2024, 05:07 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by sdsuphilip


	I have a powerhouse Rice dynasty going, I moved them to SEC and Miss State goes to AAC. However after I made this move I only have 6 conference games, what do I do?

You could use these in your next season and try swapping Rice out with another team in the SEC or B12 so they're in a P5 conference still. But it'd be best to run a test and sim the entire season after doing so just to make sure nothing was messed up and that everyone plays 8 conference games as expected (7 for MWC).

BoiseBronco2024 · 10-03-2024, 06:59 PM

These are great, but the only thing I'd change/recommend is to change the MAC A & B from this...

MAC A:
Akron
Buffalo
Kent St
Miami (OH)
Middle Tennessee St
Ohio
Western Kentucky

MAC B:
Ball St
Bowling Green
Central Michigan
Eastern Michigan
Northern Illinois
Toledo
Western Michigan

To this...

MAC A:
Akron
Buffalo
Kent St
Miami (OH)
Bowling Green
Ohio
Toledo

MAC B:
Ball St
Middle Tennessee St
Central Michigan
Eastern Michigan
Northern Illinois
Western Michigan
Western Kentucky

That way the MAC A has all the Ohio teams in the same division. Just my thoughts.

TON1C · 10-03-2024, 07:13 PM

Yeah I had played around with those a bit but as I did for most of the divisions, I tried to visualize a straight line to separate them as that just made more sense to me. But that split should work too as long as there aren’t any hard coded protected rivalries that it’d mess with. I really wish we could add/edit/delete those. With them being a hardcoded mystery it makes a lot of things unnecessarily difficult.

xboxxerx · 10-04-2024, 12:46 AM

Thanks for the info, Tonic, and all for the hard work. I was wondering, for example, the Pac 12. You have it set in your dynasty as 14. Can we just do 12 team alliances, do 8 or 9 conference games, and not have the bug issue?

Sent from my SM-S928U using Operation Sports mobile app

TON1C · 10-04-2024, 09:24 AM

Unfortunately bugs start popping up pretty easily even making small changes. We’ve essentially reversed engineered how the game is coded to generate the schedules and 14 team conferences with divisions and 8 conference games is one of the configurations that work. So doing that 9 times and having the remaining 8 teams be the 10th conference is the best we can do until EA fixes some bugs but probably won’t happen into CFB26 at this point.

09-30-2024, 05:19 PM	#1
TON1C Rookie OVR: 2 Join Date: Mar 2010	Region Based Custom Conferences That Work Alrighty, thanks to the findings of jaredm and others in another thread, I took another stab at these custom conferences and was able to get them in a much better spot! I'll leave my original post in a spoiler tag below, those will still work but I think these are a lot better and fix a couple of scheduling bugs as well (most importantly the unbalanced home/away conference games bug). They follow the same principles as the previous custom conferences and my goals based on region, history and rivalries. Now they have the added benefit of divisions for 9 of the 10 conferences and with the way I set everything up, divisions essentially become mini-conferences. Full benefits include: Full custom conferences and divisions based on region, rivalries and history (generally in that order) P5 and G5 separation Guaranteed rivalry matchups every year Each team will play 8 conference games Each team will play the other 6 teams in their division, then 2 teams from the other division Each team will have 4 home and 4 away games The only exceptions to the above are for the MWC. It has 8 teams and each team will play the other 7 teams in the conference. Setup Set up the conferences and divisions as below. Set each conference to have a championship game and to be played by the top teams from each division. Set each conference to play 8 conference games (7 for MWC) Custom Conferences: Spoiler American A: Army James Madison Navy Rutgers Temple Uconn Umass American B: App St Coastal Carolina Charlotte ECU Liberty Marshall Old Dominion ACC A: Boston College Maryland Penn St Pitt Syracuse VT West Virginia ACC B: Clemson Duke NC State UNC South Carolina Virginia Wake Forest B10 A: Cincinnati Indiana Michigan Michigan St Notre Dame Ohio St Purdue B10 B: Illinois Iowa Iowa St Minnesota Missouri Northwestern Wisconsin B12 A: Colorado Colorado St Kansas Kansas St Nebraska Oklahoma Oklahoma St B12 B: Baylor Houston SMU TCU Texas Texas A&M Texas Tech CUSA A: New Mexico New Mexico St Rice Sam Houston Texas St UTEP UTSA CUSA B: Arkansas St Louisiana Louisiana Tech North Texas Tulane Tulsa UL Monroe MAC A: Akron Buffalo Kent St Miami (OH) Middle Tennessee St Ohio Western Kentucky MAC B: Ball St Bowling Green Central Michigan Eastern Michigan Northern Illinois Toledo Western Michigan MWC: Air Force Hawaii Nevada San Diego St San Jose St UNLV Utah St Wyoming PAC12 A: BYU Boise St Oregon Oregon St Utah Washington Washington St PAC12 B: Arizona Arizona St Cal Fresno St Stanford UCLA USC SEC A: Arkansas Kentucky LSU Louisville Mississippi St Ole Miss Tennessee SEC B: Alabama Auburn Florida Florida St Georgia Georgia Tech Miami SUN BELT A: FAU FIU Georgia Southern Georgia St Kennesaw St UCF USF SUN BELT B: Jax St Memphis South Alabama Southern Miss Troy UAB Vanderbilt I spent a good bit of time testing these out way in the future and it all looked great and worked as expected. These are an improvement over the past version (which you can find below) and also circumvent a couple of bugs related to custom conferences and scheduling. Hopefully for CFB26 we will have: Ability to add, edit and delete protected rivalries Ability to set number of weeks in the season Ability to choose which week conference games start The bug(s) fixed that cause teams to not play enough conference games, even if that means filling in more non-conference games against FCS schools Proper home vs away conference game balancing Better scheduling when conferences have divisions to prioritize playing each team in your division once, then the teams from the other division Cheers - enjoy! Original Post: Spoiler Just wanted to share my custom conferences that I've been using. I've spent dozens of hours trying all kinds of configurations, combinations and permutations and unfortunately there are some major issues with the scheduling system in general, regardless if you use custom conferences or not. Unfortunately they probably aren't getting fixed until CFB26 so we have to do our best with what we have until then. Unfortunately you'll still have the issue where you may have too many home or away conference games but afaik there's no way to fix this. The biggest issue with custom conferences is that sometimes teams will not play the correct number of conference games for some reason. I've tried to narrow it down and won't bore you with the details (unless someone is curious and really wants to know). The below custom conferences and settings will work as best as something can for right now. Each team will play the correct number of conference games (either 9 or 10 depending on conference). I've tried making even small adjustments to the number of games or swapping a couple of teams around and it caused the conference games played bug to happen so it's best to set everything up EXACTLY this way, otherwise I take no responsibility for any changes Power 5 schools will all play 9 conference games while Group of 5 schools will play either 10 conference games or 9 conference games in the case of the Mountain West as they only have 10 teams in the conference. Three of the five G5 conferences will play each team in their conference every year which I think is really cool. Like many of you here, I was a fan of college sports long before all of the modern conference realignment and personally don't like the way that's trending. So my goal with the custom conferences was to essentially divide the country into 5 regions that make sense geographically, historically, and culturally - generally in that order. I also tried to get schools in the same state to be in the same conference, partly to make the hardcoded protected rivalries a bit easier on the schedule. I also got rid of independents because I think each team should have to belong to a conference. I then separated each region into P5 and G5. They are mostly pretty straightforward but there are a few exceptions and some tweener schools. You can try to swap them between P5 and G5 but do so at your own risk because in my experience even the smallest change caused scheduling bugs to start showing up. Set the custom conferences with the below teams and EXACT number of conference games No divisions I've also chosen to have the conference championship game be hosted by the top team in the conference at their home stadium which I think is cool but a neural site should be fine When entering week 1, be sure to randomly generate the schedule at least once and do so as many times as you'd like until you get the general schedule you're looking for. I didn't try manually making any matchups so use at your own risk. Custom Conferences: Spoiler AAC (10 games): App St Army Buffalo Charlotte ECU JMU Liberty Marshall Navy Old Dominion Rutgers Temple UCONN UMass ACC (9 games): BC Duke Maryland NC State UNC Penn State Pitt Syracuse Virginia VT Wake Forest West Virginia BIG10 (9 games): Cincinnati Illinois Indiana Iowa Iowa St Michigan Michigan St Minnesota Missouri Northwestern Notre Dame Ohio St Purdue Wisconsin BIG12 (9 games): Baylor Colorado Houston Kansas Kansas St Nebraska Oklahoma Oklahoma St TCU Texas Texas A&M Texas Tech C-USA (10 games): Air Force Colorado St North Texas Rice SMU Sam Houston St Texas St Tulsa UTEP UTSA Wyoming MAC (10 games): Akron Ball St Bowling Green Central Michigan Eastern Michigan Kent St Miami (OH) Northern Illinois Ohio Toledo Western Michigan MWC (9 games): Boise St Fresno St Hawaii Nevada New Mexico New Mexico St San Diego St San Jose St UNLV Utah St PAC12 (9 games): Arizona Arizona St BYU Cal Oregon Oregon St Stanford UCLA USC Utah Washington Washington St SEC (9 games): Alabama Arkansas Auburn Clemson Florida Florida St Georgia Georgia Tech Kentucky LSU Louisville Miami Mississippi St Ole Miss South Carolina Tennessee UCF Vanderbilt Sun Belt (10 games): Arkansas St Coastal Carolina FAU FIU Georgia Southern Georgia St Jax St Kennesaw St Louisiana Louisiana tech Memphis Middle Tennessee St South Alabama Southern Miss Troy Tulane UAB ULM USV Western Kentucky I spent way too much time looking at maps but it was also a good refresher on US geography. I spent a ton of time tweaking and testing this and this was the best that I could do with the limitations that we have. Hopefully for CFB26 we will have: Ability to add, edit and delete protected rivalries Ability to set number of weeks in the season Ability to choose which week conference games start The bug(s) fixed that cause teams to not play enough conference games, even if that means filling in more non-conference games against FCS schools Proper home vs away conference game balancing Better scheduling when conferences have divisions to prioritize playing each team in your division once, then the teams from the other division Just wanted to share in case anyone else was interested in using since I spent so much time on this and was really happy with how it turned out overall - enjoy! ExpedientFalcon, paco86, BoiseBronco2024 and 4 others like this. Last edited by TON1C; 10-04-2024 at 01:49 PM.

10-03-2024, 04:48 PM	#2
TON1C Rookie OVR: 2 Join Date: Mar 2010	Re: Region Based Custom Conferences That Work Posted an update thanks to findings from jaredm and others in the other thread and was able to really improve these and as a result fix the issue with home/away conference games as well. Enjoy!

10-03-2024, 05:02 PM	#3
sdsuphilip Rookie OVR: 1 Join Date: Mar 2009	Re: Region Based Custom Conferences That Work I have a powerhouse Rice dynasty going, I moved them to SEC and Miss State goes to AAC. However after I made this move I only have 6 conference games, what do I do?

10-03-2024, 06:59 PM	#5
BoiseBronco2024 Rookie OVR: 0 Join Date: Jul 2024	Re: Region Based Custom Conferences That Work These are great, but the only thing I'd change/recommend is to change the MAC A & B from this... MAC A: Akron Buffalo Kent St Miami (OH) Middle Tennessee St Ohio Western Kentucky MAC B: Ball St Bowling Green Central Michigan Eastern Michigan Northern Illinois Toledo Western Michigan To this... MAC A: Akron Buffalo Kent St Miami (OH) Bowling Green Ohio Toledo MAC B: Ball St Middle Tennessee St Central Michigan Eastern Michigan Northern Illinois Western Michigan Western Kentucky That way the MAC A has all the Ohio teams in the same division. Just my thoughts.

10-03-2024, 07:13 PM	#6
TON1C Rookie OVR: 2 Join Date: Mar 2010	Re: Region Based Custom Conferences That Work Yeah I had played around with those a bit but as I did for most of the divisions, I tried to visualize a straight line to separate them as that just made more sense to me. But that split should work too as long as there aren’t any hard coded protected rivalries that it’d mess with. I really wish we could add/edit/delete those. With them being a hardcoded mystery it makes a lot of things unnecessarily difficult.

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10-04-2024, 12:46 AM	#7
xboxxerx MVP OVR: 6 Join Date: Feb 2008	Re: Region Based Custom Conferences That Work Thanks for the info, Tonic, and all for the hard work. I was wondering, for example, the Pac 12. You have it set in your dynasty as 14. Can we just do 12 team alliances, do 8 or 9 conference games, and not have the bug issue? Sent from my SM-S928U using Operation Sports mobile app __________________ PSN Name - xboxxerx You can call it being a "Homer". But as Tupac said, its California Love. My Teams NFL- San Francisco 49ers NBA- Los Angeles Lakers NHL- Anaheim Ducks MLB - Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim NCAA - USC

10-04-2024, 09:24 AM	#8
TON1C Rookie OVR: 2 Join Date: Mar 2010	Re: Region Based Custom Conferences That Work Unfortunately bugs start popping up pretty easily even making small changes. We’ve essentially reversed engineered how the game is coded to generate the schedules and 14 team conferences with divisions and 8 conference games is one of the configurations that work. So doing that 9 times and having the remaining 8 teams be the 10th conference is the best we can do until EA fixes some bugs but probably won’t happen into CFB26 at this point.

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Region Based Custom Conferences That Work