College Football Conference Realignment — Clustering

Welcome to part 3 of this series on conference realignment! This is the blog post where we will start using the dataset to inform realignment decisions. There is a common complaint that conference realignment destroys traditional rivalries and the regional aspect of college football. It’s true that college sports tend to be regional. It’s even in the name of the conferences themselves: Pacific 12, Atlantic Coast, Southeastern, and Big East Conferences to name a few. Some get even more specific when we include the FCS: Ohio Valley Conference. Of course, the days of…