Since the NFL’s Super Bowl makes no claims about the winner being “the best team” and yet that winner does carry the distinction of having won the year’s playoffs, what if the NCAA and The BCS and anybody else with a stake in it all adopts a pro-style playoff system? Steps would include, but not be limited to:
Expand Div 1 (FBS) to 128 teams (add 8 from wherever)
Locate the “geographical center” of those 128 teams
Based on four equal-sized “quadrants” of the country, place 1/4 of the 128 teams (32 each) into four Megaconferences
Split each Megaconference into a geographically equalized Megadivision of 16 teams each
Organize the season for each Megadivision into a 16 game schedule along the lines of the NFL’s conference schedules
Have Megaconference playoffs that resemble the NFL’s
Have Megaconference “Super Bowl” winners
Have those 4 Megaconference winners in a playoff for National Champion
What else would need to be there to make for an equitable and believable National Champ in College Football?
Well, for one, if you don’t incorporate the existing bowls (at least the major ones) this is a non-starter. Money defines the equation in this.
ETA: Mind you, your idea has a lot of merit. I just know how things are, not that I like it that way. If you posit a total reboot, then, yeah your idea is pretty cool.
I see one problem with your idea. It has way too many games/. You have a 16 game regular season plus 3 levels of playoffs, which would probably be another 5 or so games,
If we paid the players this might more sense.
If they got bonuses for making it to the playoffs and were paid accordingly for each game then more games might become acceptable, injuries notwithstanding.
Of course, that would expose college football as merely being a farm league for the NFL.
And, that wouldn’t do.
Valid objection for sure. One possibility would be to involve the bowls (perhaps expanded to the needed number) in the venues for the various playoffs. There will be oodles (meaning I haven’t actually counted them) of post-season playoff games that would need to be played somewhere, as opposed to “home games” for the teams that get that far. If needed, the geographical makeup of the Megaconferences would suggest which bowls would apply. The “cold weather” Megaconferences might work some deals with the “pleasant weather” bowls?
The conferences are essentially independent from each other, which means they would have to be persuaded it’s in their individual interests. What you’re proposing is so different from what exists right now that it’s hard for me to figure out how that might happen. But I have trouble imagining how the SEC and Big Ten schools, for example, would make more money in a system like this than they do now. They both have their own TV networks and that brings in a lot of money. In a bigger conference you’re dividing up the money more ways, and I don’t know if the expansion would make the revenue greater for the individual teams. Bigger conferences also means more travel, which could be an issue. The proposal eliminates nonconference games and gives the teams no control over their schedule, and I think some of them would balk at that. And as noted, this idea would make for a significantly longer season, and I also think the colleges might not support that.
The current NFL scheduling of 16 games “regular season” (which would require some selling for sure) is broken down so that each 4-team division (for example AFC South) plays each other division team twice (one home, one away) for six of their 16 games, with the other 10 games made up of rotating teams in other divisions and conferences. So OOC games could still be part of a college’s regular season. If we consider each Megaconference as a Mini-NFL situation and manage it as such, with the post-season in each Megaconference a clone of the NFL’s system, than all that would have to be added is a post-post-season playoff among the 4 Megaconference winners. Before then, each Megaconference (32 teams each) would parallel the way the NFL works now.
I’m not meaning to diminish the major issues of tradition and local rivalries, but if NCAA conferences continue to lose their geographical identities through expansions toward 16-team structures, why not try to work in the old rivalries in a more regionalized system to begin with?
It sounds like each megaconference is going to have divisions that are really equivalent to the conferences today. I’m not sure this is going to make the system more workable.
There may be better maps than this one, but this one gives a view of how those “quadrants” might be determined. Just eye-balling I would see the “geographical center” of FBS schools somewhere in the region of the Missouri-Tennessee “border” (give or take a state or two).
Maybe so, but at least the “conferences” would be the same size (in number at least) and would fit into regional structures that had travel concerns minimized.
The plusses of such a setup would include various levels of “champions” that were determined in on-the-field tests, as opposed to the poll-driven mess we have today. There would be at least the equivalent “champions” of:
AFC South
AFC
Super Bowl
with the “top level” being National Champion. So each “section” could lay claim to some level of championship as won on the field.
Another version of how the FBS teams might be divided up into megaconferences could come from List of NCAA Division I FBS football programs where in order to get to the 4 32-team groups you might start in Florida, Maine, Washington and California and work inland until you get to 32, trying to “fan out” from the corners in a geographically consistent way.
It seems the first big hurdle to leap is the deeply rooted conviction that the current conferences have more than just geographical meaning. Once the value of reshuffling them around a “better way” is made persuasive, the next hurdle could be addressed.
I’m not saying the method would be easy or palatable to all involved, just that it makes sense in a few ways, most notable of which is a more equitable dividing up of the country than currently exists. In-fighting among the current conferences would be a major battle!
I don’t see the wonderfulness of having teams play each other twice, so I think I could get behind this proposal if you just got rid of those three games. This lowers the season to 13 games, plus the playoffs.
Zeldar, buddy you start some cool threads, but I hate this idea. College football is a different animal than the NFL. Your system would pretty much destroy all of the good things about the college game, without really adding anything.
I’d expect strong opposition from the conferences, the fans, the bowls, possibly the players, and even the NFL, which doesn’t really want increased competition for ratings at the end of their season/playoffs.
You left out the part about magical faries reffing these games so that no bad calls are ever made. You also left out the parts about free cotton candy and free parking…
I’m not sure this is going to make the system more workable.