# You've been appointed College Football Commissioner **URL:** \ **Category:** The Game Room\ **Created:** [October 16, 2008, 2:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/youve-been-appointed-college-football-commissioner/468204 "2008-10-16T14:24:09Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 8\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Ponch8](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ponch8/32/9883_2.png) [@Ponch8](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ponch8)\ **Post date:** [October 17, 2008, 9:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/youve-been-appointed-college-football-commissioner/468204/21 "2008-10-17T21:41:10Z")
> [@Duke](#): > > In English soccer when a team gets relegated or promoted the first thing they do is hit the transfer market, bringing in better players if they’re promoted, selling players if they’re relegated. College football teams don’t have that option. Why would a team that gets relegated want to sell their players? Isn’t their aim to try to get back to the next higher level? ---
**Author:** ![dgrdfd](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/eb8c5e/32.png) [@dgrdfd](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dgrdfd)\ **Post date:** [October 17, 2008, 10:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/youve-been-appointed-college-football-commissioner/468204/22 "2008-10-17T22:06:50Z")
The thing you are missing is that there are important distinctions between FBS and FCS schools besides division 1A and division 1AA. There are attendance requirements, stadium sizes, and number of scholarships. It’s a big deal for a team to move from FCS to FBS. Not something that could or should be arbitrarily done as you suggest. Schools don’t just invent scholarships for athletes. The money has to come from somewhere. ---
**Author:** ![Duke](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e8c25b/32.png) [@Duke](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Duke)\ **Post date:** [October 18, 2008, 12:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/youve-been-appointed-college-football-commissioner/468204/23 "2008-10-18T00:36:21Z")
> [@Ponch8](#): > > Why would a team that gets relegated want to sell their players? Isn’t their aim to try to get back to the next higher level? Firstly, the players they had obviously weren’t enough to keep them in the higher division… Secondly, relegation usually means a big drop in revenue. Playing in a lower division means you’ll be travelling to smaller venues, playing fewer cup ties, lower TV/merchandising/etc. revenue. Most relegated clubs count on not being able to pay all their players. ---
**Author:** ![Cyberhwk](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/7993a0/32.png) [@Cyberhwk](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cyberhwk)\ **Post date:** [October 18, 2008, 3:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/youve-been-appointed-college-football-commissioner/468204/24 "2008-10-18T03:47:16Z")
Keep conferences as they are. Leave it up to the conferences themselves how to determine their conference champions. We in the PAC-10 already PLAY everyone in our division, we don’t need to do it again. Stop crying because your team got left out? It’s your own conference’s damn fault. If you don’t like your own system, change it. Seed the Six BCS Conference Champions + 2 “at-large” bids and do a 8 game playoff with round one at the home site of the higher seed. Last three games occur at traditional Bowl sites. Institute a rule barring the announcement of coaching changes until after the National Championship game. No more “I’m moving to coach \…oh after I get done coaching the bowl game.” :mad: ---
**Author:** ![Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e8c25b/32.png) [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Really_Not_All_That_Bright)\ **Post date:** [October 18, 2008, 4:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/youve-been-appointed-college-football-commissioner/468204/25 "2008-10-18T04:03:27Z")
> [@Duke](#): > > I think that no matter what playoff system might come to pass, realistically it can’t involve many more than 8 teams. Even 12/16 is pushing it. The NCAA basketball tournaments can get away with 64/65 because teams can play more than once a week. I just think a four-week tournament is going to be pushing it for college football, especially if teams stick to a 12-game regular season with a conference championship. The teams reaching the national championship could be playing 17 games, and that seems to me like at least one game too many. Bah. Division 1-AA has a 16-team playoff (which will be expanded to 20 teams in a couple of years). There’s no reason 1-A can’t do the same. ---
**Author:** ![VarlosZ](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/d78d45/32.png) [@VarlosZ](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/VarlosZ)\ **Post date:** [October 18, 2008, 10:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/youve-been-appointed-college-football-commissioner/468204/26 "2008-10-18T10:46:59Z")
1. Revert to the pre-BCS ranking system. You don’t like that the rankings are subjective? Too bad. You think it’s a travesty that there might be a split national championship? Tough titties. We could all use a little more ambiguity in our lives, and Div 1-A was more interesting before there was a system that (theoretically) cut off debate about who was the best team in the nation. 2. Pay the players. I don’t mean superstar money, just “good paying college job” money. Max 20-30K, or thereabouts. ---
**Author:** ![Duke](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e8c25b/32.png) [@Duke](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Duke)\ **Post date:** [October 19, 2008, 1:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/youve-been-appointed-college-football-commissioner/468204/27 "2008-10-19T01:17:03Z")
> [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](#): > > Bah. Division 1-AA has a 16-team playoff (which will be expanded to 20 teams in a couple of years). There’s no reason 1-A can’t do the same. Bigger players, more injuries in 1-A. I attended a 1-A school and a 1-AA school, and the difference in the size and speed of the players was unbelieveable. I’d like to see more games myself but you’d have to be realistic. ---
**Author:** ![Quercus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/q/7ab992/32.png) [@Quercus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Quercus)\ **Post date:** [October 20, 2008, 2:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/youve-been-appointed-college-football-commissioner/468204/28 "2008-10-20T14:05:37Z")
> [@dgrdfd](#): > > The thing you are missing is that there are important distinctions between FBS and FCS schools besides division 1A and division 1AA. There are attendance requirements, stadium sizes, and number of scholarships. It’s a big deal for a team to move from FCS to FBS. Not something that could or should be arbitrarily done as you suggest. Schools don’t just invent scholarships for athletes. The money has to come from somewhere. If the school’s team is good enough to compete at a given level, why should we care how many scholarships they give out? And if a team can’t compete with a football factory because it doesn’t have enough scholarships, then it will never make it to the top division, so there’s nothing to worry about. And as near as I can tell, the stadium size and attendance requirements are just a way for the NCAA to extort money out of schools for the benefit of athletic departments. After all, if the NCAA was actually concerned about non-competitive games, you’d think they’d have found a way to prevent Florida State and the like from scheduling games against division 3 cupcakes, wouldn’t you? [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/youve-been-appointed-college-football-commissioner/468204.md?page=1)