(Un)Fixing College Football

Everyone is now wading in to the controversy that has engulfed the NCAA’s BCS setup for college football. After the Florida Gators beat the Oklahoma Sooners in the championship game, coaches from around the league are still talking about changing the rules; teams like Texas, USC, and the undefeated Utah Utes have all claimed that they have a legitimate claim to the title. Even President-elect Obama has made statements about the need for a playoff in college football.

The people running college football made a mistake of Pacman-Jones-like proportions when they decided a few years back to make the NCAA a little more competitive by limiting the scholarships teams were able to issue. The results have been seen on the gridiron over the past few years with it seems a major upset happening every week, and more and more teams being able to compete with the big boys.

It has made the game more entertaining to follow, how is this bad? The answer lies in that it has pushed greater pressure on those who run the NCAA to get rid of their biggest moneymaker, the BCS setup, which as it stands only allows 66 of the 119 Division I teams to participate.

These colleges are not all private entities, and their main focus still should be preparing young men and women for their careers, and with that in mind here are my solutions for fixing college football:

Other than the athletes that are given full scholarships, college students are not allowed to be compensated for their play with money by college’s that make millions of dollars off of their backs. These students are put through rigorous practices and game schedules for the chance of making it big in the NFL, the only organization paying enough that the average four-year career can be lived off of.

Only a small fraction of these players can make it, and the alternative markets for washed out college players are watered down with those better players who couldn’t stay in the professional ranks.

My point is that we need to stop shipping these guys all over the country throughout the year because it cuts into valuable time they need to be studying things other than just football.

So the first step I propose is to allow one more team into the Division I ranks, now with an even 120 NCAAF teams, we can group them into 12, ten-team regional divisions while keeping regional rivalries intact, this will cut down on the travel time spent by these young men, and help encourage regional interest and competition. These divisions will be broken up into two conferences for the purpose of the tournament at the end of the year; there would be a 6 division Eastern and a 6 division Western conference.

The regular season would consist of the teams in a division playing each other; every team would play every team once with one bye week, which would allow for a nine-game, ten-week regular season. Five of the teams in the division would have five home games and four away games, and the remaining five teams would only play four home games, these teams would alternate every year.

At the end of the regular season the division team with the most wins would be allowed into the tournament, in the case of a division having two teams with an 8-1 record, the team that won their individual matchup will be declared the winner.

Now with 12 teams in the tournament, we will expand the field by allowing the associated press and the college coaches to vote on and select an additional 4 wild-card teams from the Division I ranks, totaling 16 teams in the tournament.

Week eleven would be a bowl week where the 104 teams that failed to make the tournament could participate in moneymaking bowl games these games would have nothing to do with the overall championship rankings but they would produce revenue for the colleges and allow teams to win traditional bowls and suck up the accolades that come with it.

The remaining 16 teams would take the first bowl week off, and then the following week begin the single game elimination playoff with eight teams competing in each conference. There would end up being 4 weeks of competition with 15 games being played the most popular traditional bowl games could host these competitions ending in the order of their importance, and the final week would find the best team in the east playing the best team in the west.

This system would allow for a clear winner of the championship, allow a more student friendly schedule, and would still enable large amounts of money to be made by college football, the only problem with this sensible setup, is will the college’s be willing to give up their control over the system to the players, teams, and their abilities on the field?