The Four Quadrant College Football Argument

After the first college football playoff standings for 2021, the recurring argument came up again regarding group of five teams such as Cincinnati and where they should be placed in the ranking. They look good with an undefeated record, but their competition may not be as strong as other teams. Is it fair? Cincinnati had beaten a top ten team in Notre Dame and handled everyone else on their schedule. This turns into a never-ending argument about who is a better team and who has beaten tougher opponents. Each year we hear the same thing, and no one seems to be in complete agreement. Cincinnati losing to Alabama didn’t help either. So this got me thinking regarding how a different system would look like.

The new system to expand the playoffs to 12 teams should solve a lot, but I don’t believe it’s the solution that we want as fans. There will still be the same arguments for who should be included or left out. There needs to be a more fair structure in place so that these discussions do not have to take place each and every year. If we have to rely on the subjective picks of a committee, then there is always the chance that fairness is left out and bias wins.

Imagine for a minute that there was no such thing as conferences for college football. How would you structure the teams across the U.S.? How would you make it fair? This was my solution and how it would look like. It is something that could potentially work well for everyone involved, given that every college program would “buy in” to a new system. (Yes, we can all dream, no?)

Paying attention to soccer (Liverpool fan here), the leagues they have set up makes a lot of sense. In this system, the top conferences are supported by lower leagues. It allows for a system of relegation and promotion and each team plays each other to see who wins, stays up or promoted, and who is ultimately relegated. Each match is important and even those with losing records will fight harder to stay in the top league.

Though, is it transferrable to the college football game? I happen to think it would work quite well. It removes the discussion of what teams deserves to be at the top subjectively by a committee and provides a structure for giving everyone a fair chance to reach the top without arguments for playing an easy schedule.

No more will there be easy FCS opponents that teams can use to increase their wins. No more will there be arguments of an easy schedule for one team and tougher for another. No more would one loss remove someone from the discussion of a playoff spot.

What Would Be Some Potential Benefits?

1. Top division games will have top TV revenue and always draw national attention. Each game will have meaning because now there is a lesser chance that any team will go undefeated. Teams will constantly have to fight each game to stay in the top division. Losing a game will not have as much of an impact as it used to. Losses are in comparison to other teams in the division. Group of 5 teams will have a chance to move up to a higher division and show that they deserve a spot in playoffs and amongst the Power 5 teams.
2. Teams can work towards promotion to the top league and use this as incentive for recruits. It will also spread out the recruits to more teams than just a select few at the top as it is now. Each team will work hard to stay in the top division and win each year. Players would transfer to different schools for a shot to play at the top division or leave a team that was relegated.
3. No Group of 5 teams will have an argument that they are a better team. If they win, they get promoted. Coaches may even stay at a school with the understanding that they will be able to eventually play for a national championship.

How it Would Work:

• Four quadrants of teams based on location providing four pathways to the playoffs. The West, Midwest, Southeast, and Northeast.
• One team is auto-promoted each season from the lower division while the lowest team in the top division is relegated. The second top team in the lower division will play a “bowl game” with the second lowest team in the higher division to see who will play in the higher division the following year. This will bring meaning back to bowl games. It will also remove many redundant bowl games unless these are kept just for playing cross division opponents or rivals at the end of the season.
• There will no more realignments or changes in conferences.
• TV rights can be split between the quadrants. As FOX and ESPN are splitting the TV rights in half as it is, then it should be easy for each network to have control over two quadrants. The West and Northeast for FOX and Midwest and Southeast for ESPN. As there will be new teams promoted each season, every year will not include the same teams which will help maintain revenue and intrigue. FOX/ESPN can work out a current deal to make this system work within a couple years with the help of the NCAA.
• Divisions will consist of 13 top teams and 12 games played so everyone plays everyone. Everybody plays everybody and one loss may not have as much of an impact that it would in the older structure. Premier matchups will matter every week. For the lower divisions with more than 13 teams, there may be some crossover games between divisions as needed. Downside is that each major program will not have their normal 8 home games to rely on for revenue.
• Even though the team rankings will no longer rely on the AP/Coach's polls, these can still be voted on each week to nominate top teams across each quadrant.

Separating the Four Quadrants:

As I thought how this might work, two questions came up.

1. How do you create the four quadrants?
2. Who will start in the top division?

Some of the factors to consider were:

1. Rivalries
   1. Notre Dame plays many games across the country. Could these rivalry games be kept? Could these games be played in a bowl game at the end of season?
   2. Trophy games. Could you keep all of them?
   3. Top rivalry games. Can all of these be kept in the four-quadrant system?
   4. Power 5 teams. Aim is to keep as many as possible in the top divisions and keep an even split between the quadrants.
2. Travel (regional games)
   1. Western quadrant would have some long-distance games no matter how you set it up.
   2. What could you sacrifice for competition in order to gain fairness for each quadrant? 
3. Current conference alignment impact
   1. Texas and Oklahoma won’t be happy moving away from SEC and then get stuck to play their old foes once again. But if stronger teams can be added to the quadrant in the Midwest, it may help with some of the original issues regarding revenue. Also, if too many tough teams are moved to the Midwest quadrant, Texas may find itself in the lower division which will not make their fans very happy.
   2. Newly promoted teams to FBS can be added to the lowest division without any major impact to the structure already set in place.

The second thing I did was to see the strength of each team based on the final College Football Playoff Rankings (CFP) over the past ten years. This year is with the newest playoff ranking just released on November 1st. Each team was given points 1-25 based on their final standing. For any Power 5 team who was not ranked, they got 30 points and each Group of 5 teams got 35 points as a handicap. It seemed fair to give the Power 5 teams a better point set up due to playing harder teams each season (This can be subject to change, of course). Eventually this will even out as the new system gets going and the old phased out.

The next step was to use the quadrant system, location, and rankings to separate each team to each division. The split on the U.S. map for each quadrant looked like this.

And here is the breakdown for each quadrant and the teams for each. 

Separating Teams to Create a Fair Bracket

Overall, the top portion of the divisions has a good group of teams. The Southeast and Northeast quadrants would have the toughest divisions, but moving teams from Mississippi and Louisiana over to the Midwest helped to mitigate some of the top-heavy portion of the Southeast quadrant. Yes, this meant having to split up the SEC, but in all fairness, this will make the Midwest division a very good one and without any major shortfalls while keeping the Southeast fairly competitive. The only somewhat easy division would be in the West, but no matter how I looked at it, these teams are weak in general. I did add in UTEP to the west as it made sense given UTEP’s location. I also moved Memphis to the Midwest quadrant as this seemed to be a better fit.

Nebraska, Texas Tech, and Kansas are all without ranking points and would be stuck in a tie breaker. I kept Nebraska as the team with the top division, based on historical rankings pre-2013. Tennessee and Kentucky made the top division because of this current season.

Potential Effect on Bowl Games and National Championship Game

1. Top team in each division will go to the playoffs (2 bowls + 1 national championship bowl). Very similar to the current CFP setup. This can easily be expanded to the top 2 teams in each quadrant or even the top 12 teams with the top 4 getting byes.
2. 2nd lowest team in higher division will play the second highest team in lower division for promotion/relegation. This equals out to 4 bowls plus 2 additional for SE and NE divisions as they have 3 divisions.
3. All other teams could have bowl invitations as deemed appropriate by bowl committees

How would this look like for Michigan?

This new system would be extremely beneficial for Michigan. In general, it would be mean matchups each week that keeps the main rivalries with Michigan State, Notre Dame, Ohio State, and to some level Penn State, Wisconsin, and Iowa. We would, as of the current set up, have our trophy game with Northwestern but lose out on the Brown Jug with Minnesota. Though, this rivalry doesn’t have to be played each year and can be there whenever Minnesota is promoted.

We would get new matchups that would be interesting to watch including Cincinnati, West Virginia, and Matt Campbell’s Iowa State!

Penn State will have Pittsburgh and Iowa would be able to play Iowa State.

 

What are your thoughts on this structure? If you have any comments that would fit into this, please let me know. I wouldn’t mind expanding on this concept and make another post if there is significant interest.