Restructuring CFB: A Proposal for Relegation and Dynamic Conferences
A friend of mine came up with this system for restructuring college football in a way that gives every team an equal shot at playing for the National Championship. He asked if I would post it on the board to get everyone's thoughts and perhaps stimulate some interesting discussion. This seemed like a Diary post to me, but I apologize if it would be better suited for the Board. Enjoy!
January 24th, 2016 at 1:05 PM ^
Do you want to play Ohio State?
January 24th, 2016 at 1:55 PM ^
first double post
January 24th, 2016 at 1:36 PM ^
This might work, but it'd ruin college football. CFB is beautifully flawed.
January 24th, 2016 at 1:41 PM ^
Does he have the initials DB? This scheme reminds me of the clusterfuck Brandon idea JUB told us about in Endzone.
January 24th, 2016 at 1:53 PM ^
I think it's an interesting and creative idea. But, I think it creates more problems than it solves. While the concept would give non-power conference teams a better chance, I can see the following problems:
1. The draft system only preserves rivalries for the drafting team.
2. Teams relegated to the 12-team conferences will have a recruiting disadvantage
3. Teams like Iowa this year would probably be in the 12-team conference and unable to have a "magical" run to the Rose Bowl.
4. Regular season is only 9 games (issue for tv, ticket sales, etc.)
5. Bowl games - would still be meaningless
6. The number one team in a conference could load their conference with teams they matchup well against ( from a style of play standpoint).
7. It's not fair to the players to be relegated to the lower conference based on the performance of players that have since graduated.
I'm sure there are more that I am not thinking of right now.
January 25th, 2016 at 8:40 AM ^
1. As I read it, #1 picks the 2nd team, #2 picks the 3rd team, etc. That would likely preserve regional rivalries.
2. Those teams probably have a recruiting disadvantage as it currently stands.
3. Iowa would have finished tied for 6th last year (using just conference record) so they could still have had their season.
4. If some teams have 11 regular season games it would make sense that everyone has that many. You can still have out of conference games to ensure rivalry games occur.
5. Status quo.
6. Same as above, each team only picks one conference member.
7. It isn't a whole lot different than it is now. Players that choose the Alabamas and the Ohio States can be pretty sure they won't be relegated but they may not get much playing time. It's essentially the same thing as the guys who have a choice at being a starter for a MAC team or a special teams/back up at a power 5 school.
January 25th, 2016 at 5:22 PM ^
Responding to #4, I would think the point was the lower league teams are playing their last games while the playoff is happening for the rest, so similar number of games. Maybe I'm wrong.
January 24th, 2016 at 1:59 PM ^
If you really want to do relegation pick conferences by region: West, Plains, Midwest/Northeast, and South. Top 16 teams in each region make the top conference. It preserves most rivalries, we would play Notre Dame again, Rutgers would be kicked out of our conference. Even then I would probably dislike the result because of shifting divisions and the possbility of one bad coach leading to a program killing relegation.
January 25th, 2016 at 12:58 PM ^
I agree - geography has to be a consideration. Not desirable for Rutgers to end up in a conference with all West Coast teams or San Jose to end up in a conference with all East Coast teams.
As a memo, we would have been relegated based on our 2008 performance (tied for 2nd to last in conf with Purdue, and we lost to them head-to-head for the tiebreaker).
January 24th, 2016 at 2:03 PM ^
My friend Miles had a dumb idea like this. But he watches soccer and has cats, so...
January 24th, 2016 at 2:19 PM ^
I didn't care for the penultimate paragraph. The idea is interesting but wildly impractical and has some serious theoretical (having teams draft their own competition seems fraught with problems) well as logistical (how do teams ensure their home schedules are strong enough to maintain strong ticket sales) flaws. But instead of acknowledging legitimate concerns and attempting to address them, the author expresses disdain for potential objectors. That's unfortunate considering the most value this proposal could ever hope to produce is a good discussion of how to structure college football playoff systems.
January 24th, 2016 at 5:24 PM ^
1. The identity of a program is not as tied to a specific conference as your friend thinks. No matter what conference Michigan is in, it will still be Michigan. No matter what conference EMU is in, it will still be EMU.
2. Relegation/promotion might sound cool in the abstract but is horrible when it comes to competitive balance. The rich get richer and the poor struggle to scrape by. If a college football team gets relegated, its recruiting will collapse and any quality members of its coaching staff will bolt for greener pastures. No good player or coach wants to compete in a crap league if he can avoid it.
The main "accomplishment" of relegation is that it creates a new goal for crappy teams: stay in the league. The little clubs in all the European leagues do not envision ever winning a title. What they sell their fans is just that they're there, having survived for another season. When they have a rare good season, they get raided by richer clubs. It's a miserable existence for them.
January 24th, 2016 at 6:15 PM ^
Is your friend named Ted Westervelt?
January 24th, 2016 at 6:44 PM ^
Fascinating. Could be awesome but it'll never happen and I think I'm ok with that.
January 25th, 2016 at 7:00 PM ^
Would be great for the teams that typically struggle to balance their finances. Getting an opportunity to snag a year or 2 of major conference TV deals would be a windfall for a MAC/WAC athletic department. On the other hand I would just as soon do away with national championships in college football all together. Having a Rosebowl b/t B1G and Pac12 is all the championship I need.
January 25th, 2016 at 8:36 AM ^
Lets just end the charade and make four 16 team conferences, or eight 8 team conferences. Realistically there are maybe 20 programs that can compete for players to play at the level needed to win a NC so 64 includes the also-rans who run a great season from time to time. Lets face it, the EMUs and SanJoseSts don't ever have a chance to do that.
January 25th, 2016 at 9:40 AM ^
I once had a professor who started a lot of sentences with, "Imagine if...." or "Imagine a world where...." The sentence would invariably end with something that was neato to talk about but wildly unfeasible.
This idea, along with the one in the OP, falls in the same category. They're whizbang neato fun to talk about but they require some dictator to impose order on a chaotic system. Nice, but all such proposals will stay in happy gumdrop rainbow land until someone can get 128 university presidents to agree on something.
January 25th, 2016 at 10:51 AM ^
Only 64. Dump the NCAA and reform a new collective.
January 25th, 2016 at 2:52 PM ^
Even that borders on the completely impossible. A simple yes or no question like "will we be better off without the NCAA" will have 64 different answers. I mean, you won't even get the top 30 to agree who the bottom 34 should be. And dumping the entire NCAA structure and then recreating it from top to bottom again just for the sake of having a cooler football playoff (but a way less cool basketball one) is, to put it mildly, a tough sell.
January 25th, 2016 at 9:46 AM ^
should not have football program at all, or at least should run it without asking subsidies from school general fund and student fees. It is unethical or even illegal for public universities to force every students paying for the cost of their football team or divert tax payer money to something that has little to do with education. I see zero benefit out of it for the general student body. there are too much obsession about producing a NC, I wasperfect happy with the old bowl system, where every big ten and pac 10 team played for Rose bowl very year.
January 25th, 2016 at 10:09 AM ^
As long as we are dreaming, make it six regional conferences: B1G, SEC, Pac12, Big12, ACC, Big East. All teams align with one of the six. Each conference divides into upper and lower division.
Upper division can have ten (9 conf. games) or eleven (10 conf games) teams. Round robin schedule - teams are responsible for filling up to 12 total games with OOC (or upper/lower div) match-ups. Relegation/promotion rules are up to the conferences to determine.
Seed 6 conf. champs plus two at-large teams. Play 1st round at site of choice of the higher seed during the first week in December.
After 1st round, bowl bids go out for all remaining teams, including losers of opening round. Play semi-final and championship rounds at pre-determined locations as currently happens now.
A committee only has to to decide which at-large teams to invite and seeding (at-large are 7 and 8 seeds). If you didn't win your conference, don't complain about a non-invite.
January 25th, 2016 at 1:12 PM ^
We could end plays, remove most of the padding, outlaw using our hands and try to kick a round ball into a rectangle instead.
Maybe we could even call it futbol or soccer?
January 26th, 2016 at 9:31 AM ^
Sarcastaball! We can all just hug!
January 25th, 2016 at 5:36 PM ^
I think this would still destroy rivalries. Even with the draft system you'd only get to choose one rival, and that's only if no one else has drafted them. We would not be playing OSU every year and that would be a shame.
Also, I wonder how each conference would look. I don't know about other people, but I'd rather play conference games against Indiana, Illinois, Minnesota, etc. than Rice, UTEP, South Alabama, etc. You might be making every game important, but a lot of those games are going to be real snoozers.
Also, count me as disliking a system where Michigan will frequently play games at schools like UNLV, Louisiana Monroe, and *gasp* Eastern Michigan.
Having said all that, interesting idea. Just too many negatives.
January 25th, 2016 at 5:38 PM ^
I realize most of the named teams will be in the lower league, but my point remains that those things are possible and likely to happen to some teams every year if not Michigan.
January 25th, 2016 at 10:29 PM ^
this thats way way too much change to a system thats not that bad. The conferences will not just change like that because these conferences are businesses too. A conference could have 2 powerhouses that deserve a shot at the championship . There are a lot more reasons why this is just too flawed.
January 26th, 2016 at 10:40 AM ^
1. Expand the playoff teams to 8
2. Each power 5 conference sends their champion
3. Leaving 3 at-large bids. (Possibly holding 1 or 2 spots for non power 5 teams)
4. May the best team win
January 26th, 2016 at 7:28 PM ^
This works and isnt a complete restructure to a decent system, but 1 thing I would think should be added to this is that you have to have a certain amount of wins as a P5 Conference championship in case any conference is weak (10 seems reasonable).
January 26th, 2016 at 11:13 AM ^
My issue is, conferences aren't all about sports. The Big Ten was created to collaborate like-minded universities in the Midwest with the goals of higher research. It wasn't about football. It was about top academic institutions sharing research money and goals.
January 27th, 2016 at 6:11 AM ^
Are you thinking of the Committee on Institutional Cooperation? That's almost coextensive with the B1G, but the B1G was always an athletic thing. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Ten_Conference#History.
January 27th, 2016 at 8:26 AM ^
The conference itself is about athletics. I could have worded it better, but the conference (meaning all the schools) are unified for purposes larger than just athletics. We are tied together in sports because of our ties academically and (until recently) geographically. Now if you put the schools and conferences in a state of flux over performance on an annual basis, you're destroying what these conferences (or the Big Ten at least) were found upon. Something we have been tied together on for over 100 years.
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