OT - Relegation in College Football Experiment
I have been a proponent of a "relegation style league" for college football and it's popped up in threads a lot in the past. My initial idea is to have 40 teams in the "Playoff Qualified League" and the other teams in a "Bowl Division" (or similar). You would have the bottom 5 teams get relegated to the "Bowl Division" and the top 5 in the "Bowl Division" promoted to the "Playoff Qualifed League". To see how this would have played out, I used ChatGPT and it kicked out the last 5 years if we had this format (see below).
Thought it was fun and wanted to share what the chaos would've looked like to everyone else.
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If college football had a promotion-relegation system with the top 40 teams in one league and the bottom five of those 40 teams being relegated, and the top five of the other divisions being promoted, the last five years would have seen some significant changes in the top teams.
Assuming the top 40 teams would be divided into four divisions of ten teams each, with the top two teams from each division qualifying for the playoffs, the following teams would have made the playoffs each year:
2017:
Promoted teams: Central Florida, Memphis, Toledo, Appalachian State, Troy
Relegated teams: UCLA, Florida State, Kansas State, Arkansas, Vanderbilt
Playoff teams: Alabama, Clemson, Georgia, Oklahoma, Wisconsin, Ohio State, Penn State, Auburn, Notre Dame, USC
2018:
Promoted teams: Army, Cincinnati, Fresno State, Utah State, UAB
Relegated teams: Oregon State, Rutgers, Kansas, San Jose State, Texas State
Playoff teams: Alabama, Clemson, Notre Dame, Oklahoma, Ohio State, Georgia, UCF, Washington
2019:
Promoted teams: Memphis, Cincinnati, Appalachian State, Boise State, UAB
Relegated teams: Northwestern, Arkansas, South Carolina, Colorado, Syracuse
Playoff teams: LSU, Clemson, Ohio State, Oklahoma, Georgia, Oregon, Baylor, Memphis
2020:
Promoted teams: Coastal Carolina, Liberty, San Jose State, Ball State, Buffalo
Relegated teams: Mississippi State, Vanderbilt, South Carolina, Utah State, Colorado
Playoff teams: Alabama, Ohio State, Clemson, Notre Dame, Texas A&M, Florida, Oklahoma, Cincinnati
2021:
Promoted teams: UTSA, Coastal Carolina, Louisiana, Fresno State, San Diego State
Relegated teams: Tennessee, Texas Tech, Oregon State, Duke, South Carolina
Playoff teams: Alabama, Georgia, Michigan, Cincinnati, Notre Dame, Oklahoma State, Baylor, Ohio State
Note: This scenario assumes that the current playoff format of four teams is maintained, which could change if the top 40 teams are divided into fewer or more divisions.
Overall, this system would provide more opportunities for smaller schools to compete at the highest level of college football, while also making it more difficult for established powerhouses to maintain their status. The regular season would become more competitive and intense, as teams near the bottom of the top 40 would be fighting to avoid relegation.
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Why did Tennessee get relegated in 2021? They went 7-6. Also, how is Oregon State getting relegated in 2021 if they were already relegated in 2018? Same with South Carolina getting relegated three straight years in 2019-2021. Don't really understand how this proposal is working.
That aside, I really don't like relegation proposals. It feels very corporate, and I think it would destroy the traditions that make college football so great. I also think it would prevent redemption arcs. You can't have our legendary 2021 season if we were relegated in 2020. And on that note, I think people tend to underestimate the chances of relegation and how long-term devastating that could be. We could have easily been relegated from a top-40 conference in 2008, 2009, 2014, and 2020.
FB Dive, I don't disagree with your points much at all. It's part of the reason why I love this debate for college football. It's something that more than likely will never happen, but offers great debate on "what's best".
My counter arguments would be that relegation would provide more consistency in coaching, especially for lower level teams that are on the cusp of promotion. It's more likely a coach that helped build the program into promotion wouldn't jump for a higher program due to what was just built. I also don't feel relegation would be any more devastating that a few bad hires like Michigan and Tennessee (among others in the past) have done. Relegation could increase alumni support/donations to get back up to the promoted league. Redemption arcs would be a bit longer in timeframes or a slightly different style, but still doable (ex: Leicester city).
Lastly, ChatGPT has some holes in the data. I didn't go through each team and year, but thought it was close enough to share to see close to "what could have been".
Oh, I see, that makes sense. I had missed that you used ChaptGPT to generate the teams.
Relegation definitely offers some advantages, I just think it's a model better suited for soccer and maybe other professional sports.
I love relegation in soccer.
The problem with your results is that teams have to play other teams in the same tier/level for it to work. ChatGPT used results where everyone’s schedule and record is what it was when they played the top tier teams in their conference. You can’t relegate and promote like that. You would have to do away with conferences, and schedules can’t be fixed until the beginning of each year. That would screw up TV contracts which kills everything.
There is no debate about relegation in CFB.
It's just a few fans having fun shuffling teams around. That's okay as long as you realize that it's never going to happen. No Power 5 school is ever going to vote for it.
It’s called feedback
Lastly, ChatGPT has some holes in the data. I didn't go through each team and year, but thought it was close enough to share to see close to "what could have been".
Before reading through it, my first question was how closely you spot-checked the data for quality. My (fairly limited) experience with ChatGPT so far is that it does a good job of understanding your inputs and providing clear answers that address the question...but that upon closer inspection, it does not do a good job of following parameters, especially when multiple parameters are involved.
So it's no surprise to me that ChatGPT would provide something that appears relevant, but in reality is dubiously accurate. It's a fun exercise though!
Pretty sure it is taking each season as stand alone and not keeping a running tally. Like I was surprised San Jose State was in the top 40 to even get relegated. So yeah likely the "relegated teams" are what it think finished 36-40 (no matter where they were previously) and the promoted teams are the ones that finished 41-45.
Also it must be ranking by sp+ or some other advanced stat that ranks every single team.
If Rutgers could be relegated out of the B1G, I would be in favor.
Is conventional wisdom now we keep Maryland but boot Nebraska as well?
IIRC very few were happy with both Rutgers and Maryland at the start.
OP used ChatGPT for this exercise. While ChatGPT definitely has its uses (I'll never write my own cover letter again), it's designed to sound plausible and not to do analysis or check facts. So while the output sounds pretty reasonable, it's not going to be all that accurate.
Hilarious that you're saying relegation feels corporate -- this is like the opposite discourse online about soccer
I didn't read any of that but if it involves relegating Sparty to the California Penal League I'm all in.
They can go hang out with Rick Vaughn…
I'd be a fan of this system if each Tier 1 league had a regionally compatible Tier 2. More fun to have the Fleck WMU or Jordan Lynch NIU teams in the Big Ten than 2016 Rutgers or 2012 Illinois
Exactly, pair each major conference or division with a lesser conference and promote/relegate between the two is what would make the most sense in a relegation format. Though I don’t personally believe relegation is something that would work in college football anyway, or college sports in general.
With 10 football conferences, it works out mathematically with the current power 5 setup as well. Something like: B1G + MAC, PAC12 + MW, Big12 + C-USA, ACC + American, and SEC + Sun Belt. Do a top 2 promotion and bottom two relegation for each or something of the sort.
In this crazy hypothetical, doing promote/relegate would be extremely difficult to pull off on an annual basis with scheduling, budgets and TV contracts. You’d likely have to do something like the two best/worst records over a 4-5 year stretch.
But then of course there’s the question of what happens to the other sports? Indiana may suck at football, but they’re a higher end basketball program. Are they getting relegated in all sports because of a lackluster football program? Does each sport have its own relegation? How does revenue sharing work in that case?
Fun exercise, but I don’t see how it would work out
This came up on reddit recently and here's a comment I saw that highlights why relegation is a horrible idea in college football:
"Most of the permutations and scenarios in the article have been discussed ad nauseum here, and they completely lost me when they considered that annual promotion and relegation (a la European soccer) has any place in a sport consisting of 99% 18-22 year olds making significant developmental jumps every offseason, even speaking purely competitively. To the extent it still does, pro/rel works in Europe because you either have a consistent core that will age/rotate out like a normal professional roster, or else you get a fuckton of money you can use to buy largely fungible players in a liquid market.
CFB doesn't work that way. Congrats on your best year ever, Western Bumblefuck! Welcome to the SEC! What's that? You just graduated your QB, half your OL, and that second-round DE you developed from a two-star nobody? Oh well, hope the next man up is even better, or the castoffs in the portal don't need two seasons to adjust.
Meanwhile, sorry you couldn't quite find your footing with turnover and injuries last year, Massive State. It was painful watching you play all those freshmen and sophomores. Since we all know that underclassmen rarely get better with large college S&C programs and more reps in the system, it's probably best you play in the Sun Belt; I'm sure the games will be extremely competitive."
https://www.reddit.com/r/CFB/comments/11q9w5e/espn_realignment_roundtable_next_steps_notre_dame/
Great explanation! We often forget the churn the schools go through over a 2-4 year cycle. The European Soccer Leagues are more stable, hence teams don't move up or down in a short cycle.
OTOH, if there was relegation, then the schools would adjust as well. They won't conduct business as usual if they were to get kicked out of the upper tier! Some coaches would get shorter leashes. Others could cash their one "promotion" forever.
It would be interesting to see how it would actually play out. Maybe there's an E-Sports game in there somewhere.
That is the sound of 40 fanbases/alumni checking out and replacing Nebraska or Florida st with UTSA or Coastal Carolina. Sounds like high risk and low reward for the programs that matter in college football. Would be fun to try in a video game setting to see how it all played out. Im not sure you want to throw the relegated fan bases into an NIT style sucker in the dirt season. "But if you do really well this next season the season after can matter again!"
I’m all for a relegation system. I think the Big Ten Conference should expand to 20 teams (add Cal, Stanford, Oregon, and Washington in addition to UCLA and USC). Split the conference into two tiers, a top tier (i.e, the Big 10) and a Relegated 10. Each team in a Tier plays every other team in its Tier. All 20 teams have one protected rivalry game regardless of tier and two non-conference games of their choosing. At the end of every season, the bottom two of the Big10 plays the best two of the Relegated 10. The winner of each gets to play in the Big10 tier the following year, losers get relegated. Get rid of the conference championship game since the CFP is expanding to 12 teams soon, which mean the top 2 or 3 teams in the Big10 tier likely will be going to the playoffs. The rest of the teams (if not playing in relegation games) go to whatever bowl they can snag. Let the other conferences go to pods or geographic divisions or some other awkward arrangement. Relegation is fair to all.
That is right. This is much more doable than many believe. Conventional thinkers get stuck in their bomb-shelters and are afraid to come out. That said, there would be plenty of "challenges" to work out...and the expanded CFP should help mitigate the most egregious issues with the current system. I have been in favor of such a "relegation" system previously but am now in the wait and see camp.
I love it. I'm all for reconstructing the college football landscape. This relegation model - including getting rid of the conference championship game - is as close to perfection as I've seen. Please make it happen.
I like this idea. More of a "Localized Relegation".
Yeah, as many have already observed, when a conference has so many teams and stretches from coast to coast, it’s no longer about an association of similarly situated schools in a geographic region but about scheduling preferences. In the relegation scenario above, the scheduling preference would be for the top teams to play the other top teams every week (but for the non-conference games). All 20 teams would still be part of the Big Ten Conference and get their pro-rata share of any revenue split, but the Northwesterns and Rutgerses in any given season no longer have to compete with the Michigans, OSUs, and USCs of the world as they try to work their way up the conference food chain. The Big Ten Conference would offer great matchups every week and the two relegation games at the end of the season would be must-see-TV for any college football fan. Who wouldn’t want to see if, say, a 5-7 Wisconsin team from the Big10 tier will beat a 12-0 Illinois team from the Relegation tier for the right to play with the big boys the following year? And who's to say the national polls wouldn't rank the Illinois team higher? Anyway, fun to think about.
TLDR
If it hurts Sparty and/or OSU, I like your thinking.
If it helps either, you’re not thinking hard enough.
I think it can only work if you give a couple of playoff spots (lowest seeds) to the relegation league due to the nature of college athletics.
Another appealing feature of this system is, the "Premier League" teams would only play fellow Premier League teams, which means no more cupcake scheduling and at least one blue-blood program would go 0-12 despite being a pretty darn good team.
An unappealing feature would be, just like in the Premier League, money would magnetically gravitate to the top and the rich would get richer.
Relegation would never happen.
We might as well be discussing how much NIL money we would need to give Martians once they land.
Watching msu get relegated down would be a glorious event to experience.
I think the only way relegation could kinda-sorta work would be for the yearly relegation to be based on a rolling five year record and even then it would just mean a head to head game between the teams facing relegation.
I.e. let's say there's a 3 Conference, 60 team Champions League. Below them is a 3 Conference, 72 team secondary league.
Each Champions Conference has an associated secondary Conference (B1G/MAC, Big 12/Pac 12, SEC/ACC, for instance). The B1G team with the worst 5 year record each year would play against the MAC team with the best 5 year record and the winner plays in the B1G, loser goes to the MAC.
That way the only teams with a chance to be relegated downward are perennial bottom-dwellers who STILL get a chance to save themselves while still allowing the best second tier teams to prove their mettle against the big boys.
It’s the off-season for college football, which means it’s time for another iteration of MGoBlog tradition: relegation masturbation.
Yank away.
Obviously there will never be true relegation, but...
Simply start by making a 60 team D1A.
Six, 10-team divisions...9 conference games...winners to an 8 team playoff (6 + top 2 at-large). Quarterfinals on home campuses, losers are still bowl eligible. Winners go to 4-team neutral site Final Four.
...then take the next 60 teams and do the exact same model for D1AA.
...then take the next 60 teams and do the exact same model for D1AAA.
And it's the AA and AAA that I'm most excited about, because you get more meaningful games and playoff opportunities for more schools. AND I love that you can move some of the current FCS powerhouse teams into these AA or AAA with FBS teams.
I've said this before, but imagine a Friday night #2 Eastern or Western Michigan vs. #3 North or South Dakota St. game...with a CFP trip on the line.
That would be watched and attended a lot more than Tuesday's Ball St. vs. Kent St. tilt on ESPN.
...basically, get 180 teams, put them all into a bucket...and then resort them, first 60, second 60, third 60. I think that rebalancing would be fascinating for the next 50+ years of college football.
Ummm, if it’s the last 5 years, what happened to 2022? Is that a ChatGPT fail or a Nashville fukup?
Interesting idea - however, IMO, it will never happen.
Think of the Premier League - 38 matches per season - with a "home and home" against every other team in the League. That provides a balanced schedule that college conferences can't adjust to.
I appreciate the comments and idea - and, one thing that may be a finding of the Chat GPT question - is that most, if not all, teams that were elevated - were from Group of Five conferences - while most of the teams that were relegated were from Power Five conferences.
For the B1G, I do wonder - what's going to happen. Will the B1G add four teams and reach twenty teams in the conference - with two ten team divisions? Will a sixteen or twenty team conference be four pods of four or five teams each?
People suggest the B1G CCG might "go away" - however, with the revenue that game generates - it's visibility - and, awarding a conference champion - my guess is that it's here to stay. One question associated with it is - "where will the play the B1G CCG?" Indy's been home for the CCG, and with the addition of USC and UCLA, as well as the historical tie to the B1G - the Rose Bowl enters the discussion. The only question, or issue, I have with the Rose Bowl for the CCG is - you'll find out on a Saturday afternoon whether your team qualifies for the CCG - and, if you need to travel to Southern California on a few days notice, is it realistic for local fans to make it to the game - balancing cost, time, etc.
Ehr......chatGPT promoted App State twice, without relegating them, once in 2017 and again in 2019, if they're not relegated in 2018, wouldn't they still be in the upper group?
Same with UAB, promoted in consecutive years, 2018 and 2019.
Didn't check for others, but there is a flaw in the model somewhere.
I didn’t see any relegated teams getting promoted in subsequent seasons. That seems unrealistic. I presume that there was no continuity year-to-year, which is also why some teams were relegated multiple time. Altogether, it’s not a sound extrapolation of the thesis
If we're going soccer style... I'd rather just take 72 teams and randomly draw 8 pods of 9 teams every year. Everyone play an 8 game season in their pod. Top 2 in each pod go to a 16 team playoff.
I think having national relegation is kind of stupid because the schedules are so imbalanced. If you play in a crappy conference some team will obviously have a good record. The best way to do relegation would be conf by conf. An Upper B1G and a Lower B1G. Same for the other major conferences.
After our 2020-2021 seasons, I'm kind of over the concept of relegation in college sports. The problem with combining any college sport with relegation is the fact that 2 seasons is an entire generation for any type of college sports team. The teams change dramatically over just about any two year window, so the punishments and rewards would almost never align with the teams who earned them. Thus, it would be extremely unfair.