538 article on how to do away with conference title games, divisions

I was expecting to hate this idea, but I actually like it. It'll never happen for logistics reasons and I think it would suck for bad programs because they'd play fewer good teams to build excitement/ticket sales, but I think it would make for better football.

This is not as big of a logistical nightmare as people are making it out to be.  2 of the 4 flex games are home games, in which you're going to be playing teams who are evenly-matched record wise when you play, meaning that they will be big games.  Why wouldn't those tickets sell far in advance?  As for the 2 away games, yes it might decrease the amount of people traveling, but the home fans would still be there to buy a lot of the tickets and some would go.  Getting rid of divisions and the champ game is a laudable goal IMO.  The B1G divisions suck.  It would also suck if UM & OSU were in different divisions becuase who wants to watch them play 2 weeks in a row?  It could/would take away from many of the 1st games.  

As they stand, the conference championships are often either "play in" or "play out" games for the 4 team playoffs.  As such they are often a de facto first round of the playoffs.  Why not make that official and replace the conference championship games with the first round of an 8 team playoff?  Each P5 conference champion gets in and three at large teams.  The conferences have to determine their champions within the course of the 12 game regular season using whatever method they devise.

Hundreds of millions - billions - of people around the world have pinned their hopes on the conference championship games. They are their leaders have embraced the conference principles - and drawn closer to the SEC - because they believe that this system can work for them. But what if it can't? What if the Big 10 athletic departments stagnate or even shrinks? In that case, we will face a new period of inter-conference conflict: South against North, rich against poor. Clemson, Oklahoma, Washington- these programs with their millions of fans and their spread offenses will pose a much greater danger to UM dominance than Nebraska and Tennessee did in the 1990's.

-Mead '92.

conference alignments or playoff restructuring.

Here's what I would do to fix collge football (In addition to a $500 monthly stipend, mandetory 4-Year schollarship offers for all players, allowing players to make cash off their name, and Brian's Year-to-Year scholly limit): 

1) Using the conferences circa 1990 as a starting point, create 8 10-team conferences that will be "Division 1." No more Independants. Teams MUST reach certain criteria (Alumni base, stadium size, financial stability, education standards). 

2) start the year with an 8-team conference schedule + a championship game. 

3) The 8 Conference winners, plus the 8-next highest-ranked teams, enter into a 16 tournament, with all games at home sites (except the Championship Game), complete with a loosers bracket.  Every yeam plays 4 games. Every team in the tournament has to go on the road twice (except the top two seeds, which only have to go once), with the higher ranked team geting to choose when to play their away games. 

4) Teams 17-32 also do a seperate 16-team tournament, with four guaranteed games, played at home sites. Same deal here: every team gets two games home and away. 

5) 33-80 get randomly assigned 4 games, with every team hosting at least two. 

That article was sure short, sweet and simple.

Definitely agreed with the opening of the article. This seems like a good idea on paper, but 

"Week 7 features the most storied rivalries such as Michigan vs. Ohio State" and not knowing the schedule ahead of time (for travel and season ticket purposes) makes me think this wouldn't work. 

if nothing else, Silver makes the point of getting rid of the (usually boring, and often pointless) conference title games---substituting instead another week of BCS playoffs.  The B10 would have had 3 and possibly 4 teams in.

I wrote a similar diary a month ago.  

I think that Silver's idea is too radical.  He is asking conferences to kill something that they see as a cash cow for the dubious purpose of expanding the playoff.  Hell, the B1G expanded just to make a Championship Game happen.  I think that, someday, flex scheduling of some sort is going to be done.  Change usually happens incrementally, and stakeholders need sufficient reason to change (like seeing a wildly successful playoff that seems like a bigger moneymaker than conference championships).

Given our current constraints (knowing the national champ will come from one of 5 conferences), I do think that it is reasonable to use the regular season to determine "who is the best team from each conference", and use that information to create a postseason tournament to determine the national champion.

eliminate the divisions, thats a good start, the conference championship game is staying though, too much tv money for the conference. Sick of the west alsways being so weak

The other cost is lower fan attendance for away teams in the weeks without a predetermined opponant. Still, I'd take that and moving the game in order to have more legitimate conference champions. 

The other cost is lower fan attendance for away teams in the weeks without a predetermined opponant. Still, I'd take that and moving the game in order to have more legitimate conference champions. 

6 "power" conferences (P6) with ten teams each. That means 5 current P5 schools get the boot. The conferences would be Big Ten, SEC, PAC 10, ACC, Big East and Southwest. Each school plays every team in their conference plus 3 non-conference games.

There would also be 8 "other" conferences (O8) with 9 teams each. That's the current 60 G5 schools, plus the 5 that got the boot from the P5 plus the 4 independents plus 3 new to D-I/FBS teams. each school would play every team in their conference plus 4 non-conference games

Bowl games for P6 are set up that match conference champs against each other: Rose=Big vs. PAC, Orange=SEC vs. Big East and Sugar=ACC vs SW. The 3 winners of these bowl games would automatically qualify for the play-offs as the 1, 2 and 3 seeds and get one week off before they play again. 

Meanwhile, the top 2 ranked O8 schools and the two higest ranked non-conference champion P6 schools would be seeded 1-4 (based upon ranking) in a 4 team play-off. The first round games would be home games for the higher ranked team. The Fiesta Bowl would host the winners of those two games. The winner of the Fiesta Bowl would then become the 4 seed in the overall play-off. 

The resulting 4 team play-off would be pretty straight forward.

This is basically a 10 team play-off. To win the NC, a conference champion would have to win 3 games in 4 weeks. A P6 non-conference champion or O8 school would have to win 4 games in 4 weeks.

This system:

• Restores the importance of classic bowl games with some of the pagentry and conference rivalries of old;
• Maintains intra-conference rivalries by ensuring that teams play everyone in their conference;
• Places emphasis on winning your conference;
• Gives O8 teams a shot, but makes them "prove" themselves.

Flaws:

• 3-4 extra games is significant, even if it only affects 10 teams.
• It is theorectically possible, but unlikely, for the #3 ranked team to get shut-out. 
• While #3 getting shut out is unlikely,  the chances of a team in the 5-10 range getting shut out is significant. Of course if you win your conference this is a non-issue.

At first glance it seems like a possible solution, but leaving weekends open as TBD seems like a real logistical hassle for teams, fans and stadiums.