For the past year or so, teams in major college football have been rumored to switch conferences. Many people seem to believe that schools want to switch conferences to better the competition they face, I feel that this whole ordeal is about money, that's right, cold hard green cash. The Big Ten Conference was formed in 1895 as a way for the colleges to regulate football rules, a few years after that the NCAA was formed and governed college football throughout the country. After that, the point of the smaller regional conferences was to make it easier for schools to schedule games and officiating. Now I am going to remind you that was 100 years ago when teams preferred to play teams withing 200-300 miles so they wouldn't have to travel. All conferences back then were regional and did not mix teams in Louisiana with teams in California.
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| All those states have teams in the Western Athletic Conference |
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| Not earning their potential revenue |
Right now, teams are moving conferences just so they can take advantage of financial opportunities that other conferences supply. The only schools that get help because of conferences are the small schools that never compete for national championships and only make money because they are in the same conference as the most prestigious and elite programs. Boise State may be the school most hurt by the conference system. If they were an independent team that could schedule whoever they wanted and didn't have to play cupcakes week in and week out, they might of played in a national championship game. Not to mention that if they were able to negotiate their own TV deal, they would most likely receive more money than they would in their current deal with the Mountain West Conference. Vanderbilt is an example of a team that takes advantage of the system. They are members of the SEC and are lucky to get more than 3 wins a year, but yet they bring in the same amount of TV money as Florida. For a sport that obviously does not care about parity, they do a shitty job of allowing schools to take advantage of their own self-worth.
I feel as if there are three options for college football at this point, and there is no middle ground when it comes to how I feel about college football.
1. Mark Titus's theory on college conferences; go to Grantland.com for more info
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| A possible 2008 bracket, wouldn't that just ruin college football |
2. Have all schools join regional conferences and adopt a playoff system. Right now there are 120 FBS teams so they could split everyone up into ten twelve team conferences. Each conference would then be split into two divisions, again based on location, each team would play all 5 teams in their division and half the teams in the other division, those games would switch on a year to year basis according to the teams end of year record and power ranking. This will undoubtedly make the regular season more exciting, as one loss could possibly mean the the team might not make their conference championship game. Sure, teams with one or two losses might make the playoffs, but it's better than no loss teams not having a chance to win a title. The winner of each division would then play for the conference championship game, with the winner receiving an automatic entry into a 16 team playoff. To decide the 6 teams that will join the conference winners, a BCS type system would be used. The at large teams would not half to be the runner ups but any team in the nation, meaning that a conference could end up sending 7 teams to the playoffs, although that would be very unlikely. In a addition to all conferences having equal playoff rights, all teams in the country would receive the same amount money.
The last part of this plan is debatable, I feel this would be the best option but I part of me also
feels the stronger conferences should be able to make more money than the weaker ones.
3. This idea is pure capitalism, except that they are no trusts, sweat shops, or 2 year olds working 16 hours a day in a shed. NO conferences, that's right, each team for themselves when it comes to making bowl games and making cash. These idea does not need much explanation. Every team can schedule as many games as they want against whatever teams they want to, and at the end of the year each bowl's selection committee decides which teams it would like to invite to their game. Sure, you would almost never have an actual championship game, but college football worked so well without one for so many years. In this system the rich get richer and the poor get more poor. This is exactly why laissez faire economies never work. This system would eventually self implode as the bad schools would stop fielding a football team because they make no money and scholarship opportunities would be limited for student athletes and college football would become a 45 team league. This brings me to my next point, there are no rules on scholarships in this system either. If a school can give out 200 athletic scholarships, good for them, I'm sure they will enjoy the national championships.
There, I offered my solutions to college football, I want to see what other ideas you guys out there have and I honestly wouldn't be surprised if the NCAA someday follows #3, since it is clearly the worst choice in my mind.
