The Problems
The constant background noise you hear is the shuffling of the athletic conferences, specifically Bowl Subdivision conferences. This shuffling is a byproduct of the BCS. Big Ten teams don't have championship games, and scheduling sometimes makes it so the two best teams do not meet. Modern conferences don't have co-champions. Boise State plays in a conference of nobodies and Nevada, not to mention the cost and toil of having to fly to Hawaii every other year (Or any of Hawaii games for that matter). BYU is going independent because their brand is worth more than the entirety of the Mountain West. Utah and Colorado are joining the Pac-10, because Utah caught a shooting star and they figured Boulder had better weed than the current members. Nebraska and the Big Ten have some mutual love as Nebraska is a historically powerful football program and the Big Ten also consists of an extremely beneficial academic consortium. Yes, I just talked about academic benefits as a motivation for college athletic policy.
The SEC cares little for the expansion, because simply they're better than everyone else. The ACC jumped the gun and now finds itself a (recently) mediocre football conference. Now, the Big XII is doomed, because it lacks both equality and the same academic benefits. It was and always will be a marriage of convenience, where Texas acts as an abusive spouse. The Big East is now desperately trying not to become a non-BCS conference and failing miserably, even trying to add another eastern team...Texas Christian?
None of these changes will fix anything, especially for the fans. They want a playoff, but is that fair to the players? Adding a 16 team playoff to the current system, means the champions will play 16 games, and subjecting amateur athletes to such punishment isn't extremely fair, especially to these athletes wishing to pursue careers in the NFL. I will acknowledge Missouri high schools currently play 15 for champions, but a great percentage of the kids will never play again and most won't take the punishment that a college athlete gets in five games. But every sport has a playoff, even the lower divisions of college football and it works. They also have shorter schedules, which I'll get around to.
A Solution
My solution is outlandish and perhaps worth loathing. An SEC fan would hate it, but then again why doesn't said fan have a rooting interest in a team rather than a conference. The solution is eliminate the conferences and run college football independently of the other sports.
The conferences should remain for the other sports and the academic partnerships that currently exist. The money generated by football can also be used to support other sports, in fact the budget should not even be changed except for one matter: money that previously went outwards will now come in. How about eliminating the bowls? Sure, you may hate the idea, but how does a corporation making money off of amateur athletes feel to you? Wouldn't the money be better served going to the programs for which the athletes play? However, if you want to keep the bowls, go ahead. Just choose from the eighty-eight schools not playing in the playoffs, or wait to pick until the third round and have your pick of everyone but the last eight teams.
My solution not only eliminates the Boise State/BCS argument, it eliminates the BCS/Playoff argument and lowers the travel costs that major conferences are not taking on to form these super-conferences. By establishing regional conferences, it allows teams to budget better and eliminates the Hawaii problem that small schools like Utah State and Idaho are currently dealing with (at least better than a 13th game).
Before I detail the new conferences, I would like to make some notes on scheduling and a decision I made on who should be in this group. Every team has twelve game schedules, and each one can schedule one FCS opponent. Some would like these games eliminated, but in reality these games are a major boost to FCS athletics who get major cash influxes to support their entire program.
I propose 12 10-team conferences with everyone's ugly step-sister Notre Dame remaining independent. If I eliminate the independence of Notre Dame, I feel it's necessary to increase the division to 130 teams. Essentially, this means promotion of teams from two football weak areas, the Northeast and Northwest. I'll go over the Notre Dame independent scenario, since it is the most logical.
| Southeast | SE Coastal | Sun Belt | Carolinas | Northeast | Great Lakes |
| Alabama | Florida | South Alabama | South Carolina | Boston College | Pittsburgh |
| LSU | Florida State | UAB | Clemson | Temple | Penn State |
| Auburn | Miami (FL) | Arkansas State | North Carolina | Navy | Michigan |
| Ole Miss | South Florida | Western Kentucky | NC State | Connecticut | Mich St. |
| Miss St. | Florida Atlantic | Tulane | East Carolina | Syracuse | Cincinnati |
| Tennessee | Florida Int. | Louisiana Tech | Wake Forest | Buffalo | Ohio State |
| Kentucky | Georgia | Louisiana-Monroe | Maryland | Army | Indiana |
| Vanderbilt | Georgia Tech | Louisiana-Lafayette | Virginia | West Virginia | Purdue |
| Southern Miss | Troy | Memphis | Duke | Rutgers | Wisconsin |
| Arkansas | Central Florida | Middle Tennessee | Virginia Tech | Marshall | Northwestern |
Let's go over the "eastern" half of the country first. Obviously, the Southeast still remains the strongest of the conferences. Even without Florida and Georgia and the addition of a mid-major Southern Miss. The depth is still good. The Sun Belt is basically a conference made to fill in the gaps, since none of these teams are good enough to even compete with the other southeastern teams. However, I threw this out in Florida. The talent exists to negate this advantage much faster, and FAU and FIU will get better every year because of it. This is the almost perfect conference 1)Travel is confined to three states; 2) UF, FSU, UM, GTech, and UGA are solid top half 3)The bottom half given economic opportunity and a solid recruitment base will be quickly competitive. The Carolinas grouping has the same advantages minus the elite football programs.
Now we are approaching the tough part. The Northeast/Mid-Atlantic doesn't have a strong football base. The best way to fix this is to have the teams masquerading as I-AA programs step up (UMass, Villanova specifically). But that would only allow a preservation of the Big Ten and weaken the overall quality so I'll show that later. This conference is traditionally weak, but with a AQ for the winner and the possibility of success for the other teams; it provides ground for growth among programs that have lacked lately. The Great Lakes is the Big Ten+Pitt and Cincinnati-Minnesota/Iowa/Illinois. In football terms, that currently goes as a small loss as Iowa is a near-elite program, but Pitt and Cincy have more traditional strong markets to grow within.
| MAC | Midwest | Southwest | Mountain West | Pacific NW | Pacific South |
| C. Michigan | Illinois | Texas | Utah | Washington | Arizona |
| E. Michigan | Louisville | TCU | Nevada | Wash. St. | Arizona St. |
| W. Michigan | Iowa | Texas A&M | BYU | Wyoming | San Diego St. |
| Akron | Iowa St. | Texas Tech | Tulsa | Boise St. | California |
| Bowling Green | Missouri | SMU | UTEP | Idaho | Stanford |
| Miami U. | Nebraska | Baylor | Utah State | Oregon | UCLA |
| Toledo | Kansas | Rice | North Texas | Oregon St. | USC |
| Ohio | Kansas St. | Houston | New Mexico | Air Force | Fresno St. |
| Kent State | Minnesota | Oklahoma | New Mexico St. | Colorado St. | San Jose St. |
| Ball State | No. Illinois | Oklahoma St. | UNLV | Colorado | Hawaii |
Obviously, the west, being more sparsely populated both with people and d-I schools, is going to be more problematic. There is only one small travel conference out west, the Southwest. Even worse is the problem that is the MAC. There are sixteen teams in the current MAC, and to this day not one school has stepped forward to control that conference. Therefore, no team really would be able to even compete, even on Indiana's level, in the Big Ten. So like the Sun Belt, the MAC continues to hold teams not worthy of other conferences. Like Troy, Northern Illinois is a sacrificial lamb in this policy. Geographically, this is much better. It eliminates Hawaii-Louisiana Tech road trips, and counters the Hawaii problem by adding it to schools with higher athletic budgets and presenting opportunity for Hawaii and their opponents to make more TV money from those games.
Overall, this new alignment and playoff produces obvious winners and losers.
Winners: All non-BCS powers. Nebraska, Iowa, BC, West Virginia
Losers Initially Due to Superior Competition: San Jose St., SD State, Hawaii, Troy, No. Illinois, Idaho, Cincinnati (?), Rice, So. Miss
Essentially this alignment will produce a regular season and tournament like college basketball. The MAC and Sun Belt would most likely only have one automatic qualifier and they will be seeded low. The Southeast would have four and most will be seeded high. If you think this plan would help my team, I think if Missouri played in that conference they would finish behind Nebraska and Iowa, and most likely be first team out-last team in or around there. A playoff would usually consist of the top-30 ranked teams, and the Sun Belt and MAC champs. Notre Dame would most likely get in with a 9-3 record at least, and an 8-4 record on occasion. Oregon and Auburn would still win their conferences and be seeded first, getting an easier draw.
Now the main argument against a playoff is the assumption that teams will schedule patsies for their three out-of-conference games. Now, I already said each team should/can schedule a I-AA/FCS team. Notre Dame will still be playing Mich, Mich St. Purdue, BC, USC, Stanford, and Navy. As the conferences even out, this will become less of a problem. Also, losses to a good program won't look as bad as near wins against bad ones. So Va Tech losing to Boise is a non-factor, but Mizzou almost losing to San Diego State would look bad (That is if SDSU is actually bad, they might not be). Twelve games for the regular season, with most teams playing 12-14 and the better teams playing 15-17. Remember, the better teams should have four or five game a season where their starters don't play full games, including their opening playoff game against a weak opponent, so the playing time for individual starters should be no more for a championship team and a 13-14 game season for a "cinderella." Now, the wear and tear might be a factor if "cinderella" never stops winning.
Of course this eliminates the bowl games significance, and how horrible of us to destroy an illustrious tradition of private companies making money off of college athletics once a year. The other problem is it eliminates the conferences input into college football, and how awful would that be: NCAA officials, not conference specific ones; no money grabbing championship games; no unbalanced schedules; and no conference re-alignment chatter in the off-season. Win your conference and you're in. Get second in a tough conference, you're in. Consistently win as a program, and you're in. From there, it's anybody's game.
Author's Note: This is essentially the end of the plan; I will talk about FBS expansion for Notre Dame conference play on Friday and respond to all of the negative feedback on this plan. The following is explaining the TV situation for college football and deals with specifics just to emphasize the value of changing the game.
TV
The specter overlooking this is the television money. I propose that each conference has regional TV packages in certain markets and then ESPN, VS, Big Ten Network, and CBS flex schedule games like NBC in the late NFL season. Basically, this allows the conferences to do what they are about to do now. Essentially, the money from the flexed games is distributed with 30% going to each team and 40% (5% per team) being split among the rest of the conference and then the regional contract money is distributed equally. Remember that this flex plan helps maintain the status quo somewhat. CBS will air Southeast games, BTN games involving Big Ten teams, VS midwest and western teams, and ESPN the biggest names and best matchups.
Here are the regional sports networks and the proposed conferences they will cover.
Southeast: Fox Sports Tennessee, Cox Sports Television
Carolinas: Fox Sports Carolinas, Mid-Atlantic Sports Network
Northeast: Comcast SportsNet New England MSG Plus Yankees Entertainment and Sports MSG Network New England Sports Network Time Warner Cable SportsNet
Great Lakes: Fox Sports Detroit Fox Sports Indiana Fox Sports Ohio FSN Pittsburgh Fox Sports Wisconsin
Sun Belt: Fox Sports Tennessee Cox Sports Television
Pacific South: Fox Sports Arizona Prime Ticket and Fox Sports West Comcast SportsNet Bay Area Channel 4 San Diego
Mountain West: Fox Sports Oklahoma, FSN Utah
MAC: Ohio, Michigan Fox Sports Detroit, Fox Sports Indiana, SportsTime Ohio, Comcast Television (Michigan)
Essentially, this plays out to a contract with Fox Sports to broadcast all non-nationally televised games. Fox Sports would essentially be broadcasting every conference's games. Ideally, Fox would start showing at least one game a week on its network channel in the afternoon or evening.
Even without it, ESPN has 12-18 slots to air games (ESPN, ESPN2, ESPNU: each 3-4, ABC: 2, and perhaps ESPN Classic 1-4). The reason I say 11-17 is I don't see them airing games on ESPN Classic and airing one to three west-coast games at the 10 EST timeslot. Some of these conferences don't seem to have many affiliates and they overlap viewing areas, but let's make an example.
Southeast: Five games
CBS Game of the Week 3:30 EST , ESPN flexes two games (8:00), Fox picks up two games one at 12 PM EST, another at 8 PM EST
Sun Belt: Wednesday Night ESPN game, Fox Sports Thursday Night, Fox Sports game Friday Night, Fox Sports 2:30 EST (two games, split viewing area, perhaps usage of FSN alternates on dishes).
This doesn't change much from now. The Sun Belt gets less exposure and plays non-traditional schedules. In turn, they have every game televised in some manner, giving them both opportunities for exposure and financial reward.
The typical week consists of no more than 80 games involving FBS teams, and as the season progresses this hovers around sixty.
The Coverage breakdown (no. of games and time-slots in EST):
ESPN: 7 games Thu-Fri 8 Sat. 12, 3:30, 7, 10:30
ESPN2: 3 games 12, 3:30, 7
ESPNU: 3 games 12, 3:30, 7
ABC: 2 games 3:30, 8
CBS: 1 game 3:30 or 7
MTN: 3 games 12, 3:30, 7
VS: 4 games 12, 3:30, 7, 10:30
BTN: 2 games 12, 3:30
=25 nationally televised games
FSN regional-Remainder of games
The main conferences will still get the national exposure, but the new bonus will be the addition of TV coverage for the other teams. Some of those networks listed you may not know of, but they only come into play as alternates. The northeast has many networks listed, but most situations will be carrying the same game broadcast by one network's team, most likely Comcast. For example, Missouri is playing on FSN Kansas City and Metro Sports picks up a FSN feed of K-State or Kansas. Or SD4 picks up San Diego St.-Hawaii when USC-UCLA is on FSN.
Author's note:
Yes, I realize this seems extremely in-depth and time consuming. The reality is it was quite simple to think up, and essentially is a relapse to the traditional conferences of the pre-TV era. HTML tables blow, but they were necessary since I know the same amount of HTML and computer knowledge that I did when I was 19. The most time-consuming part and the reason this was posted so late tonight is the analysis of the TV areas and networks capable of broadcasting the games. I actually have a more reasonable and subtle change that would change college football in the western states, that I will write about on Friday.
1 comments:
I actually never did the write-up on expansion, but I guess I should at some point. On the TV note, I should add that Fox now shows games on FX so the nationally televised games goes up to 26, and is probably more around 30 now.
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