Fixing College Football

College football is changing in ways that are mostly not good.  I’m worried that I’m going to care very little about college football ten years from now because it will be so unrecognizable.  I’m going to try to fix college football in this post.

Overtime

I’ll start with the easiest problem to fix.  College football overtime has been stupid since it was instituted in 1996.  Earning good field position is part of football … except in college football overtime. Kickoffs and punts are part of football … except in college football overtime. They’ve changed it a couple of times and made it even stupider.  Now it’s one regular session, one where teams have to go for two if they score a touchdown, and then it’s just alternating two point conversions after that.  So how do we fix it?  Do anything else.  Anything.  Use the current NFL system.  Use the old NFL system.  Go back to not having overtime.  I’d rather have ties in regular season games than use this stupid system, it’s the runner on second in extra innings of football rules (really the runner on second in extra innings is the college football overtime of baseball rules).  Usually I don’t want college football to be more like the NFL, but this is one area where the NFL is so much better than college football.

Conference Realignment

Texas and Oklahoma are going to the SEC.  We don’t know what the future holds for the Big 12.  There’s concern about the other Power 5 conference teams losing teams and that’s what led to this Alliance.  I think the Alliance of the ACC, Pac 12, and Big 10 has the potential to be good, but I think it’s more likely that we just end up with Jack Swarbrick taped in a box trying to spy on the SEC.  

The Pac 12 said that they’re not going to expand and that’s good.  Having Pac 16 (or whatever) teams in Texas doesn’t make any sense.  But will the SEC stop expanding?  I don’t know how you have a conference with more than 16 teams, but I wouldn’t be shocked if they tried to get Ohio State and Clemson or teams like that.  I remember people talking about four superconferences with 16 teams each.  The SEC will be the first one with 16, but I could imagine them trying to create one superconference with like 24-40 teams.  And that would just be totally different from what college football has always been.  This would make it more like the NFL in ways that aren’t good.  It might be all conference games.  I love non-conference games.  This year we start with Clemson-Georgia.  Sure, that could become a conference game, but we’d lose games like Appalachian State beating Michigan in 2007.  We’d have one conference that matters and nothing else would matter.  Right now you have five conferences that matter (not every team in each conference matters, but many of them do) plus some other teams that matter (like Notre Dame, Boise State, UCF, or Cincinnati, depending on the year).  That’s a better setup than what the SEC is dreaming of.

I have some ideas for this that I like, but unfortunately they’re just never going to happen, but I’ll go through what I have.  The ideal number of teams in a conference is either nine or twelve.  Why nine or twelve?  Because the ideal number of conference games is eight.  Some conferences are playing nine games, but then you have an uneven number of home and road conference games.  With eight conference games, you get four at home, four on the road, and four non-conference games.  If you have nine teams in a conference, you play everybody once.  If you have twelve teams, you have two divisions of six teams.  You play every other team in your division once and half of the other division each year (so you play the teams in your division every year and the teams in the other division every other year).  But of the Power 5 conferences, nobody has nine teams and only the Pac 12 has twelve teams.  The Big 12 could get to twelve (I’ll get to that), but the others already have more than that.  Ideally, I would get rid of teams from the other conferences.  Nebraska doesn’t belong in the Big 10 and Rutgers has added nothing to the conference (you could also get rid of Maryland instead of Nebraska, at least Nebraska has good football history).  How has being in the ACC worked out for Boston College and Syracuse in football?  It probably has worked out financially for them, but they haven’t had any sustained success on the field.  I would go back to the SEC before they added Texas A&M, Missouri, Texas, and Oklahoma.  But none of that is going to happen.

So what can we do?  The first thing is to make the Alliance work.  To do that, you need to play eight conference games and at least two non-conference games with other Alliance members.  Ideally, I would like Notre Dame to be an independent Alliance member (we can throw BYU in as well).  I would love for Notre Dame’s schedule to be this:

• Four ACC teams per year (we’re currently playing an average of five per year)

• USC

• Four other Pac 12/Big 10 teams per year (not Stanford every year)

• A wild card game against a power conference team (it could be another Alliance team, an SEC team, or a Big 12 team if they survive)

• Navy

• A buy game at Notre Dame Stadium with no return game (like another service academy, a Group of Five team, or even a lower tier Power Five team like Rutgers  or Vanderbilt)

So that would be Notre Dame’s schedule (but this is highly unlikely to happen since we have all of your ACC opponents scheduled through 2037).  For the conference teams in the Alliance, you get eight conference games, two non-conference Alliance games, and two wild card games.

What do we do about the Big 12?  I would take all the teams from Texas and Oklahoma other than Texas A&M, Texas, and Oklahoma and make that a conference (there are 10 other FBS teams in Texas plus Oklahoma State and Tulsa for a twelve-team conference).  That’s definitely not a Power 5 level conference (you’re throwing teams like UTEP and Texas State in there), but that would be a cool conference.  The Big 12 currently has four teams outside of Texas and Oklahoma (Kansas, Kansas State, Iowa State, and West Virginia).  You take those four teams and add them to the American Athletic conference.  When you take out the Texas schools and Tulsa from the American Athletic conference and add in those teams, you end up with another twelve-team conference.  Again, it wouldn’t be a Power 5 level conference, but none of those teams I mention really need to be in a Power 5 conference (of the Big 12 teams left after Texas and Oklahoma leave, Oklahoma State is really the only one that I think definitely belongs in a Power 5 conference).

I like that idea, but that’s definitely not going to happen.  So for a more realistic idea, I think the Big 12 should add Cincinnati, Houston, UCF, and Memphis.  That would not be a conference equal to the other four Power 5 conferences, but it would definitely be better than any other conference.  I’ve seen Colorado State, BYU, and Boise State mentioned as Big 12 possibilities.  I think expanding east makes much more sense.  West Virginia is isolated in the Big 12.  Memphis and Cincinnati would kind of build a bridge to West Virginia.  Having a conference go from West Virginia to Utah or Idaho doesn’t make sense.  Houston is a huge city that would help with recruiting in Texas and UCF would get the Big 12 into Florida.

Kind of unrelated to my previous ideas, it would make sense to have football conferences that have no connection to conferences for other sports.  Texas being in the same conference as Kansas really doesn’t make sense for football, but it does make sense for basketball.  I wish Notre Dame had no connection to the ACC and was still in the Big East for our other sports.  I know the Big East isn’t really comparable to the ACC for any sports other than basketball, but I don’t care much about the other sports anyway.

As Notre Dame fans saw last year, conferences are stupid.  The best game of the regular season ended up just getting played again in the ACC Championship Game (and then there was a possibility of Round 3 in the playoff).  So rather than an Alliance of conferences, I would love a football alliance of independent teams (who would be in whatever conference for other sports).  In 1988, there were 25 independent teams and that included the teams that finished the season ranked 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 5th, and 13th.  You’re probably not getting back to 25 independent teams, but you could have a lot more than we have now.  Imagine if there was an independent alliance of Notre Dame, Texas, and USC.  If those three schools worked together, they could get a pretty awesome TV contract.  Like if those three schools agreed to a deal with NBC, then NBC could have at least one college football game per week and maybe once or twice per year have a triple header with all three teams having home games on the same day.  The service academies could work together as independents and have their own TV deal.

Actually, if we took the ACC/Pac 12/Big 10 Alliance and just made it an alliance of 42 teams (through Notre Dame and BYU in there) rather than three conferences, I think you would have something.  Each school could have a few schools that they would play every year and then you fill most of the rest of your schedule with other Alliance teams and then have two wild card games against other teams.  Like USC could play UCLA, Notre Dame, and maybe Stanford and Cal each year and then play six other Alliance teams.  Notre Dame could play USC, Michigan State, and maybe like Pittsburgh or Boston College every year.  The North Carolina schools could play each other each year (North Carolina and Wake Forest have played “non-conference” games against each other because there are some years when they don’t play against each other with the ACC schedule).  I think I stumbled into something that I really like with a 42-team alliance where those teams play 10 alliance games per year.  I would divide it into geographic regions (Northeast, Southeast, Midwest, Northwest, Southwest) and say that teams have to play at least one game against a team from three other regions besides their own so that you don’t end up with something like the former Pac 12 just playing 10 games against other former Pac 12 teams.  Like Oregon could play most of their alliance games against Northwest and Southwest teams, but they would have to play at least one game against alliance teams from two of the other three regions).  But yeah, this idea is never going to happen and it’s much more likely that the ACC/Pac 12/Big 10 Alliance will just end up being completely meaningless.  But I really really hope that we don’t end up with one NFL-like superconference and then everybody else playing a lower level of football.

Name, Image, and Likeness

I am all for college athletes being able to get paid to do advertisements or being able to monetize a YouTube channel or being able to play Major League Wiffle Ball and make money off your jersey sale (MLW sells their jersey t-shirts, but they couldn’t sell Jack Aigner’s until recently because he also plays college lacrosse) or being able to get paid to play music in a bar or EA Sports being able to make a college football video game where they pay the players to use their names.  But there are going to be negative consequences.  You’re going to have more kids that don’t care about getting an education because they’re going to be making money.  I don’t like the idea of recruiting being “come to Alabama to play quarterback because you’re going to get a million-dollar endorsement deal.”  I don’t really have a solution for this one.

I’m fine with kids being able to make money on their own, but schools should not be paying the players.  For the overwhelming majority of college athletes, getting a free college education provides them with way more value than they provide to their school.  Schools still have an obligation to provide an actual education to their athletes which so many schools ignore.  Duke and Kentucky basketball are the most glaring examples where schools are taking kids who have no interest in getting an education and are just there as hired mercenaries (yes, Duke is just as bad as Kentucky).  Of course, in basketball you only have to stay for one year.  In football, you have to stay for three years.  Sure, Alabama, Clemson, and Ohio State are going to have players leave early for the NFL, but some schools have shameful graduation rates that are way too low for the explanation to just be that kids are leaving early for the NFL.  I remember Oklahoma having a graduation rate of 47% several years back.  Yes, Oklahoma has guys who will leave early for the NFL, but it’s not 53% of their players.  One change I would make is that athletic scholarships are four-year commitments for the schools (not the players) as long the players stay academically eligible.  If you want to leave early for the NFL, you should be able to do that, but a school should not be able to pull your scholarship because you didn’t turn out to be a good player.

Bowls/College Football Playoff

I absolutely hate the idea of a twelve-team playoff.  It would completely ruin college football’s regular season.  The plan seems to be on hold for now, but it was supposed to be 12 teams, with the six highest-ranked conference champions getting an automatic bid.  Automatic qualifiers for conference champions would render non-conference games meaningless.  And 12 teams is just way too many.  I was thinking of past Notre Dame teams and games.  In 2006, we would have made the playoff as the 11 seed.  We had no business competing for the National Championship that year.  In 1988, we played Miami in the greatest football game of my lifetime.  And it would have meant nothing with the 12-team playoff.  A game that gets overlooked from 1988 was our game against USC (probably because it was the same year as the Miami game).  It was the last game of the regular season.  Both teams were undefeated, ranked 1 and 2, and two wins away from a National Championship (USC ended up losing the Rose Bowl also, but if they had beaten us and won the Rose Bowl, they would have won the National Championship that year).  We dominated USC and then won the Fiesta Bowl and the National Championship.  With a twelve-team playoff, our win over USC would have meant … nothing.  Think about the USC game in 2005, the Stanford and Oklahoma games in 2012, the Clemson game in 2015, and the Michigan game in 2018.  Those games all determined whether or not Notre Dame and their opponent had a chance to play for the National Championship.  With a twelve-team playoff, both teams in each of those games would still make the playoff.  It would make the college football regular season much more like the NFL regular season. And that’s not a good thing.  Even the four-team playoff (plus conference championship games) diminish the regular season.  We beat Clemson in the regular season last year, but we had to play them again in the ACC Championship and we both made the playoff.  Clemson and Georgia open this season against each other.  The loser of that game has a very good chance of making the playoff if they win their conference.

The bowls have slowly lost their meaning ever since the BCS started.  In 1977, three bowls had a hand in determining the National Championship.  Number 5 Notre Dame beat number 1 Texas in the Cotton Bowl.  Number 2 Oklahoma lost in the Orange Bowl and number 4 Michigan lost in the Rose Bowl and Notre Dame ended up winning the National Championship.  Now if you’re not in the playoff, nobody cares about the other bowls.  Also, the College Football Playoff was supposed to reclaim New Year’s Day for college football.  That works when the Rose Bowl and Sugar Bowl are the playoff games, but in the other years, the playoff games are before New Year’s Day and then it’s just weird having the other bowls after that.  Now with the twelve-team proposal, the bowls would be the round of 8 in the playoff.  So you could have the fifth-ranked team upset in the first round.  If that happens, either the fifth-ranked team is not playing in a bowl game or they’re playing in a bowl game that has absolutely no meaning (they probably just wouldn’t play in a bowl game).

So what should we do?  My ideal scenario would be to go back to more traditional bowl matchups and then have the top two teams play after that.  So if we use 1977 as an example, Notre Dame and Alabama would have been the top two teams after the bowls (Alabama was ranked third and they won the Sugar Bowl).  I could live with a four-team playoff after the bowls.  Here’s how I would do the matchups:

Rose Bowl:  Pac 12 vs. Big 10

Orange Bowl/Sugar Bowl (rotating):  ACC vs. SEC

Non ACC vs. SEC Orange/Sugar Bowl/Cotton Bowl/Fiesta Bowl/Peach Bowl:  Two highest ranked conference champions from the other conferences and six at large teams

The teams for the Championship Game (or a four-team playoff) would be selected from the winners of those games.  So let’s use the rankings from 2012 as an example (2020 was too weird and 2012 was my favorite regular season that I remember), but assume that Ohio State was eligible for a bowl game and that they won the Big 10.  I’m setting a limit of four teams from one conference.  Then we could avoid conference matchups in bowl games and if you’re the fifth best team in your conference, you don’t deserve to play for the National Championship.  This is what it might look like:

Rose Bowl:  6 Stanford vs. Ohio State (not ranked because they weren’t eligible for a bowl game, but they were undefeated and definitely wouldn’t have been ranked any worse than third)

Orange Bowl:  12 Florida State vs. 2 Alabama

Cotton Bowl:  5 Kansas State vs. 1 Notre Dame

Fiesta Bowl:  3 Florida vs. 4 Oregon

Peach Bowl: 7 Georgia vs. 15 Northern Illinois

Sugar Bowl:  8 LSU vs. 11 Oklahoma

I would have two of these games on New Year’s Eve at like 2:00 and 5:30 and the other four on New Year’s Day.  There are other ways you can set up the matchups for the games other than the Rose Bowl and Orange Bowl, but the way I did it was to assign teams to logical bowls (Georgia in the Peach Bowl, LSU in the Sugar Bowl, Oregon in the Fiesta Bowl) and to have two games that probably don’t matter.  If you just picked the top two teams after these games, the Peach Bowl and Sugar Bowl winners have no chance.  If it was a four-team playoff, the only way they would have any chance would be to have Florida State beat Alabama, but if that happened it might be enough for Florida State to make it to the playoff.  If we adjusted the rankings to include Ohio State, the top seven teams clearly have a chance to make a four-team playoff and if you’re ranked outside of the top 6, I don’t feel bad if you don’t have a chance to make a four-team playoff.

So yeah, college football is changing.  Notre Dame joining a conference is something I never want to see.  Probably the only good thing about a twelve-team playoff would be that there would be absolutely no reason for Notre Dame to ever join a conference.  Why join a conference if there are six at large spots available?  And if we get to a point where a team can go 9-3 or even 8-4 and then have a chance to compete for a National Championship, that’s not a version of college football that I want to see.  This isn’t college basketball.  College football’s regular season is so much fun.  Please don’t mess it up.  But I fear that college football is like National League Baseball without the DH.  I’m just going to have to enjoy it the way it is while it lasts.