Dumping Them Out: College Football Relegation

Welcome back to another episode of Dumping Them Out. I will once again be using this time to ramble aimlessly on the current state of college football. 

It might be time for us to take the subjectivity out of college football all together. To stop relying on the opinions of a committee to determine who makes the playoffs. It would be a real shame to take that away. It's kinda what makes college football so great. But we can't handle the responsibility of it anymore. Everybody involved the decision making is compromised. Everybody involved has their own personal interests in the matter. There's too much money at stake for these major networks who cover college football (ESPN & Fox Sports). We've gotten to a point where they're just openly trying to control the narrative to fit what's best for the conferences they're in bed with. 

Fox Spots & Big Ten have Gus Johnson crowning Fernando Mendoza the Heisman Trophy winner on what could be his biggest call of the season. I watched Booger McFarland last night wax poetically for 5 minutes about how Texas A&M proved themselves to be elite championship contenders for beating a 3-6 South Carolina team by a single point. And it all works. Because the people voting for the playoffs aren't taking the time to watch every important college football game. They're listening to Fox Sports and ESPN to tell them who's actually good just as much as any fan. 

The CFB Playoff Committee has active AD's of major universities on their panel. That's a pretty demanding full-time job. There's just no way those guys are watching 15-20 important college football games each week. Which is what they should be doing. As much money as there is in college football, the committee should be made of up people who do literally nothing but grind tape and watch games all day every day of the college football season. It's not like they can't afford to pay 12 unbiased people who aren't affiliated with any university $100k a year to watch football all week. But they'll never do it. They'll just keep using a panel of people who definitely don't watch enough football. Of course their opinions are shaped by the media. Even if they hang their hats at the door before voting. 

I don't actually want to take the voting completely out of college football. It would take so much of the intrigue out of the game. But the discourse around it can get so annoying. It's funny how in college sports, we all feel entitled to a playoff that features the teams who we think are the best. The teams who Vegas would have favored on a neutral field. That's just not how sports were meant to work. You're supposed to play X amount of games, and the teams who win the most make the playoffs. It's not like the NFL doesn't have scheduling discrepancies. Look at the Detroit Lions schedule compared to the Patriots. It's like they're playing different sports. But in the NFL, we're all just perfectly content to accept it. 

I've seen people throw out an automatic bid system where the SEC gets 4 teams, the Big Ten gets 3, the Big 12 & ACC each get 2, and top best G5 team gets the final spot. To be honest, when I started this blog, I was going to argue that we should move to that. But I now realize that would make out of conference games obsolete (sorry I told you this was going to be a rambling blog). If we did that, we would barely even need to have rankings anymore. If only we didn't move to these stupid ass giant conferences. Imagine if we had the modern day playoff system, and still had 6 power conferences worthy of an automatic bid. Something like this…

That's an old example I found online. It's missing some of the newer group of 5 teams (sorry James Madison). But you get the point. Nobody would be mad about the Power 6 conferences getting an auto bid. Well… of course people would still be mad. But maybe not as mad.. Personally, I'd move Miami back to the Big East to strengthen that conference a bit. I also kinda like Notre Dame staying independent. But that's not the point. The conferences used to be appropriately sized. We could have 6 automatic bids for conference winners. 1 bid for a G5 team. Then we'd only have 5 at-large bids to worry about. And there wouldn't be such a wild disparity in schedule difficulty between teams in the same conference. Everything would be so much better.

Unfortunately, that's conference format is probably never coming back. But I did have another dumb idea. Consider in-conference relegation. Take the Big Ten as an example. We could split that conference right down the middle. If the season ended today, here would be the games played on conference championship weekend.

The following season, the teams who finished in the top half of the Big Ten would all play each other in an 8-game conference schedule. Same with the lower division. The top half of the Big Ten would be the only teams eligible to win the conference championship that season. Whoever finishes on the bottom of the top division gets demoted next season. Whoever wins the bottom half gets promoted. It'd work the same way as European soccer.

That was mostly meant to be a joke, but I think I'm starting to love it. There'd be no more people bitching about the Big Ten's strength of schedule. It would give the bottom half of the conference something to play for. The relegation & promotion games during conference championship week would be electric. Just something to consider Big Ten… who knows… it might be fun…