I 100% agree with the sentiment of the OP that at some point college football has to move to more of an NFL conference / division and playoff making structuring. There are 100 different ways to breakdown these conferences and divisions that are hopefully more regionally aligned.
I personally would prefer maybe 4 conferences with each conference containing 4 divisions and each division containing 5 teams. That’s 80 teams total. But whatever, like I said this could be worked a number of ways.
But ultimately I’d like to see….
Every team within a division has to play each other. If you want to be considered a division champ then you should have to play every team, ever year, within your division. Division champs then play the other division champs in your conference to ultimately decide the conference champ. The conference champs then play each other to decide the national champ.
I’d also like to see all subjectiveness taken out of the deciding who is or isn’t in the playoffs.
In my scenario of 4 conferences each containing 4 divisions would result in a 16 team playoff where only the division champs make the playoffs. That’s it, win your division and make the playoffs. No wildcards. 16 teams is enough.
64 teams, and 32 make the playoffs? Why even have a regular season?
I can’t get behind this. I know the games passing me, and it’s time to just turn in, but college football had the greatest regular season of any sport for 20+ years.
If you have 8 conferences then each conference winner and 4 wild card teams based on record, just like the NFL and have the tie breakers, head to head, conference record, same opponents, then SOS. Clear cut
Because im eliminating the conf champ game. Networks are gonna want those games still.
so i think we all agree the playoffs is gonna go to 16 soon anyway. So if you have 4 power 4 championship games. Plus 15 games in the playoffs. Thats 19 post season games total. Network are NEVER gonna have less than that.
32 team playoff is 31 games. Maybe you can do 24 team playoff, 8 champs plus 16 wild card. Champs get a bye. Thats 23.
is it too much? Absolutely. But again. Money talks BS walks.
and if the bowl games are getting cut. Might as well replace them all with the playoffs, theres 45 bowl games including the playoffs.
So new playoff is 31 games. Giving the remaining 14 bowl games for the group of 5/6
Both Maryland and Rutgers have 1 Conf champ since 1991.
However Maryland has more bowl appearances and bowl wins.
And i respect the 90s/00s ACC more than the 90/00s Big East. By the time Rutgers started doing well in the BigEast all the good teams left. And it was basically the American Conference.
This has so much common sense in it that there is zero chance it ever gets done…..LOL
My only thought is that 32 team playoffs is too many teams. But I guess HS does so not a big deal.
I think where you fall down is that the total number of games will get sideways. Many teams need those for money. So the profit sharing would need to be sorted which is where this will die.
So if these 64 teams are all in one “conference” with equal rev sharing. Collective bargaining power for each team as well as players. With contracts. It will make everything more balanced. And rev sharing HAS TO be a factor because most schools 45-55% of their total AD Revenue is football. (SEC is higher at 65%) AND one conference means 1 NATIONAL TV deal. Meaning Revenue would be higher. Estimated at over $100m per school For football ALONE. Vs the ~$65m now.
As for the 32 teams making it in. lets look at Highschool and NFL Football Seasons
Michigan plays 9 regular season games 5 playoff games. For a max of 14. Ohio has 10 regular season and 5 playoff for a max of 15.
Both with just shy of 50% of teams qualifying for the playoffs.
NFL 17 regular season with 4 playoff.
So a max of 21 games. And just shy of 50% qualifying. (Soon to be 22 games and exactly 50%)
So in mu opinion. College should be 12 or 14 regular season games 5 playoff games (max of 17-19 games) with ~50% of the field making it. Splitting the difference between highschool and pro.
And this is where you lose me. And by me I mean the big dogs of college football. See the actions of ND. See the actions of Texas and Oklahoma in the B12. The revenue sharing has almost always been slanted to certain teams. So they would need to agree to taking less. Which a sane person might suggest makes sense because you cannot play yourself.
I just think the greed of the top earners will not get this done. Why would OSU or UM want to level the playing field? Texas oil money wants what it wants. The big powers want to have an advantage and they will fight this for a long time I suspect.
I agree with your theory and idea 100%. A rational person would see how this makes sense……
I think a slight skew in rev share would be possible. But the new national tv deal would result in EVERYONES revenue share increase. So your not asking the bigger teams take a pay cut.
Hate it. All this money talk, sharing and revenues… hate it all. Lose 3 games, and whatever. You’re a top ten program. C’mon in so we get more money! I hope people find fun and enjoyment in all this. Like was said, money talks and bullshit walks. I have to accept I’m bullshit. I had a good run of excellent cfb. 30+ years. And I have to accept I’m not the target audience.
And it’s not just this proposal, it’s basically everything since they moved to 14 teams, and California became the Big Ten and ACC. Time moves on.
Need to find a way to regularly watch curling. That’d be fun.
