How to Fix College Football

The Den
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So College football is struggling to modernize. Trying to balance expansion, realignment, NIL the portal, the playoffs etc.

Theres a very easy fix, and they did it 50 years ago. Cut the FBS in half.

In 1977 there were 144 teams in D1 football. The networks, AP and NCAA realized half the teams are not competitive. They didnt have the funding to even use all their scholarships. So they split D1 into the FBS and FCS with 72 teams each.

After next season we will be 2 teams away from that number at 142 teams. So we need to split it again.

But make it a nice round 80. Why 80? Have 8 “conferences” of 10. Because it wouldn’t be fair to cut out any team currently in the P4 to get down to 64, too many legal issues there. And 72 doesn’t divide up nicely. (Other than having huge confidences) So round up to the next nice number 80.

“But how is that fair to the little guys” it really doesn’t effect them. Those that get cut will go to FCS. They will still be on their CW or ESPN8. But now they wont be competing with the big dogs for the championship. in 2022&2023 Indiana was one of the worst teams in the FBS. They still BEAT the Conference USA champion Western Kentucky both years. ranked as the 2/3 best Go5 team those years.

The top 80 average over $170m in athletic revenue. With an average Football roster approaching $30m combined Nil and Revshare. The lower teams? Under $50m total revenue for athletics. And under $8m for football rosters. theres no way those 2 tiers should be in the same league.

So this would be the new FBS football.

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The league would have a national TV deal, not conference exclusive deals. The revenue would be split evenly. Thus removing the need for realignment. And this ONLY applies for football. Every other sport stays as is.

Also no expansion. No relegation. The 80 is the 80. The other teams i choose (out side of the p4) were based on athletic revenue, NIL generation and recent football performance. Wash St, Oregon St, Boise St, Memphis. (Those were obvious). Air Force, Army, Navy. (Actually have been decent in football and a have a fairly large revenue) the last were close to other teams, leaned more heavily on Revenue vs performance. UNLV, UConn, SDst, Fresno St, Tulsa.

The schedule would be 9 conference games. 3 games against other top 80 teams. And 2 “pre season” games vs the FCS. 2 bye weeks for each team. Ending with a 16 team playoff.

First preseason the week before Labor Day. national championship game week after new years.

This would help

  • level the playing field between conferences
  • Help keep big rivalries. And regionality
  • Keep the schedules balanced and competitive. No massive disparity

The only thing that it wont fix a whole lot is the Portal. Which can be helped by having only 1 window. 4 weeks after the championship.

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Those Atlantic & Mountain divisions are pretty bad. Woof

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They are the 2 worst.

For football i used Massi index scores.

Computer rankings 10-0 each season.

Atlantic had a season average for the entire conference of 6.91

Mountain at 7.3

Pacific is close at 7.55

Entire league average is 7.68.

Highest conference is South & Southeast at 8.06

So its not that far off at all. With Roster $ averaging $26.7m for the league and range of$24-29m for76 teams

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For reference the MAC.

Football Massi average. 5.4 and $6.5m average roster.

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From an overall perspective, I agree. Deconstruction would do a lot for viewers. And making it regional would really boost fan engagement for people like me. (Not that I’m the majority or anything. Just my opinion)

I know we hashed this out a bit before, but

I just cant see this being an easy task. I hope for the best, but there’ll be quite a few of these fringe teams claiming the “drop” in leagues slashed thier budget or something something money.

And I’ll post again, although you’re not a fan, if we’re going to relegate quite a few teams to the D league, giving them a way to get back up to the majors would be awesome from a fan perspective too. Imagine the national televised FCS championship game between James Madison and Troy, where the winner gets an automatic invite to the “Super 80”. Of course, the team that get pushed down will be furious, but they will have also had a 0-12 or 1-11 record. So the demise of some programs would be, at least, performance based.

Fun talk. Great ideas. CFB sucks now.

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The Little guys dont get any revenue from being in the FBS alone.

They get money from their TV deals (which isnt much since 90%+ of their games are on streaming only or Macion Tuesday Night) so that wont change.

Playing against a power school (2 pre season games) that goes unchanged

And playing in bowl games. Where 28 teams played last year (that wernt in the super80) averaged under $1m per team. For about ~25M total. They could still earn that in the FCS playoffs.

So their revenue wouldn’t be effected at all really . They just wont compete for the BIG championship.

Where Tulane got destroyed by 30 James Madison 20.

The little guys have no shot.

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80:is probably too many. Either you go all in on collective bargaining or cut it to something like 40. Or both. Schools that don’t have the NIL can’t realistically compete.

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I mean i guess 72 would be fine.

Power4& ND+ was st, Org st, boise st, UNLV.

6 conferences of 12. Eliminating the 2 preseason games.

Its to much legal issues to kick out schools from a power conference. Where simply taking schools from a lower conference is easy. Its just a cheap buyouts. Most of them even have cheap buyouts to join a p4. however kicking out a p4 school. Legal issues as well as a half billion dollar buyout in some cases. So cutting to 40 schools would mean $20B buyout? Not happening.

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I read this while sitting on the throne, it’s the only time I have to catch up. I’ll be honest, you lost me when you suggested having 8 conferences of ten Universities. Maybe I should have kept reading but, that’s where I stopped because that’s where this idea met its demise.

There is zero point zero chance of the B1G allowing any, (and here’s where your plan fails) major TV markets teams to leave. It’s what makes the B1G the most predominant non professional sports league in the world. The B1G TV markets dwarf any other conference and the money disparity will only get worse. It’s not happening. If anything the B1G adds two more members to make an even 20.

Interestingly, the B1G had zero intent to expand until ESPN manipulated the SEC into adding Texas and OU, in an attempt to gain market share. As soon as that was announced the Big Ten essentially nullified that entire deal by adding USC, UCLA, Oregon and Washington. I don’t think anyone at ESPN or the SEC conceived this would happen. Obviously, if they had,they would’ve never gone down that road.

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Thats the point of having a league wide TV deal.

A league wide deal. Where rev sharing of the TV revenue is equal amongst all 80 teams.

Also they have rev sharing for NIL. Each university is currently allowed to give 22% of it’s revenue to its players directly. Figure football will get about 8.5%. so take that 8.5% from each university and put it into one pot and divide equally. So it would operate like a salary tax system or loose cap.

a better TV deal would increase overall revenue. If if the tv deal is 10% more than each individual deal combined (which it would be) OSU and Texas would be the only 2 universities to lose out slightly short term. (Only 3% down) all 78 other teams would increase revenue or be about the same.

Heres what a 72 team league could look like.

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For the last fiscal year reported, which was 2024-2025, The Big Ten reported A more than 55% increase from the previous year to $1.47 billion. This figure is nearly a half a billion dollars more than the SEC reported. The Big Ten controls the future of the NCAA, I don’t see any way they relinquish that for the sake of parity Why would they? What’s the incentive for the Big Ten? A 3% increase year over year? It doesn’t make any sense. This is all about revenue not about how cool it would be to have a neat playoff system in which everybody had the opportunity to participate. That’s never been in play for the NCAA and never will.

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What’s more than likely going to happen? Is the 68 teams from the Big Ten, SEC, ACC and big 12 leave the NCAA completely. There’s no way the NCA can be expected to try to navigate bylaws Intended to govern such drastically different groups. It’s idiotic that it still exists in Its original format The only commonality a big 10 School has with the mountain West or the Mac is that they play the same game but The disparity is almost equal to that of college and high school football. They exist on two different planets

There will never be revenue, sharing, these aren’t professional sports franchises, these are universities almost only interested in the financial well-beingtheir own university. What we will see is more than likely players unions and what is essentially a salary cap between those 68 schools . The only thing holding that up at this point is the universities doing everything in their power to not recognize athletes as employees, but it won’t be long now before that ship has sailed.

Also, there’s another big factor for the Big Ten and that’s membership in the American Association of universities. Thus far that has been a dealbreaker for non members entering or joining the Big Ten.

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It’s all true, and it sucks.

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Did you not see the report about the b10 football tho? Yes revenue was up. But the b10 actually LOST money. Hence why they are pushing so hard for the 24 team playoff.

Sure the rev sharing across all teams is probably very unlikely. But a league wide TV deal? Oh absolutely possible. The networks want it.

And again this is for football only. The B10 still would exist for every other sport and research and all the other stuff. But football would be separate.

And the NCAA is powerless to do anything.

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Curious as to why the UP keeps getting lumped with Wisconsin on your map? Obviously, it doesn’t matter and is just aesthetics, just a weird way to draw the lines. I see this in other spots too. Seems better to draw at state lines except where you have teams in different regions

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How to fix college football?

First, I make sure the players attend all their classes, complete all their assignments and write all exams. Once they fail to meet this criteria they are not playing ball. Then I tell them all to stay off my lawn.

If they are not proper college students then how the hell are they playing college football?

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Good luck getting NIL millionaires to attend classes. And then they just transfer to a different school the next year for more money.

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If you’re going to limit a school’s budget, you might as well cut the coaches pay as well.

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That is in a recent proposal.

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I see it in fan maps. Like polls of “favorite sports teams”

More often than not Uppers are fans of Wisconsin teams over Detroit. College tho the UP is almost evenly split between Wisconsin, UoM and MSU. So i just kept the pro fan polls too.