Comments on: 10 Steps To Better College Football Livin’

By: Homepage | MrSEC

Homepage | MrSEC — Tue, 26 Jun 2012 17:27:28 +0000

[...] Martin to be much of a softie, but I have to congratulate him on his view. While discussing 10 ways to improve college football back in May, I made it clear that as long as a player is in good academic standing and protecting [...]

By: Homepage | MrSEC

Homepage | MrSEC — Wed, 06 Jun 2012 16:47:00 +0000

[...] part of our 10-step plan for fixing college football, we at MrSEC.com put forth the idea of a three-pronged selection process. Each unit would get [...]

By: 10 Ways to Fix College Football « Bama Boys Football

10 Ways to Fix College Football « Bama Boys Football — Thu, 31 May 2012 14:41:18 +0000

[...] http://www.mrsec.com/2012/05/10-steps-to-better-college-football-livin/ [...]

By: AllTideUp

AllTideUp — Wed, 30 May 2012 23:35:30 +0000

I was about to say that I couldn’t see the comments either, but they have magically appeared now. There have been several bugs with the comments lately. Strange. Anyway…

The 10 steps…I like them.

There are only a few tweaks I would like to see made to this.

1) The current divisions idea does need to be scrapped. I have no idea why it’s so clunky in the first place, but John’s makes a lot more sense. 80 teams is a nice round number and you can divide that into 4 20-team conferences with 2 10-team leagues each. I used the word “leagues” there because I’m going to be talking about Divisions 1-5 as well as standard East/West divisions so I thought that would make it easier for everyone not to be confused by what I’m saying.

The scheduling won’t always allow all the teams in the conference to meet regularly, but you can fit traditional rivals into 10-team leagues a lot easier than you can into 6 or 7-team leagues. Play 9 games against all the other teams in your league and 2 games against teams from the other league in your conference. You can have 1 game for OOC match-ups and those will become less important with this setup as all the traditional and regional rivals will probably be grouped together from the outset. The 1 OOC match-up will be mostly an exhibition as it traditionally has been anyway. No more cupcakes needed. 12 strong regular season games will be plenty in addition to the postseason for some teams. 6 home and 6 away. In addition, the respective winners of the 2 leagues will meet in the conference championship game. The likelihood that these teams have met in the regular season is reduced and so this first rung on the playoff ladder carries extra weight. That should maximize the TV revenue and attendance figures.

I would add that in the promotion/relegation plan that you set it up to follow wins and losses more than anything. I would go with making sure the bottom ranked team of each division gets bumped down every year. That means 2 teams per conference and 8 overall would be relegated down to the Division 2 level ever year, but would have an equal chance to get themselves promoted again the following season. The top teams in Division 2 and most importantly their “national” champion would be promoted to Division 1 for the following season. I have to believe that would create a lot of extra interest and buzz in the relegation process by moving the lower Division’s champions up every year. Perhaps also this will bring more attention to the teams that are in danger of being demoted as the fans might normally skip the games if they feel their team is pathetic and the games don’t matter. But if your favorite team’s game might make or break your season and get your team relegated then I think that would generate extra interest. That would be especially true if the potential candidate for relegation was a traditional power although it would be a lot harder to finish 10th in a 10 team league for one of the big boys.

I think this system would also eliminate conference realignment concerns because the teams moving up and down would have corresponding slots to fill. Each league would never have to fear losing more than 2 teams and the process is orderly so that the same conditions end up effecting all the conferences and not just 1 or 2. A Southern conference wouldn’t have to worry about who fills Vandy’s or Wake’s spots when the winner of the conference in the lower division is slated for that one opening. Maybe App St and Southern Miss move up in a given year and the leagues they will be placed in are set before they ever move.

2) I would like to get rid of the bowl committees altogether. They have become an unnecessary middleman and they aren’t providing the charity that a non-profit is supposed to be doing anyway. Toss ‘em to the curb. Let the conferences run the bowl games and let cities and tourist commissions bid on all the games.

3) I would go with an 8 team playoff myself. I think in any given year that if you have the top 8 teams playing then there is no conceivable argument for anyone else. There are just not more than 8 teams in a given year that could run the table. I also choose 8 because it is a nice compromise for the 2 competing parties in all these discussions. A) Those who want only conference champions in the playoff…you can take the 4 conference winners and give them an auto-bid. B) Those who want just the flat-out best teams….the other 4 teams are wild cards and there is room for conferences with greater depth to have corresponding representation in the playoff. I think both arguments have their points of merit and so there is no real good reason you can’t do both. An 8-team playoff would be huge for TV ratings and you can start them the weekend before Christmas. About 3 weeks later you are playing the title game about a week after New Years. Play the 1st round and the semi-finals on campus sites. So what if the stadiums are a little smaller. Most bowl games sites aren’t that much bigger anyway and you can’t expect tens of thousands of fans to fork over cash week after week to follow their team around the country. Most college football fans just don’t have that kind of money. Bid the championship sites out and you get another win-win. I imagine the traditional bowl sites will usually be huge players in the bidding process because no one is going to want to play the national title game in cold weather…much like the Super Bowl.

4) I would also add that one way to keep the athletes in line is to allow the schools to build athletic dorms again. Stipulate that their athletic dorms can’t be any nicer than all the others on campus just to keep the schools from building palaces, but other than that let them go. It’s much easier to keep kids accountable on all fronts that way and since we dropped all the poor programs off the ledger then there really is no possible unfair advantage.

By: Tim

Tim — Wed, 30 May 2012 15:53:08 +0000

Regarding #7, I’m pretty sure the Big XII and it’s bowls still do the back-door deals.

By: gatorwhisperer

gatorwhisperer — Wed, 30 May 2012 15:33:30 +0000

#12 make the comments for this article appear

By: gatorwhisperer

gatorwhisperer — Wed, 30 May 2012 13:57:22 +0000

#11 Require boy-girl seating at stadiums

By: Thern

Thern — Wed, 30 May 2012 12:47:54 +0000

Love the idea of a relegation system, and college athletics would be where this would fit well (couldn’t work in pro sports because networks would revolt if any team from a major Metro area got relegated and a team like, say Oklahoma City is playing in the top division). I am in favor of a division 1 set up in multiple tiers, based on winning percentages, attendance, budget, facilities, etc, but I would allow for all of the schools to have up to the same limit of schollies (same for all tiers; schools could offer up to this limit or less depending on their aspirations for upward movement). I think it would be challenging to shave off 10 or more scholarships from one season to the next due to relegation, because although you have some attrition with athletes leaving each year, there’s also a years worth of recruiting to replace those athletes. Love the idea, but don’t think it will ever happen. Unfortunately, for some programs, a system of relegation would probably be program killers (why would a fan base used to seeing SEC level competition look forward to seeing Sunbelt level competition from one season to the next; the impact on attendance on some programs would be drastic, making upward mobility very difficult).

By: Football Freak

Football Freak — Wed, 30 May 2012 11:54:43 +0000

I LOVE the idea of making EVERYTHING about the polls PUBLIC!!! TOO MANY TIMES has somebody been screwed over & the only answer given is “blame the polls”, but never WHAT it was in the polls to give that result.

Now, the only thing I personally disagree with polls are 2 words – “HUMAN FACTOR”! I don’t care who you are or what you claim, NOBODY’s going to have a 100% NON-BIASED opinion about all schools/conferences…..everybody has some +/- feelings in them. With that said, I think the computer should create them based upon factors we give each result & those %ages are agreed by everybody before hand. That’s like trying to change up the rules in poker mid-game. You all agreed to them before the start & they’ll last until the very end.

By: » SEC: Pat Summitt, Spring Meetings and drug arrests John Clay's Sidelines

» SEC: Pat Summitt, Spring Meetings and drug arrests John Clay's Sidelines — Wed, 30 May 2012 11:06:06 +0000

[...] Ten steps to better college football living, from John Pennington of Mr. SEC. [...]