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Promotion and relegation in college football

Started by thspfc, August 26, 2019, 09:27:19 PM

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thspfc

College football is a better fit for promotion/relegation than any other league in America, IMO. The conferences are unfair because they haven't been changed (minus a few schools moving) for a century. As a result you have Oklahoma and Kansas, or Ohio State and Rutgers (Rutgers screwed themselves into that one), or USC and Oregon State playing each other every year. My solution is this system. Basically, the two teams with the worst record in each power 5 conference get dropped to group of 5, and the top two in each G5 conference move up to power 5. The cycle continues at the lower levels, with adjustments due to numbers made as needed: Group of 5 bottom drops to FCS, FCS drops to DII, and DII drops to DIII.
This also makes it so that every team has a shot at the national championship. Conference champions from each P5 conference are automatically in, then there are three at large for the rest of the power 5. So you do need to be power 5 to make the playoffs, but every team can move up to the top level if they're good enough.
As for scheduling, I would propose an eight game conference schedule for every team (numbers permitting obviously). Teams can schedule non conference if they want, but non conference results are only considered when concerning the playoff selection.


Max Rockatansky

Top level college football ought to be split into eight conferences with two divisions. The two division winners would face off in a conference title game to decide who would go to the eight team playoffs.  There is so many fluff teams and overwrought traditions that hold then sport back from being truly streamlined away from subjectivity. 

Big John

The Big Ten is based on academics rather than athletics, so pulling and inserting schools based on athletics is a no-go.  Also what do you do when a conference consists of a set of football powerhouses ans another set of basketball powerhouses?

Max Rockatansky

Quote from: Big John on August 26, 2019, 09:53:05 PM
The Big Ten is based on academics rather than athletics, so pulling and inserting schools based on athletics is a no-go.  Also what do you do when a conference consists of a set of football powerhouses ans another set of basketball powerhouses?

Simple, just dissolve all the current conferences and have them assigned by geographic region like the NFL does.  Perhaps the bottom two teams in each conference would be those up for relegation to Division 2.  Really the problem is that the way the NCAA and the schools want to operate is like the top tier college football is somehow all about academics when it is plainly obvious it is more about profit.  I'd say just dismiss the farce pretending top level college is about school academics and move it towards a more professional structure.  It might even be worthwhile to allow players to sign rookie contracts with NFL teams or decide if they want an athletic scholarship.  Either way, the present system completely sucks and needs to be blown up to start from scratch IMO.  That might mean Schools like Northwestern might not have a place in the top tier of college football anymore but I'd be okay with that. 

TheHighwayMan3561

There are a lot of logistical and infrastructure problems with this, such as facilities, scholarships, scheduling, and TV issues. Rutgers unfortunately caught the eye of the Big Ten not because they'd bring anything to the conference, but because that meant they could get the Big Ten Network into NYC.
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Max Rockatansky

Quote from: TheHighwayMan394 on August 26, 2019, 10:15:50 PM
There are a lot of logistical and infrastructure problems with this, such as facilities, scholarships, scheduling, and TV issues. Rutgers unfortunately caught the eye of the Big Ten not because they'd bring anything to the conference, but because that meant they could get the Big Ten Network into NYC.

Exactly, that was a pure money grab by the Big Ten and everyone knew it.  About the only additions that made sense from a "football"  standpoint were Penn State and Nebraska since both are in the general reach of conference and could be competitive.  I used to really love college football but the seedy underside has only gotten worse since the BCS Championship game era started.  Things like the whole Penn State scandal, the advent of mega conferences  and the ugly demeanor of a large percentage of the top level coaches has soured my perception.  I feel a lot better watching my team with no inkling that I'm seeing anything more than just a completion on the field that exists solely make money and entertain.

Alps

I like the idea of this, but it will require football to completely separate itself from the conference structure in order to work.

nexus73

80 teams.  8 conferences of 10 teams each.  Play 12 games in the regular season, 9 in conference, two out of conference.  Top two teams of each conference host 1st round home playoff games, after which seeding done at the end of the regular season determines home field.  Third/fourth place teams from these conferences hit da' road.  All non-conference regular season games must be played against other teams from these 80, making for more attractive non-conference matchups while not jeopardizing a team's chances to make the playoffs in conference play.  National Championship game at a neutral site.

Do the same for the second 80 teams and third 80 teams.  Title games at neutral sites.

Let venues bid for those title game hosting rights each season.  Mo' money honey to combine with broadcast rights payments! 

Basically this resembles what high school playoffs look like.  Home playoff games should sell out, which beats what the majority of bowl games do.  Fans for teams in the postseason will see their travel halved as one team will be playing at home until the title game.  Bowl games mean both group of fans need to travel with the same deal going on with the College Football Playoffs semis and title game.  Money saved by the fans!

Football-only conferencing can be completely different from basketball-only conferencing.  Do the same for lesser revenue sports like hockey, baseball, track, soccer, wrestling, etc.

Rick
US 101 is THE backbone of the Pacific coast from Bandon OR to Willits CA.  Industry, tourism and local traffic would be gone or severely crippled without it being in functioning condition in BOTH states.

amroad17

This is American football, not European football.  Relegations have no place in American football, especially in college.  Almost all teams are tied in with a conference.

Now maybe it could work for the MLS--even though the local expansion team here is 5-19-3 and would be considered to be a team that would be relegated.

Re: Big 10...
The conference also may have sought out Maryland to grab exposure in the Washington-Baltimore area.
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mgk920

With the way that things have been going off of the field/court/ice/etc in recent years, I can easily see the NCAA, as well as high school level athletics, completely imploding within the next decade or two, with the ultimate replacement being the overseas (ie, in Europe) private sports club model, where every sport that each club plays is organized into a promotion and relegation federation, this to keep the competition as even as possible.

Mike

NWI_Irish96

The five major conferences (Big Ten, SEC, ACC, Big 12, Pac 12) are never going to agree to any structure that allows any of their teams to be relegated to a lower level.

The closest you are going to get is a structure where the other FBS Conferences (AAC, MWC, CUSA, MAC, SBC) and the non-Notre Dame independents join together to form an alliance that promotes their best teams to a super-conference (with relegation back down), getting some buy-in from the Big Five conferences to guarantee home-and-home series with the super-conference teams.

A ten team conference with UCF, Cincinnati, Houston, UAB, Army, Buffalo, Boise State, Utah State, Fresno State and Appalachian State, with a 9-team conference schedule and at least one guaranteed game each against a Power 5 school, creates a strong enough conference to give its winner a chance to make it into the playoff.
Indiana: counties 100%, highways 100%
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SP Cook

Playoffs are the ruination of college football, and further playoffs will ruin it yet more.  There is nothing greater than a 100% meaningful REGULAR SEASON game. 

Anyway, as to Euro style promotion/relegation, there are two facts that get in the way.  One is that the level of financial commitment is different at each level, and many schools are perfectly happy to be in the division they are in (BTW DIII is a no scholarships deal funded by the NCAA, including it in any relegation scheme is silly).  There are certainly at least 50 FCS (formerly and still popularly called I-AA) schools that COULD go to FBS (I-A) if they wanted to.  They don't want to. 

The second is this myth that college sports is this mega profitable deal.  It isn't.  Yes, college football and basketball make money, as does hockey and baseball in a few places.  But Title IX and NCAA rules requiring schools to field teams in over a dozen sports to be Division I, means that at the end of the day, very few schools actually make money at sports overall.     Most college sports programs are operated on the backs of student fees and taxpayer money.  USA Today files a FOIA will all public colleges every year and maintains a data base on this issue. 

thspfc

It can be debated how profitable college football actually is, but a good football program helps a school more than most would imagine. Using my hometown as an example, the UW campus has been transformed in the last two decades, from a run down, old bunch of buildings to now one of the most modern in the country, a large thanks to the football team being successful. When teams have something to play for, fans watch, and the school makes money.

SP Cook

Oh, now that is correct.  For most big public schools, particularly the ones with the name of the state or a city, big time sports is about making people who never attended the college, or often any college, think of the school as "us".  And more than that, to influence policy makers, especially state legislators, fund programs at that school that might better serve the state at another school.

This is called the "Hayes Rule", which is "most people who never attended college believe the quality of a school's education is proportional to the quality of its football team." 

In an alternate universe without major college athletics, about the same number of people who in ours can tell you what town the state women's prison or school for the deaf is, can tell you where the University of * is located.


nexus73

Quote from: thspfc on August 27, 2019, 09:32:53 AM
It can be debated how profitable college football actually is, but a good football program helps a school more than most would imagine. Using my hometown as an example, the UW campus has been transformed in the last two decades, from a run down, old bunch of buildings to now one of the most modern in the country, a large thanks to the football team being successful. When teams have something to play for, fans watch, and the school makes money.

Oregon State was below capacity in student body count until they won the Fiesta Bowl over Notre Dame.  Now they are the largest university in Oregon.  Lots of new stuff was built for both the athletic and academic sides. 

Glad to read UW, who was the only team to defeat the Beavers that year and won the Rose Bowl over Drew Brees's Purdue team also saw an upswing in both their football and infrastructure fortunes. 

Rick
US 101 is THE backbone of the Pacific coast from Bandon OR to Willits CA.  Industry, tourism and local traffic would be gone or severely crippled without it being in functioning condition in BOTH states.



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