For those not familiar with relegation (seems to be a soccer thing), basically you create different levels of leagues, and if you win a lower league, you move up a league, if you finish at the bottom of a league, the next season you play in the league one below your current league. I know how much football fans hate soccer, but this could improve college football and get people to stop complaining about a playoff. If you finish undefeated in the top league (lets say of 40 teams), you obviously earned it.
The first step is be totally eliminating conferences. No more Big 10 or Pac 10. Split the top 40 teams into two conferences. You play everyone once, and then get to play some ‘out of league’ games as warm ups. That way if two rivals aren’t in the same league (like Wisconsin and Minnesota) they can still play. Obviously there is an advantage to home games, but that is life. So unless you want to move all the games to neutral fields, this is an issue we will just have to live with.
This would stop teams like Boise State and Utah playing cupcake schedules, or at least stop us from having to compare teams from lesser conferences to teams from major conferences. You wouldn’t be able to be a ‘one hit wonder’ and come out of no where to win, but who cares? That doesn’t happen anyways. When was the last time a team not in the top 40 ever competed for the national title? Boise State would still be eligible since they have put together a solid program, year in and year out they are competing. Now they can prove they are a truly legit program because they would face quality competition week in and week out, as opposed to their current schedule.Teams which are good one year, would (hopefully) stop complaining that they went undefeated because everyone would be on the same page that they are not in the same league as other top flight schools. “Thank you, please come back next year.”
You would lose rivalries. Ohio State and Michigan wouldn’t play every year (especially now since Michigan would be in a lower division). Texas wouldn’t always play Oklahoma. But you can’t have your cake and eat it too. You can’t want a playoff or progress and not lose some tradition. You simply can’t. I love that the Big Ten/Pac 10 champs play in the Rose Bowl, but that isn’t always the case anymore. We move on, and you cannot let tradition hold you back.
Naysayers will complain that the rich will get richer. That top recruits would never consider going to lower level school. They don’t now. Program prestige plays a major role in a recruits decision, as does recent success. This is why USC and Florida recruit well (and being in warm weather with flexibly-moraled coaches helps) and Northwestern doesn’t.
There would be quality matchups every week. You wouldn’ t have to sleep through Florida beating the snot out of Mississippi State or USC pounding Washington State. Instead, 9 games a year are solid ‘premeir legaue’ matchups. The major snag in that system is that with college students graduation (well, running out of eligibility more likely than graduating) or leaving early for the pros, you might have a team in the top league with lower league talent. Oh well. Life moves on.
Just to get you excited, lets look at the 40 teams that would make up the top league in my fictional college football utopian world (I should trademark that):
- Alabama
- Florida
- Texas
- Boise State
- TCU
- Ohio State
- Cincinnati
- Virginia Tech
- Oregon
- Penn State
- Oregon
- Georgia Tech
- BYU
- LSU
- Nebraska
- Pitt
- Miami
- Wisconsin
- Oklahoma
- USC
- Arkansas
- Mississippi
- Utah
- Texas Tech
- Clemson
- West Virginia
- Georgia
- Stanford
- Oklahoma State
- Oregon State
- Auburn
- Central Michigan
- Arizona
- Connecticut
- North Carolina
- Navy
- Tennessee
- Rutgers
- Florida State
- Air Force
Let the record show I found that list on a weird ranking site, so I am not sure if those would be the top 40 teams or not. Obviously the list is pretty solid, and even some ‘fun’ stories sneak in like Central Michigan, Air Force, and Navy (I am sure all three would end up on Boise States schedule).You could drop the bottom ten teams each year and promote the top 10 teams out of the lower division (which would include teams like Notre Dame, Cal, and Michigan).
Besides the obvious “the NCAA would never go for this,” why wouldn’t this plan work? Someone has to talk me out of this.
The Mirror of Erised 