My fix for NCAA football

[dplank]

The main problem with NCAA football is that a majority of the games that are played every week aren't competitive. That's boring as shit. Even within power conferences, there's typically only a handful games each year where the outcome is truly in doubt. Look at Ohio State for example, they played: Minnesota, Oregon, Tulsa, Akron, Rutgers, Maryland, Indiana, Penn State, Nebraska, Purdue, Michigan state, and Michigan. Out of these teams, Tulsa, Akron, Rutgers, Maryland, and to a slightly lesser extent Indiana and Purdue don't have any chance of beating OSU ever - even if they are having a good year and OSU is having a bad year, the talent disparity it just too wide to compete. That's half of the games they play! Then with the other half, Minnesota, Nebraska and Penn State won't be competitive with OSU many years, probably most years. And that leaves competitive games against Oregon, Michigan and Michigan State as the only games worth a damn for the entire year.

Now repeat this problem for all of the top dogs: Alabama, Clemson, LSU, Georgia, Oklahoma, etc.

They want to gear the season towards the national championship game, but along the way the vast majority of games played are utterly meaningless and not worth watching. As opposed to the NFL where socialism keeps the league in a far better competitive posture year over year.

What I think they should do is create one super conference that ignores geography and is organized around the programs that get all the talent. 30 teams that all play each other like an NFL schedule would, divisions and such could mimic the geography part. But there should be no stretches of games where OSU plays Tulsa, Akron, Rutgers, Maryland, and Indiana - that's basically a 5 week bye and ruins the flow of the entire season. They won by 50+ in most of those games, how is that in any way interesting? And so now we get to the final bowl week and we have a lot of good games being played, and people like me just don't give a flying rats ass because they already lost me. You can't have a meaningless regular season for a 98% of all teams, and then expect excitement with your championship rounds. If you are a Maryland alumni or any of the other 100+ teams that literally have no chance to compete, what is your reason for watching college football?

[o-pus #40 in B major]

Sorry to be a nag but shouldn't this be in the Halas Hall & the NFL section?

[The Marshall Plan]

I can see where people have a problem with the structure of college football.

One thing to point out is that when a nobody school plays a big name, that creates a lot of money and attention to the nobody school. Yes the nobody gets slaughtered, but nevertheless.

My biggest problem with college football is that it has the same season as professional football and there's only so much I can watch over a weekend. Between fishing, working out, the NFL, and other things I just don't have the time to watch as much as I'd like. When I do watch it, I love it.

I'm personally sick and tired of Notre Dame dominating the TV broadcasts. It's a big world out there. I want some more diversity in the games.

But to the concern outlined previously....

There should also be a way to limit the number of high quality prospects that a single school is allowed to get. IDK how you do that. I don't have the answer. But a key difference between CFB and the NFL is that the NFL has a salary cap. If the NFL didn't have a salary cap, we'd be having this exact same discussion. I wouldn't mind seeing a salary cap on coaches salaries so that smaller schools have a chance for competing for guys like Harbaugh and Saban.

Maybe let the lesser schools give out more scholarships? IDK.

Is there a current grading system for high school prospects? That could be used.

And yes, when an OSU plays a bunch of nobodies for half the season why am I supposed to be impressed when they're 10-0? The scheduling definitely needs reform.

I do like the playoff system much more than the previous system where it encouraged schools to runup the score.

So I suppose if it were up to me, I'd do this:

1) Put every team on a rotation for national coverage. Notre Dame doesn't get to dominate Saturday afternoons anymore. Increase the exposure and give people variety.

2) Assign a weighting to high school prospects. I have no clue how to do this and I could be driving off a cliff here. But there's got to be a way to prevent the big schools from hogging all the good players.

3) Limit the amount of scholarships the bigger schools can give out and increase the amount, and quality, of those scholarships to the smaller schools.

4) Impose a salary cap on coaches salaries.

[Otis Day]

If you just need a football fix on Saturday, pay attention to FCS games. They have them on ESPN3 and ESPN U.The games are much more competitive and balanced. They have a true playoff system to crown their champ and you get some NFL players out of this level.

The championship game was not competitive yesterday, unfortunately. North Dakota State rose to the top after a year or so absence. They dominated Montana St and won 38-10. Montana St QB, true freshman, went down early in 1st qtr. That dude was having a helluva playoff leading up to the game.

NDSU is the FCS version of Alabama. They have won 9 of the last 11 titles.

[Moriarty]

A lot of things are wretchedly wrong with and should happen to college football.

Ideally, the whole system would be trashed and rebuilt from ground zero.

[Umbali]

Well all of this is now just a pipe dream with the transfer portal and the Image and Likeness. Noone is making decisions based on making the games better for the viewing fan they are making it where the kids playing have way more options