I think CFB has changed the last 20 years dramatically. I'd like to see some even bigger changes, and in many cases. I'll share mine here, with the emphasis on being creating solutions to issues, as opposed to just knocking out problems without replacing them with something better. What's on your wish list:
(1) The regular season is too long. There's an unhealthy and impossible to reconcile marriage between every game counting to make the CFP, the quality wins being the biggest factor in determining who makes the playoff, and the fact that these are 18-22 year old amateurs who are supposed to be student-athletes. The leading "response" to the addition of the 12th game seems to be to have the top tier teams make a payout to have an extra home game in order to play a cupcake. This is bad for CFB. SOLUTION: Cap conferences at 10 teams maximum (more practical) or my preference 8 teams. Make all conference-members have to play every other team in the conference. All conference championship games will be played the Friday and Saturday after Thanksgiving every year. Every conference champion - winner of the conference championship game, makes a playoff.
(2) The NCAA doesn't have the role it should in creating fairness, parity, and in making the officiating the same. Officiating should be done by the NCAA and unlike in other sports, there should be accountability. If a team gets screwed by a referee, that team should be able to take a referee to a 3rd party and present a legal case. If the referee has shown consistent bias against a team, that referee should be able to be recused or banned from officiating a team's games. There should also be non-trivial rewards or bonuses that can be given to teams that are victims of unfair play by officials, or other member teams in the NCAA. One solution might be that there are bonus scholarships awardable by a committee each year based on a variable but objective criterion. Each team gets awarded 0-4 extra "parity" scholarships per year based on whether they are poor-performing, or left out of playoff competition, etc. The playoff teams get no bonuses. The other teams do. There needs to be a new system and structure created and maybe it won't even fall under the name NCAA. But the officiating is simply too different and too biased and that should be entirely reviewable.
(3) Playoff changes: there needs to be a system that doesn't reward those with the highest resources so much. Right now, we have a sport where you can 1 week to prepare for each opponent, or maybe 2 weeks once a year (bye week). Then you have end-of-semester finals, and a completely variable length of time to prepare for round 1 of the playoff and then about 2 weeks for round 2. This system basically rewards teams that have the most resources devoted to preparation and gives them a huge advantage when it comes to round 1 of the playoff. And it does that through perverting the preparation time and expanding upon what had to be done each week of the season. I dislike that. That's why I propose Conference Championships, plus a variable number of "wild cards" awarded each year. I think the only role of the CFP committee should be to determine seedings, and how many additional teams and who they are. I don't think you have to set the field at a specific #, like 8 teams. It could be 10 one year - with two teams getting a bye, or 12 with no one getting a bye. The emphasis should be on who earned the right to be there.
(4) I think there should be 2-3 more coaches/assistants allowed and a recruiting coordinator allowed who is not a coach. One of the issues I have with the exploitation of college athletes is that kids get lost. Let me put it this way: the NFL has 53 men rosters. I did a quick google search, and according to one article, the average NFL team has a staff of about 22 coaches. We have kids who get thrown away and not developed. Plus, you have such a strict limit on the number of hours the kids are supposed to be able to devote to football. With the big money involved, it would be better to expand the staffs and have the kids developed more.
(5) There should be much more specific rules, universal, on the number of credit hours football players must take, and the courses must be approved by the NCAA. I specifically think that in-season, the players should be forced to take no less than 8 but no more than 11 credit hours in an acknowledgement of the time needed to devote to football. I'd even be in favor of capping it at 8-9 credits and giving players 6 years to complete a degree with 5 years of scholarships plus one redshirt. As of now, there's too much abuse of this. Fifth years taking solely ball-room dancing. ND requiring I think no less than 12 credit hours, which is an absurd, "let's just unfairly ask more than most anyone can do" demand. CFB requires in-season more hours than the average full-time job. It's simply not healthy or fair to ask kids to have a full-time academic load. Please note: this will work hand-in-hand with my playoff proposal.
(6) There should be more allowances made and even some penalties to coaches who bail on their contracts. Specifically, if a coach leaves a school like BK did to come from Cincy to here, there should be increased flexibility granted to student-athletes in terms of transferring and there should be something done for the school whose coach is departing. What I'm suggesting here again is something that pushes for some parity. Honestly, significant increases to staff size does something to expand parity beyond the top 4-6 schools who devote considerably more resources to football beyond all others - because more coaches will have a relationship with a specific school. But again some kind of reward like an extra scholarship, or being able to take transfers-in without a year sitting out penalty would seem to be completely fair. This would keep teams like Cincy from falling if they have an up-and-comer who leaves for a better job.
(7) The Bowl system should be obliterated and re-created from the start. Hand-in-hand with the new Playoff, the Bowl system wields too much influence, has too much money, too much power, and it doesn't benefit the student athletes or the NCAA. So, yeah, I say get rid of it all and start something better from scratch. Make the Bowls host the playoff games and have them be on January 1 each year. Have other bowls be on 2-4 days maximum and have an NCAA committee, not the Bowls or conferences, decide who plays in those games. Make them rewards for the players, and again, use the bowl games to promote some form of parity. I'm not talking about making EVERY team equal. I don't want that. But every other highly successful money cow league except for NCAA football has some counterbalancing measures in place so that it's not 1-4 teams who win it all (salary caps, draft picks by merit, etc.). There needs to be some creativity and systematic efforts to bring some parity to NCAA football as well.
(8) Impose penalties on coaches, not schools or players. Now we have vacating wins if players cheat. Or post-season bans for teams. There should be punishment on the coaches. This is another reason the staffs should probably expand, to assist each team in following new rules.
I think CFB is great. I think it's fun and exciting and it's my favorite sport to watch. But I also think it's become far less enjoyable to follow over the last 8 years than it was because I feel the system is rigged (so to speak) and that the changes have become increasingly unfair to the student athletes. These kids are exploited for millions of dollars but no one really advocates for them or represents them in the changes that have been and continue to be made. I think some of these suggestions would be a start to move in a better direction. It's uncomfortable to see so many kids work so hard, not get an education, and often get tossed aside by the best programs if they aren't in the 2 deep by Sophomore year. Likewise, it's frustrating to see every game count so much with 12 games but then if the wrong guy gets hurt a team's season is over. I'd like to see some adjustments made.
I know just about every single post on here can be viewed as unreasonable if not impossible on some level. But if we don't talk about the changes that SHOULD be made, none will ever happen, even more realistic changes. Like, I'm a double-domer, and I've done nothing to ask my alma mater to ease up on its 12 credit hour restrictions for in-season football players. We should all be pushing hard for that. So even if many of you see a lot of these changes as impossible, can we at least talk and think about what should be done?
(1) The regular season is too long. There's an unhealthy and impossible to reconcile marriage between every game counting to make the CFP, the quality wins being the biggest factor in determining who makes the playoff, and the fact that these are 18-22 year old amateurs who are supposed to be student-athletes. The leading "response" to the addition of the 12th game seems to be to have the top tier teams make a payout to have an extra home game in order to play a cupcake. This is bad for CFB. SOLUTION: Cap conferences at 10 teams maximum (more practical) or my preference 8 teams. Make all conference-members have to play every other team in the conference. All conference championship games will be played the Friday and Saturday after Thanksgiving every year. Every conference champion - winner of the conference championship game, makes a playoff.
(2) The NCAA doesn't have the role it should in creating fairness, parity, and in making the officiating the same. Officiating should be done by the NCAA and unlike in other sports, there should be accountability. If a team gets screwed by a referee, that team should be able to take a referee to a 3rd party and present a legal case. If the referee has shown consistent bias against a team, that referee should be able to be recused or banned from officiating a team's games. There should also be non-trivial rewards or bonuses that can be given to teams that are victims of unfair play by officials, or other member teams in the NCAA. One solution might be that there are bonus scholarships awardable by a committee each year based on a variable but objective criterion. Each team gets awarded 0-4 extra "parity" scholarships per year based on whether they are poor-performing, or left out of playoff competition, etc. The playoff teams get no bonuses. The other teams do. There needs to be a new system and structure created and maybe it won't even fall under the name NCAA. But the officiating is simply too different and too biased and that should be entirely reviewable.
(3) Playoff changes: there needs to be a system that doesn't reward those with the highest resources so much. Right now, we have a sport where you can 1 week to prepare for each opponent, or maybe 2 weeks once a year (bye week). Then you have end-of-semester finals, and a completely variable length of time to prepare for round 1 of the playoff and then about 2 weeks for round 2. This system basically rewards teams that have the most resources devoted to preparation and gives them a huge advantage when it comes to round 1 of the playoff. And it does that through perverting the preparation time and expanding upon what had to be done each week of the season. I dislike that. That's why I propose Conference Championships, plus a variable number of "wild cards" awarded each year. I think the only role of the CFP committee should be to determine seedings, and how many additional teams and who they are. I don't think you have to set the field at a specific #, like 8 teams. It could be 10 one year - with two teams getting a bye, or 12 with no one getting a bye. The emphasis should be on who earned the right to be there.
(4) I think there should be 2-3 more coaches/assistants allowed and a recruiting coordinator allowed who is not a coach. One of the issues I have with the exploitation of college athletes is that kids get lost. Let me put it this way: the NFL has 53 men rosters. I did a quick google search, and according to one article, the average NFL team has a staff of about 22 coaches. We have kids who get thrown away and not developed. Plus, you have such a strict limit on the number of hours the kids are supposed to be able to devote to football. With the big money involved, it would be better to expand the staffs and have the kids developed more.
(5) There should be much more specific rules, universal, on the number of credit hours football players must take, and the courses must be approved by the NCAA. I specifically think that in-season, the players should be forced to take no less than 8 but no more than 11 credit hours in an acknowledgement of the time needed to devote to football. I'd even be in favor of capping it at 8-9 credits and giving players 6 years to complete a degree with 5 years of scholarships plus one redshirt. As of now, there's too much abuse of this. Fifth years taking solely ball-room dancing. ND requiring I think no less than 12 credit hours, which is an absurd, "let's just unfairly ask more than most anyone can do" demand. CFB requires in-season more hours than the average full-time job. It's simply not healthy or fair to ask kids to have a full-time academic load. Please note: this will work hand-in-hand with my playoff proposal.
(6) There should be more allowances made and even some penalties to coaches who bail on their contracts. Specifically, if a coach leaves a school like BK did to come from Cincy to here, there should be increased flexibility granted to student-athletes in terms of transferring and there should be something done for the school whose coach is departing. What I'm suggesting here again is something that pushes for some parity. Honestly, significant increases to staff size does something to expand parity beyond the top 4-6 schools who devote considerably more resources to football beyond all others - because more coaches will have a relationship with a specific school. But again some kind of reward like an extra scholarship, or being able to take transfers-in without a year sitting out penalty would seem to be completely fair. This would keep teams like Cincy from falling if they have an up-and-comer who leaves for a better job.
(7) The Bowl system should be obliterated and re-created from the start. Hand-in-hand with the new Playoff, the Bowl system wields too much influence, has too much money, too much power, and it doesn't benefit the student athletes or the NCAA. So, yeah, I say get rid of it all and start something better from scratch. Make the Bowls host the playoff games and have them be on January 1 each year. Have other bowls be on 2-4 days maximum and have an NCAA committee, not the Bowls or conferences, decide who plays in those games. Make them rewards for the players, and again, use the bowl games to promote some form of parity. I'm not talking about making EVERY team equal. I don't want that. But every other highly successful money cow league except for NCAA football has some counterbalancing measures in place so that it's not 1-4 teams who win it all (salary caps, draft picks by merit, etc.). There needs to be some creativity and systematic efforts to bring some parity to NCAA football as well.
(8) Impose penalties on coaches, not schools or players. Now we have vacating wins if players cheat. Or post-season bans for teams. There should be punishment on the coaches. This is another reason the staffs should probably expand, to assist each team in following new rules.
I think CFB is great. I think it's fun and exciting and it's my favorite sport to watch. But I also think it's become far less enjoyable to follow over the last 8 years than it was because I feel the system is rigged (so to speak) and that the changes have become increasingly unfair to the student athletes. These kids are exploited for millions of dollars but no one really advocates for them or represents them in the changes that have been and continue to be made. I think some of these suggestions would be a start to move in a better direction. It's uncomfortable to see so many kids work so hard, not get an education, and often get tossed aside by the best programs if they aren't in the 2 deep by Sophomore year. Likewise, it's frustrating to see every game count so much with 12 games but then if the wrong guy gets hurt a team's season is over. I'd like to see some adjustments made.
I know just about every single post on here can be viewed as unreasonable if not impossible on some level. But if we don't talk about the changes that SHOULD be made, none will ever happen, even more realistic changes. Like, I'm a double-domer, and I've done nothing to ask my alma mater to ease up on its 12 credit hour restrictions for in-season football players. We should all be pushing hard for that. So even if many of you see a lot of these changes as impossible, can we at least talk and think about what should be done?
