Couple thoughts on what could fix some of this mess that is college football right now.
1) Change the transfer portal rule to where you can only jump in the portal prior to the first game of your season, i.e. immediately following your teams fall camp and immediately following the conclusion of your teams season, including their post season play. This will stop or at least drastically curb, all the BS we are dealing with right now where the dam has broken at a lot of schools and they are trying to recruit HS kids, recruit the portal, recruit their own players, and prep for a bowl game that is next to meaningless.
2) Instead of offering bowl gifts to the players, offer cash bonuses paid upon completion of the game to all ACTIVE participants. I stress the word active because this will cut down on the amount of kids that would just choose to opt out of any game as they wait to jump into the portal. Couple that with a clause in every NIL deal that makes the deal bull & void as soon as they opt out of the season. Sure, you’re still going to have some opt outs but they would just be costing themselves money at that point.
3) Have a 24 team playoff, which is what FCS has had for years. Reduce the regular season by 1 game (cut out the shit non-con game that essentially every conference has) and add an extra bye week in its place, if need be to “not make the players play too many games”.
Top 8 seeds get a first round bye. Top 8 seeds would be comprised of the Power 5 Conference Champs provided they are ranked inside the top 12 and fill in the remaining slots with at large bids of teams inside the top 10. This would eliminate the possibility of a fluke conference champion getting a bye like if Purdue would’ve won this past weekend. This also maintains the importance of the regular season. You can’t afford to lose many games and still be ranked top 10. The remainder of the bracket would be filled in based on at large bids based on rank. Additionally, conference champions not in the top 12 would get home-field advantage in round 1 (allowing for a G5 team to host provided they make the ranking cut).
First 2 rounds would be played on campus with the quarters & semis played in the NY6 bowl locations. The National
championship location would then be bid out much like the Super Bowl.
If this FCS playoff format were to be carried out under the rules explained above, it would look something like this:
Top 8 seeds:
1. Georgia
2. Michigan
3. Clemson (next highest ranked conf champ)
4. Utah (next highest ranked conf champ)
5. K State (next highest ranked conf champ)
6. TCU (highest ranked at large)
7. Ohio St (next highest ranked at large)
8. Alabama (next highest ranked at large)
Round 1 games would include:
-LSU @ Oregon
-Tennessee @ Troy (hosting based on being a conf champ)
-Notre Dame @ Washington
-Texas @ Florida St
-South Carolina @ Oregon St
-Miss St @ Penn St
-NC State @ USC
-UCLA @ Tulane (hosting based on being a conf champ)
This format gives you 23 playoff games and a majority would be prime time, major matchups - which is far more than what the current model gives us which might give us 10-12 good matchups when you include the playoffs and some of the major bowls.
As for the remaining teams not in the new playoff, you can still have the bowls since they are nothing but made for TV events anyways. Couple that with the proposed rules in points 1 & 2, I think you’d get better participation numbers from all involved.
If you made it this far, I appreciate you reading and hope it was at least somewhat interest. Would love to hear your thoughts.
1) Change the transfer portal rule to where you can only jump in the portal prior to the first game of your season, i.e. immediately following your teams fall camp and immediately following the conclusion of your teams season, including their post season play. This will stop or at least drastically curb, all the BS we are dealing with right now where the dam has broken at a lot of schools and they are trying to recruit HS kids, recruit the portal, recruit their own players, and prep for a bowl game that is next to meaningless.
2) Instead of offering bowl gifts to the players, offer cash bonuses paid upon completion of the game to all ACTIVE participants. I stress the word active because this will cut down on the amount of kids that would just choose to opt out of any game as they wait to jump into the portal. Couple that with a clause in every NIL deal that makes the deal bull & void as soon as they opt out of the season. Sure, you’re still going to have some opt outs but they would just be costing themselves money at that point.
3) Have a 24 team playoff, which is what FCS has had for years. Reduce the regular season by 1 game (cut out the shit non-con game that essentially every conference has) and add an extra bye week in its place, if need be to “not make the players play too many games”.
Top 8 seeds get a first round bye. Top 8 seeds would be comprised of the Power 5 Conference Champs provided they are ranked inside the top 12 and fill in the remaining slots with at large bids of teams inside the top 10. This would eliminate the possibility of a fluke conference champion getting a bye like if Purdue would’ve won this past weekend. This also maintains the importance of the regular season. You can’t afford to lose many games and still be ranked top 10. The remainder of the bracket would be filled in based on at large bids based on rank. Additionally, conference champions not in the top 12 would get home-field advantage in round 1 (allowing for a G5 team to host provided they make the ranking cut).
First 2 rounds would be played on campus with the quarters & semis played in the NY6 bowl locations. The National
championship location would then be bid out much like the Super Bowl.
If this FCS playoff format were to be carried out under the rules explained above, it would look something like this:
Top 8 seeds:
1. Georgia
2. Michigan
3. Clemson (next highest ranked conf champ)
4. Utah (next highest ranked conf champ)
5. K State (next highest ranked conf champ)
6. TCU (highest ranked at large)
7. Ohio St (next highest ranked at large)
8. Alabama (next highest ranked at large)
Round 1 games would include:
-LSU @ Oregon
-Tennessee @ Troy (hosting based on being a conf champ)
-Notre Dame @ Washington
-Texas @ Florida St
-South Carolina @ Oregon St
-Miss St @ Penn St
-NC State @ USC
-UCLA @ Tulane (hosting based on being a conf champ)
This format gives you 23 playoff games and a majority would be prime time, major matchups - which is far more than what the current model gives us which might give us 10-12 good matchups when you include the playoffs and some of the major bowls.
As for the remaining teams not in the new playoff, you can still have the bowls since they are nothing but made for TV events anyways. Couple that with the proposed rules in points 1 & 2, I think you’d get better participation numbers from all involved.
If you made it this far, I appreciate you reading and hope it was at least somewhat interest. Would love to hear your thoughts.
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