Tuesday, August 4, 2009

Trimming The Fat

No one has ever accused college football of being in equipoise. In fact, it probably has the least competitive balance of any sport in America. It's a neo-conservative dream sport where the rich constantly get richer and the teams with less rarely compete. Change is bad; tradition is good.

ESPN
columnist Pat Forde has taken that sentiment a step further and has suggested that college football actually cut down the bowl system teams from the current number of 120 to a leaner and meaner 40. Forde wants to create four different super conferences each featuring 10 powerful teams.

His point is to have Texas vs. Oklahoma or Florida vs. Georgia every week of the college football season. No more Ohio State vs. Western Ohio joke games that end up in a 56-13 blowout.

I actually agree with Forde on his point. I would like to see the number of teams in Division I cut in half from 120 to 60 because it's near impossible for a smaller school to effectively compete with the big
guns of college football. I know this because I went to a small school. It's a great place for education, but it was a private school with 4,000 students. The big football schools have 80,000 seat stadiums that are filled to capacity each week. It's just too much to expect from a smaller university.

Make two divisions with two different championship games, the small money school and the big money school division. That way a te
am might have a realistic shot at a title without going up against the University of Texas and it's limitless supply of money.

The top 20 teams in the big conference and the top 10 teams in the smaller conference ma
ke post season bowl appearances. This would give us 15 post season bowls and solve another problem: there are currently over thirty bowls at the end of every college football season and the pride of making a bowl has been watered down. Let's cut back on the bowls and make the appearance in one a special memory.

You'd then have the Division I A BCS championship game and the Division I B championship game. Two different teams with titles, but hope spread throughout the land. Just because it's tradition doesn't mean it can't be fixed up.


1 comment:

  1. Nope, don't agree. Because teams like App state and Boise State would be in this lesser DI conference. Part of the fun now is having those smaller schools upset the big schools when no one expects them too. Sorry I don't want to see big vs. big every game. I want to see some small school have the chance to upset a powerhouse (yes even my powerhouse).

    ReplyDelete

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