Radical Solution for College Football Boondoggle
As some of the eight or nine (sorry, I have been told there might be 10 or 12 or maybe even 17 of you reading my scribbles – I just can’t wrap my head around those numbers) of you may know, my newspaper world began in the toy department.
It was a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away . . . oops, wrong story. But to clear things up, no, I didn’t work for Frederick August Otto Schwarz (how cool would that have been!). The toy department is what we used to call the gathering of scribes, pundits and sometimes derelicts in a room behind the frosted glass door with SPORTS stenciled across it at your friendly neighborhood newspaper. It was usually well off the main newsroom because, well, the main news types didn’t consider us real journalists . . . hence the toy department moniker.
Truth to tell, it was probably fair. We did tend to have more fun. After all, would you rather sit around and talk about the drama of last night’s game or the tedium of the latest city council meeting? And so long as we’re truth telling, it was the department where some of the greatest prose in journalism was created. Did you ever read a lead in news that began: “Outlined against a blue-gray October sky the Four Horsemen rode again. In dramatic lore they are known as famine, pestilence, destruction and death. These are only aliases. Their real names are: Stuhldreher, Miller, Crowley and Layden. They formed the crest of the South Bend cyclone before which another fighting Army team was swept over the precipice at the Polo Grounds this afternoon as 55,000 spectators peered down upon the bewildering panorama spread out upon the green plain below.”
That’s what Grantland Rice penned after Knute Rockne’s Notre Dame team upset mighty Army in 1924. And that, dear hearts, is writing.
Back when dinosaurs roamed the Permian Basin, I was a young sports writer who got the honor of working from hallowed Hoosier high school gyms to the Friday Night Lights of West Texas. It was around then that the proverbial fork in the road came. I had a chance to go be a sports columnist for one of the big Dallas-Ft. Worth papers – OR I could leave sports behind and head for the management side of newspapers.
That was almost 40 years ago and I’m still second-guessing that decision.
So forgive me if once in a while I wander back home, so to speak, and wax poetic in the world of sports . . . or is it business now? With all the changes, it’s kind of hard to tell these days. Actually, it’s one of those changes that’s got me all riled up– college football. As we all know, players get paid now (some in the millions), TV controls everything and the system has never been more flawed.
The old bowl system may have had its share of klunkers after the bowls got watered down, but it was a heck of a lot better than this fiasco that is the College Football Playoffs. Let’s recap. This mess started with the 2014 season when the powers that be created a four-team playoff.
Let’s review the process since – every year schools who were not invited and felt they should be screamed to high heaven. And with only four teams initially, there was a lot of screaming.
Eventually, that screaming led to expanding to 12 teams. Those same powers that be told us that tripling the amount of teams would fix everything.
You know how that turned out.
So now the idea is to expand again. Maybe 14? Maybe 16?
Does anyone think that will fix it? Really?
Do you think the government will suddenly begin spending your money wisely?
Do you believe in the tooth fairy?
If you really want to fix the system, forget 12, 14, 16 or even 18 teams. You want to fix it – let everyone in.
How about a playoff where the schools actually decide who gets in with their play on the field rather than some committee in a hotel? (As an aside, can you name anything good that’s ever been produced by a committee? Yeah, me neither.)
Here’s how this works. There are approximately 135 or so schools in the top tier of the NCAA Division I football world. How about letting anyone in who wants in – with the sole caveat being they must have a winning record?
Sound insane?
As Lee Corso used to say, not so fast my friends.
This means around half the schools are eligible. A few may opt out for whatever reason – so it’s not hard to think we end up with 60-some schools. Let’s go with 64 for grins and giggles.
How can you have a tournament with 64 teams? Heck, that would take six weeks. The schools are already playing 12 or 13 games, so that would mean 18 or 19? Maybe. That’s a possibility. But stay with me for a minute.
Meet the flex schedule.
Here’s how it could work.
Schools create an eight-week fixed schedule. After eight weeks, any team with a winning record that wants to be in is in. Week nine then begins the playoffs with 64 teams. For those 60-some teams that aren’t in the playoff, this is where the flex comes in. All the teams not in the playoff, PLUS the teams that lose in the first four rounds, can work together to determine who plays who next.
And before the athletic directors and coaches scream that’s simply not possible, we do it all the time with winners in tournaments, don’t we? Winning NCAA tournament teams don’t know who they are going to play from one week to the next in all sorts of sports – and yet they work out the logistics. This is the same.
PLUS, think about some of the cool regional matchups that are likely to take place in this format. Or maybe a west coast team and an east coast team want to create their own little showcase? The door is wide open.
When week 11 dawns, the tournament is down to 16 teams and more teams are added to the flex protocol for the last week of the regular season.
That leaves all the attention focused on the remaining teams for the last weeks until only two are left to play for the championship.
Critics might say this is too long – but it’s not. It’s actually less. We started this season the first part of September. Go back and count the weeks. Under this proposal, the championship game would have been last week.
Critics will also say this is a problem for conferences. Guess what? So is the current CFP. Let’s not forget that there was talk this year that playing in your conference championship game might be a detriment to your chances of qualifying for the CFP. The conferences already have a problem. And don’t forget, there was no such thing as a conference championship game until the 1990s when schools figured out they could make more money by adding a 12th game.
Is this system perfect? Nothing in this world is sweetheart. But it certainly eliminates any argument on who gets in and who doesn’t. If you want in, win. If you have a winning record and you want in, you’re in. A losing record or a .500 record and you are in the flex.
Are there other issues? Sure. Maybe some schools will schedule cupcakes in those first eight games? Maybe. But when they get slaughtered in week nine, they may decide that’s not a great idea. Plus, conferences will likely want to use those eight weeks to get their games in.
And think about the six weeks of the tournament. There will be some blowouts (just like we have now), but with that many schools there’s likely to be some marvelous upsets.
However, the best part – the biggest reason this has at least some merit – is that when it’s all said and done, it accomplishes one very important task. It offers a venue where the best teams are decided where it matters – on the field.
Is it a wild and crazy idea? Of course it is. Maybe’s it’s as wild and crazy as paying a kid a couple million bucks to play college sports?
Two cents, which is about how much Timmons said his columns are worth, appears periodically in The Times. Timmons is the chief executive officer of Sagamore News Media, the company that owns The Noblesville Times. He is also a proud Noblesville High School graduate and can be contacted at ttimmons@thetimes24-7.com.