So what do I have to offer before the break? Only a manifesto of 15 changes I'd make if I were in charge of the NCAA. It'll be such an arduous task that I'll spread it over 2 weeks. Enjoy!
1. Alter the BCS
Any list of changes to the NCAA would have to start with the most controversial and talked-about system they've got: the BCS. Most people consider it the bane of humanity, or worse. A rare few think it works, or at least think it's the best option out there. But if you polled everyone outside of university and conference presidents, you'd get the same response: change it! Some would say change it in the form of blowing it up and starting a playoff from scratch, some would say alter it so that it becomes a playoff, and some would say tweak it (again) to work out the rest of the bugs.
My vote would be the alteration to include a playoff. I spent LOTS of time talking about that in my December post titled "A Look at Playoff Possibilities". In fact, several of the changes I'll suggest are already found here. You might as well go ahead and open it up in a second window, it'll mean less cut-and-paste on my end. Scroll down to the section called "Possibility One".
To summarize what I wrote there: I'd enact the "plus-one" playoff, with the top 4 teams in the BCS making it in. Play 1 vs. 4 and 2 vs. 3, then let the winners go at it. Keep the rest of the BCS bowls as is, keep the rest of the bowl system as is, everyone wins.
2. Radically Change the Polling System in College Football
I spent a lot of time examining this in the aforementioned December column too. Look at the "Factor #4: Polls" section and read my solution that probably makes a little too much sense for it to actually happen.
The bottom line is that the whole system of coaches and sportswriters, who both have varying levels of regional bias, and the zany computer polls, which use cold data and can't see the nuances and weird bounces of every game, is decidedly NOT the most fair way of determining who's worthy of playing for a championship. And beyond the bias of human polls and the computers' inability to view actual football games played on a field is the problem of the preseason polls. Human polls always start with a preseason poll that ranks teams before they've ever played a game, and this start-of-the-year ranking goes a long way in establishing who's on top of the heap at the end. It's dumb and needs to be eliminated. If you're using polls as means to determine a champion, you have to let the teams play several games before being able to do any sort of logical, accurate ranking.
The polls are very aggravating to me and I could easily go on, but what I said in December is enough.
3. Division 1-A (currently known as "FBS") teams aren't allowed to play Division 1-AA (currently known as "FCS") teams
I mentioned this in my December post as well. Since the NCAA added a 12th game to the schedule, teams have used it to schedule an automatic win (as long as it isn't Appalachian State) with a 1-AA team. Some teams go so far as to schedule 2 lower division cupcakes. Not only is this boring, it also tends to overinflate how good that top-level team really is. Anyone can go out and beat The Citadel 63-7. We'd find out a lot more about a team and have much better information on which to rank them if they played another major conference team. We'd also get more tantalizing early season matchups between heavyweights, which would only be good for business. Part of the reason teams shy away from scheduling those sort of games, understandably, is because a loss could completely take them out of the national title hunt. Going to a 4 team playoff would diminish this threat to a degree, and eliminating the option of playing Wofford or Northern Iowa would force the hand of the BCS conference boys. Then we'd really find out who's deserving of playing for the national championship.
4. Eliminate Football Conference Championship Games
This is the last one that I mention in my "Playoff Possibilities" column. Conference championship games have yet to produce a matchup of teams who are both undefeated in their conference, and have rarely (three times, if you're generous) pit 2 teams who are both legitimately in the national title hunt against one another. Conference bigwigs would tell you that championship games exist largely for this purpose. So they're basically irrelevant.
What they do is give a few teams an extra game, one that appears to be very important, and the opportunity to leapfrog another team that doesn't have the benefit of playing in a conference championship. Or, if they lose to an inferior team they possibly have already beaten, a costly unnecessary defeat the week before the BCS pairings come out.
So if they're both irrelevant and unfair, and we've already established that we're going to have a playoff, let's just get rid of them and even the playing field for everyone.
5. The Highest Ranked Conference Champion from a non-BCS Conference Gets an Automatic Bid to the BCS
Since the BCS was established, non-BCS conferences have severely gotten the shaft. They've had to fight tooth and nail just to have a chance at a BCS bowl, and even now it's difficult at best, requiring an undefeated season or an incredible stroke of luck. And they've proven time and again they belong there once they get in.
Right now the rule is that a non-BCS team has to finish in the top 6 of the final BCS standings to qualify for an automatic berth. Let's go ahead and expand that. It's only right that the BCS would throw these supposedly inferior conferences a bone. If I were in charge, I'd ensure that the highest ranked non-BCS conference winner would automatically get a bid. So long as they meet the criteria that other conference winners have to meet - namely finishing in the actual top 25. Most of the time these teams would be ranked higher than the ACC and Big East winners anyway. And with the "plus-one" format in place, a non-BCS conference school would have an actual national title shot, something that's nonexistent right now.
6. Shift the timing of the college football season
Some teams finish their regular season in mid-November, then sit around until January to play their postseason game. This is ridiculous. Even those who finish the first weekend in December have a month to wait before their bowl game. By that time, it feels like a completely different season. It's such a long wait that the national championship game and the major bowls lose their luster. Everyone's forgotten about the scintillating regular season and the circuitous path each team took to reach their postseason destination, and sometimes you have a completely different team than the one that finished the regular season. If you have a 2 week, maybe 3 week at most, wait from the end of the regular season to the postseason, you end up with an acceptable level of hype and a tangible event to look forward to. When it's nearly a month and a half away, hype turns to blabbering and anticipation turns to boredom. The gap has to close to improve the overall product.
Also - the regular season starts the weekend before Labor Day in most years, before some schools have begun classes. Isn't it responsible to ensure that the most vital part of your fan base - the students who attend your university - are actually able to go to the game?
The solution is to push the start date back 2 weeks, to the middle of September, and make the second Saturday in December the last possible date to schedule games. Universities would complain that this would interfere with the end of semester academics, but that's bull. College basketball games are played throughout December, and lower division schools have playoffs the whole month. And most schools have their Finals week after that anyway.
Ending the season the second Saturday in December would provide about a one week break before bowls start, and the interest level that builds over the course of the season would persist, rather than break down in the monotonous gap of time that currently exists.
7. Eliminate the NCAA Mens Basketball Tournament Opening Round Game (aka the "Play-in Game")
The fact that 65, not a nice round 64, teams make the NCAA men's basketball tournament is another testimony to the power of the major conferences. Once upon a time, Division 1 mens basketball had 30 conferences, meaning 30 automatic tournament bids were given out. The remaining 34 bids to fill out the symetrical, pleasing-to-the-eye, mathematically sound 64 team bracket, were "at-large" bids, made of the 34 most deserving non-automatic qualifiers. It went on this way for quite some time, until another conference formed, bringing the total to 31 and adding another automatic bid. Instead of just cutting the number of at-large bids to 33, the NCAA bowed to the pressure of the major conferences and kept it at 34, thus created the need for an opening round game, which always pits teams from the tiny conferences and prevents one of them from competing in the actual Big Dance, which they rightly qualified for. The major conferences knew that one of their own would be left in the cold by cutting that one extra at-large bid, and they refused to let it happen (with dollar signs in their eyes, no doubt).
If it were my choice, I'd cut the extra at-large bid anyway. No one takes the play-in game seriously and those teams both deserve their shot at making history. The major conferences have their way in football, basketball, and just about every other NCAA sport, and it's time they're shown that they aren't the only ones competing in college athletics. And rarely does the last at-large team in win more than one game. The tournament needs that picture-perfect 64 team bracket, spaced neatly in 4 regions of 16. Cut off that unsightly nub that attaches itself to one of those beautiful 16 team groupings!
Next week: the last 8 changes. I promise more basketball, some thoughts on administrative details, and more football too. Check back for the last fresh Freshman Fifteen for months!
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