College football is getting stale.
Got your attention? Good. I'll need it; I kind of went Simmons-ian in length.
Don't get me wrong. I'm happier that college football is arriving next week than Donte Stallworth on sentencing day. We're obviously not talking about the kind of stale you get finding a piece of bread that was dropped behind a couch a year ago. There are plenty of great storylines. And not just the ongoing "who can create the most bizarre shape with his body" competition between Mark Mangino and Charlie Weis.
So while you read this apparent gripe-fest, don't protest with your thoughts on how college football is super-awesome. I know it is. But as any coach will tell you, you can always get better. And there are some things that irritate me right now. They might irritate you, too; feel free to weigh in with any ideas to fix some of the core problems I'm having:
Problem #1: Thanks to competitive imbalances, in a league of 120 teams, maybe 10 have a realistic shot (maybe four with great ones) at a reaching the national title game as of week one. Three, at most, have a good shot at most conferences.
Problem #2: Thank goodness there's a lot of games, because most are somewhat uninteresting, whether in-conference matchups are laughably lopsided, or out-of-conference matchups are scheduled so that a small program can make an extra buck while the big program gets an extra home game (read: can also make an extra buck.)
Problem #3: No one is discussing problem one or problem two, but kicking and screaming for a playoff. That would help the elite teams crown the elite-est team, but still not address the system as a whole.
Problem #4: The one compelling thing to play for once the conference title is out of the question, a bowl berth, has been cheapened so much that the bubble spotlight shines on crappy, .500 teams that got half their wins against the high school teams they schedule OOC. (Whether to cut bowls or explicitly delineate tiers of bowls, we basically need something tangible to give separation between nine-win, third-place finishes and seven-win, fifth-place finishes. Something for good, but not great, teams to play for.)
Obviously, I include Florida, Oklahoma, USC, and Texas are among those 10. You probably wouldn't give me even money if I took those four and gave you the field for the Crystal Ball. (If so, call me. The odds-makers sure as hell wouldn't.) Considering only one game pits two of those teams together, I find those odds to be a not so compelling race. "Winner is the one to not suck too much against a sucky team ... GO!" (Full disclosure, I went to USC. But, frankly, it almost gets old playing 8-10 games per year where the outcome is either A) expected by everyone, or B) utterly soul-crushing. Okay, it isn't that horrible to always win. I bet you are enjoying it less than I am. But still...)
Moving on, Alabama and Mississippi have enough talent and pretty manageable SEC schedules. (Non-SEC? After 'Bama/Virginia Tech, there are seven punch-lines to chose from.) LSU would be clinging to the outside of that boat, but they play Florida and Georgia, teams their aforementioned West rivals avoid. (Stumbling onto another problem, one with the 12-team division format, perhaps?) Penn State and Ohio State play each other, Ohio State plays USC, and then there's 21 games against double-digit underdogs that could propel one of them to the title game if they don't blink. Remember, we were a Hawkeye's blink from Penn State/Oklahoma for the title last year. Fun.
After that? Horrifyingly, the nation's leading senile grandpa, Lou Holtz, said Notre Dame has as good a chance as anyone at reaching the title game. More horrifyingly, he's actually kind of right. If the Irish have even moderately improved with experience and we haven't dramatically overrated (I believe the new term is "Irished") them at No. 23, they will be favored in 11 games. That's 10.
Oklahoma State and Georgia warrant mentioning, but they play each other, and have two in-conference top-11 roadblocks each.
Sure, it isn't quite as stagnant and boring as I describe, but it's closer to it than you think. A national title winner hasn't come from outside the top eight since 2002. And just one other title game participant came from lower.
To channel Jim Mora: "Playoffs? PLAYOFFS!?" They could set the field for an eight team playoff in the preseason, and you would almost never miss a title winner or runner-up.
The talent gap is too wide for us to pretend all these teams are in the same league. We all love upsets. They're cute. Exciting. And usually no one is watching the whole game, because most of the time when a team plays an inferior one, the expected happens. Talent wins. Coaching wins. And teams that have the most money, best facilities, and biggest support will continue to win more. That's just a fact. Wouldn't you rather see them play each other, rather than beating up on some hapless team looking for a game check and to escape without too many injuries? If we just wanted to see upsets, we could just have the top-10 play nothing but Sun Belt teams all year. Surely, we'd get a magical moment then. Eventually.
So what can we do add to the already palpable intrigue in college football?
First, systematically discourage these laughers of non-conference games. Charleston Southern will have to cope without their visit to the Swamp. (Name their mascot and colors, quick!) Schedule an exhibition game and sell tickets if you need a tuneup and they need a payday. BCS teams should never play D-1AA ... I mean, FCS teams. Ever. And cap the number of home games so teams have to play an OOC game on the road each year. Eight home games is a joke. And by forcing teams to travel, they'll start looking to teams that can put up a decent payout, and, voila, they start to play big-boy teams that get them TV coverage and national exposure ... and real live competition.
Second, (unlikely, but hell, it's my column) I am all for some form of realignment. Teams get behind in the college football world, and aren't all on the same rung. Why does Florida have to beat down Kentucky each year? Does Ohio State need to prove its dominance over Northwestern and Indiana every fall? USC has to show that it can beat downtrodden Washington schools that can't beat WAC teams?
The system ESPN posed is an intriguing one. Teams in the upper division (with four 10-team regions) play nine games a year against other teams in the top 40. My mouth waters at that sentence to the point where the impracticality and logistics problems I'm chewing on dissolve like cotton candy. If teams falter, they drop back into the lower division to reprove themselves. Lower division teams play other teams of their ilk, and have a chance to move back up by excelling; otherwise they remain in competitive, exciting games. Meanwhile, keep rivalries alive with the three non-league games. I'm not kidding myself that it could happen, but tell me that wouldn't be more fun than kicking a terrorist in the marbles.
Thirdly, yes. A playoff. Something that allows a team to lose a game and not be done for the year, but one that keeps every game pivotal in importance. Even now, a semifinal and a final should be enough. I've never heard someone say that the No. 5 team is the best in the land and should have a shot at the title. But four-team, eight-team, I don't care; get one.
Fourth, take action to balance the money and talent out a bit. Maybe cap the scholarships another level lower than now, say 80 or 75. Capping it at 85 in 1994 leveled the field dramatically, preventing the big guns from hoarding all the talent. NFL rosters make due with 53. College teams can make it with 75, plus their usual platoon of walk-ons and non-scholarship players.
Money-wise, the comparisons between even teams in the same conference can be kind of embarrassing. If we aren't going to realign and recognize that Iowa State, Missouri, and Oklahoma aren't in the same league, at least pretend to have an interest in a level playing field. Some schools have more alumni, money, and support for football, and the game should not be a check-writing competition between boosters. I'm not calling for radical collectivism, but implement a luxury tax on a percentage of revenue made over a threshold; put it into a fund, and let other FBS programs posting revenue below a threshold get a taste (keep the money within the conference, if you'd prefer), under the condition that they invest it into the athletic program.
You could make this fair. Have certain rules to limit benefits so teams don't end up abusing it; make them use it to build the program. The Yankees still make and spend by far the most money despite such taxing in baseball; the big boys won't suffer much. The little guys could take an extra recruiting trip or two, keep coaches for more than stepping-stone periods, or fix that one embarrassing aspect of the program/facilities recruits cringe at, all with table scraps from the big boys.
So there it is. Ranting and raving. I hope I didn't hit you in the front row as I foamed at the mouth. Again, I'm truly thrilled about college football being here, and if I wrote a piece on what was right about college football, I'd need to make it a mini-series that was not so mini. Plus, most of what I said will never happen. But at least two of the ideas were pragmatic, so cut me some slack.
And perhaps this obsession we all have with a playoff, with making everything perfect at the top, with worrying about only the best nationally and dismissing everything else, we miss great football. I'm guilty, too. I live in ACC country now. Unbelievably exciting conference. Regularly the most balanced, parity-driven conference, loaded with good, if not great, teams. Hell, even Duke can play now. And that should be what we consider great college football.
Since there hasn't been a true national contender for years, the ACC gets no respect. Nationally, we need to credit conferences built like this as being great for excitement and drama and take advantage, rather than shun them for failing to have a Superbeast. Embrace more parity. Watch some teams that aren't title contenders: Oregon State, Nebraska, North Carolina State, Georgia Tech, Iowa. Don't fall into the trap of having your entire season consumed by coverage of Florida, Texas, and my school. Even if ESPN drives you in that direction. You'll find a lot more on the buffet of college football that way.
So in that positive spirit, we end with the five most mind-numbingly annoying specifics to look forward to in 2009:
5. Unbalanced, 12-team conference schedules. As mentioned, silly. So easy to miss two or three of the best teams in the other division.
4. The lack of a true national contender in the ACC or Big East. I love parity, but come on, someone emerge once in a while.
3. The lack of at least second-rate contenders in the Big Ten to give Ohio State and Penn State the upset loss they would receive as the flawed contenders they are each year. At least the Pac-10 forces USC to keep its head up.
2. The lack of a fifth team on Florida's schedule. Georgia, neutral. LSU on the road. Maybe FSU in the Swamp. SEC title game. That's it. That's
their entire season.
1. Notre Dame is ranked. And with a schedule barely tougher than Florida's, they will probably finish that way.
Hey, I did go to USC, remember?
August 28, 2009
Kevin Beane:
Excellent article, but I do take issue with a few, I believe, faulty presumptions.
First, there are upsets galore in college football (a USC alum should appreciate that more than anyone) and there is more parity than you are giving credit for, and much more than there has ever been.
This may not be true on a year-to-year basis, but it certainly is true in, say, five-year chunks. Just a couple years ago, we crowned a 2-loss National Champion.
Second, the “problem” of having to endure Ohio State beat up on Northwestern, and USC beat up the Washington schools, is myopic to the extreme, and it leads you to propose permanent solutions to temporary problems; curing your hangnail by cutting off your thumb.
In the last twenty years, Washington has two National Championships and four Rose Bowl appearances. At one point, ending in 2004, Washington State had as many consecutive ten-win seasons as any other team in the country. Northwestern had three conference titles or co-titles between 1995-2000. OSU only had two in the same span.
Sure, the storied programs eventually rise back to the top, but nearly every program has had their moment in the sun, and those moments are accelerating and becoming more frequent.
That, to me, is the beautiful thing about college football, and should be protected, all the 50-point blowouts we have to endure to get that life-changing upset be damned.
Which is why I will indeed bet you even money (say, $50?) taking the field against your four powerhouses. Marc can put you in touch with me.
August 31, 2009
Kyle Jahner:
Thanks for the comment. You make some good points.
It seems our primary differences are how often upsets happen, just how imbalanced the system really is, and whether striving to create more parity is a good thing. Most of my points you didn’t directly contradict: forced OOC road games, playoffs, D1-AA bans, cutting scholarships, etc. The urgency and perhaps even the necessity came into question, but its all peripheral disagreement.
But, aside for the overall tone (which I myself said would sound more gripey and negative than I actually felt), realignment seems to have been where the crack became a canyon dividing us. And admittedly, it is my most radical and least politically feasible proposal listed.
First of all, to your point of fluctuation of success with teams like NW and UW: the relegation system is is there explicitly to deal with this. When a team gets good and shows ready to play in the upper league, they get to.
What’s wrong with having to earn your keep in the most competitive league rather than getting it as a birthright? The smaller but great programs like Boise State, Utah, BYU, ECU would all benefit and have a chance to become great programs. As it is today, they are totally locked out of the big money and the big stage, forced to perpetually play the role of cute underdog that dominates its competition but no one knows how good they really are. Sports are about finding out how good they really are.
Basically the losers in this system would be teams that hang on to prestigious conference labels and marquee scheduling based on name brands and prior success alone. And I don’t see a problem with that. Downside is that teams in the bottom league might find it harder to recruit. But would it really be any tougher than it is for the non-BCS schools today?
And despite the upsets that have happened over the years, a national title remains a yacht club for exclusivity. Take stadium capacity as an admittedly imperfect sign of inherent program strength. About 25 stadiums have capacities over 74,000. Teams playing in those 25 have won every national title since 1991 (UW comes up 1,500 short, so Colorado in 1990 might be as appropriate a marker). That’s nearly 20 years including the ENTIRE BCS era, where no team outside the top 20% in stadium size has won a title. That’s a significant correlation and one that further indicates that some teams don’t play the same game, much less on the same level, as others.
And I still respectfully disagree with your implication that we should relish and protect mismatched teams playing each other because a small portion of these dogs of matchups turn into special moments. If there were just one league in college football, would you rather it be the ACC where there are at least 4 games a week that are exciting and evenly-matched? Or would you choose the Big Ten, where Ohio State and Penn State are favored by two touchdowns each week, and two or three games on their entire schedule are exciting? All so we can wade waist-deep in garbage looking for the Iowa-Penn State game last year? Parity is good for drama, good for excitement. If someone ask MLB teams to play AAA teams 10 times a year, would you be excited for the couple upsets that would occur to the point where you’d watch each one?
August 31, 2009
Kyle Jahner:
Sorry for the novel of a post last night. I had just had a fantasy draft on the left coast (I’m now east) and was falling asleep as I finished the post, catastrophically failing to reign in the length to a comprehensible reply.
Cliff notes verson:
Good comment, still disagree to an extent.
Tiered realignment=seemingly main disagreement of yours,
Tiered realignment=better games, still upsets, fewer blowouts, bad for teams that underperform, good for overachievers.
Relegation= upward mobility, egalitarian conference alignment based on quality of program not ancient history
Parity=good
Today=not parity, half of FBS could never play a schedule hard enough to warrant BCS title game birth.
Hope that clears things up. And in case you were wondering I went with Steve Slaton and Larry Fitzgerald on the snake with the 12th and 13th picks, getting Warner and Kevin Smith on the next time ‘round.