AP Preseason Top 25 Poll

The AP released a Top 25 yesterday. This included teams that aren't participating this fall. The pressure on the Big Ten and commissioner Kevin Warren hasn't changed anything to reverse a decision. AP Voters knew that, and yet they are included in the PRESEASON poll. Then will drop them after the first week. Why include them. What does it help Ohio State, Penn State, Oregon?

Then also the College Football Playoff released their schedule too, which this season is to include the Rose Bowl. The Rose Bowl is so intertwined with 2 conferences playing in the Winter/Spring. Will there be a spring Rose Bowl? Where is that going to be packed on the calendar? How can there be a championship with out 2 of the Power 5 played, and will you allow split titles with the winter/spring?

This season is showing the importance of college football needing to have a central leader.
You can view the AP Preseason Poll here.

2019 College Football Awards

Big Ten Player of the Year : Chase Young - Ohio State

Big XII Player of the Year : Jalen Hurts - Oklahoma

Offensive Player of the Year : Joe Burrow - LSU

Defensive Player of the Year : Chase Young - Ohio State

Coach of the Year : Ed Orgeron : LSU

College Football Fix : The PostSeason

In the last post, I looked at the schedule for how I would fix college football. Now on to crown a National Champion and the post season.

After week 14 8 Region Champions will be crowned, setting up what will be the 8 team National Championship Tournament. An Elite 8 if you want to call it that and copy from March Madness. Using an RPI type system to rank the schools will be placed into an 8 team bracket with the top 4 seeds hosting the lower 4 on home campuses. These would take place 2 weeks after week 14. Winners then move on to the Semifinals. Where I would make changes from what is currently set up, is that the semifinals are ALWAYS the Rose Bowl and the Sugar Bowl.

I know the other bowls would throw a tizzy, and maybe a few have a right too, but there is no greater setting in college football than the Rose Bowl at sunset on New Year’s Day. I love the Big Ten/Pac 12 tradition there, but we are moving the sport on to the next century. The Sugar Bowl then follows the Rose with the other semifinal on New Year’s Day. Similar to what is in the CFP, as teams move on, the higher seed would get the selection of which semifinal they would prefer to play in.

Below is an example of what a playoff from this year could've looked like.

The Championship game then will be played roughly 2 weeks after Jan 1 on a Monday Night. NFL Playoffs are going on then, and TV executives will not want to have all that competition on the weekend. Sites will be rotated amongst the latest and greatest NFL Stadiums. Los Angeles, Miami, New Orleans, Las Vegas, Tempe, San Francisco, Minneapolis, Houston, Dallas, Indianapolis and Atlanta. These stadiums, and cities have what it takes to host Super Bowls can easily set up for National Championship Games. The inclusion of Minneapolis and Indianapolis give the northern cities with great set ups the chance too. Football is not just a southern sport.

A champion then is crowned. But what about the other schools and some of the bowl traditions? Not forgetting you in the setup. With 13 regular season games, there will be no .500 teams, 7-6 is bowl eligible, 6-7 is not. But with 80 schools and 8 already gone to the playoffs, there is not a need for all those bowls. 19 Bowl games for the top 36 schools.

Bowls now are already struggling to pack people in, and the playoff is taking a lot of the luster off. Look at the Sugar Bowl this past season with Baylor and Georgia. The top half of the Super Dome was empty. This is a New Years 6 game! And with the creation of so many games and the attempt to sell them to major conferences, the match-ups are becoming nothing to write home about. So we are eliminating bowls and only 36 teams available.

The selection changes too. No more politicking back stage and all the wooing and reps with this many fans. The process will be something akin to a fantasy football draft. Bowls will be ticketed off into half tiers, with the more prestigious ones get the first pick. From the same similar RPI ranking, the bowls will be given a pool of schools to select from. As schools are picked, another will take its place.

The Bowls, in their respective tiers, I would keep are the following.

Tier 1 : Cotton, Peach, Fiesta, Orange, Citrus, Outback

Tier 2 : Las Vegas, Alamo, Holiday, Gator, Insight/Cheez-It, Music City, Belk/Charlotte

Tier 3 : Sun, Camping World, Houston, Wash DC/Military, San Fran/RedBox, Pinstripe

An example of the Bowl Draft would be :
Pick 1-Cotton, Pick 2-Peach, Pick 3- Fiesta, Pick 4-Cotton, Pick 5-Peach, Pick 6-Fiesta
Pick 7- Orange, Pick 8- Citrus, Pick 9- Outback, Pick 10- Orange, Pick 11- Citrus, Pick 12- Outback

I would also televise this live. Again, no back room deals. The bowls wouldn’t see the final rankings till the start of the selection process, and they would get 2 minutes to make their choice. 

After each half tier would be done selecting, a ten minute “trade” time frame would be allowed, with a bowl looking to trade, would be moved back in selection process the following year. This would be TV GOLD.

Bowls then would be played from Dec 26 – Jan 1. On Jan 1, the semifinals would be joined by 2 of the tier 1 games and a tier 2 game.

Post season is enhanced, adds some new flavor to it than just the bowl tie-ins and match-ups are better for the fans.

The remaining group of 50 then could fill out the other bowl games, and or create their own FCS type playoff.

Realignment | Scheduling | Post Season | Video Game

College Football Fix : Schedule

In Part 1 of what i would do if I was college football czar I created eight 10 team regions consisting of (arguably) the 80 most deserving programs currently in FBS. Now on to Part 2. The schedule

First off, who doesn’t love college football. Years ago we went from 11 regular season games to 12. Now, I’m going to be moving the regular season games to 13 games. Football, we are told, is getting safer. It is the money driver for all these universities, so why not add another game. Most schools right now get 8 home games, but with this update all schools will have 7 home games, and I’ll get into the breakdown soon.

All schools in each region will play each other, 9 games. 4 home / 5 road in year 1, 5 home / 4 road in year 2. This will be able to crown one true region champion. All regions will have the same tie breakers so that we all know who the region champion is. Not something like one conference having one set of tiebreakers and another having something completely different.

So with 9 games down, there are 4 left to go. Gone will be the days of cupcakes for one conference and harder schedules for others. This will be a more conforming schedule for all.

The first game, regions will be matched up with another region for 10 years at a time. So a school will play each school from another region. These games will be set out for 10 years. (etc. Midwest & Great Lakes)

The next game, 2 regions will be matched up with 2 other regions (etc Midwest/Great Lakes & Atlantic/South East), and the opponents would be selected based on the previous years finish. In year one a Midwest team would play an Atlantic team of similar finish, the next the Midwest team matched up with a South East team. This would happen for 10 years. Schools will not be allowed duplicate opponents over this 10 year stretch. This will allow 10 new opponents over a 10 year time frame. The location would flip from home and away, it would be 5 home and 5 away in the 10 year time frame.

The next game will be a match up against a school from the other set of 4 regions, for a Midwest team it would be vs Gulf Shores, Southwest, Mountain and Pacific. Like the previous game it will be determined from previous years finish and also over the 10 year time frame will be 10 different opponents and it would be 5 home and 5 away in the 10 year time frame.

12 games so far against 12 power 80 teams.

The 13th game on the schedule will be a home game vs the remaining group of 50 school or FCS school. I would schedule this game as the first game of the year as the token “Cupcake” game. It will also be a payday for those schools that didn’t make it into the Power 80.

With all that determined, here are some examples of what schedules would look like (see image)

The dates (using 2019 calendar as example) would look like this

Wk 1 : 8/31

Wk 2 : 9/7

Wk 3 : 9/14

Wk 4 : 9/21

Wk 5 : 9/28

Wk 6 : 10/5

Wk 7 : 10/12

Wk 8 : 10/19

Wk 9 : 10/26

Wk 10 : 11/2

Wk 11 : 11/9

Wk 12 : 11/16

Wk 13 : 11/23

Wk 14 : 11/30

After these 13 games, 8 region champions will be determined. You know have your expanded playoff up to 8.

Realignment | Scheduling | Post Season | Video Game

College Football Fix : Realignment

If you look at the sport, and the history of college football, it is a regional sport. The Big Ten footprint is the Midwest, the Pacific is the Pac-10, SWC the state of Texas. The ACC and SEC hold their footprints. Rivalries were created, icons, and partnerships In the past 15-20 years though things have got kind of wacky.

Missouri is in the SEC, the Big Ten made questionable moves with Rutgers and Maryland, and Notre Dame still is somewhat independent. Rivalries were destroyed in Texas/Texas A&M and Kansas/Mizzou all for the sake of little arguments and big tv money. In that now teams rarely play due to the size of conferences. In the SEC, Alabama rarely plays Georgia AND Florida. Alabama and Georgia have only played 8 times since 2000. 3 have been either the SEC Title game of CFP. The Tide and Gators only played Florida 9 times, and 4 were in SEC Title games. That type of scheduling does not make a conference.

What I’m doing in my first move as college football czar, is going to be something to spit at in the face of history but also maybe try to recreate some of it.

I’ve tried to create a 4 part super conference with 16 teams before and yet I run into the scenario above I mentioned with Alabama-Florida/Georgia. Why even be a conference if you don’t play. And well even the NFL has the Cleveland Browns and MLB has the smaller market teams.

I have selected 80 teams, and separated them out to eight 10 team regional conferences. These schools are all close where fans can afford to drive to each game. It keeps some rivalries intact and also brings others back together. The Big Ten schools loose some of their trophy games, but to be fair too many have trophy games, and are corporate feed.

There are maybe some arguments that these aren’t the top 80, but they are really close to it.

There are 50 remaining could keep the conference model or split off into something similar to this. Though the MAC is something perfect for a 12 team conference IMO.

I know SEC and B1G homers would holler that they shouldn’t be split up. But some regionalization needs to be brought back to this sport.

Realignment | Scheduling | Post Season | Video Game

Drake Date Night with Ry

 Ry went to a Drake game on a field trip and fell in love with the Drake Women's team.  Tonight we had a date at a game.  

New Years Day

I love college football, am passionate about it. If you follow me on twitter you can see how.

When I hear people bash the Rose Bowl (Clay Travis) I get upset.

The sport has changed so much the past 20 years, from the Bowl Alliance to BCS to Playoff, and then on top of that all the conference realignment, disintegration and lost history of rivalries.

The game is going places so quickly that is going to change much much more around the 2025 season with all new TV deals. SEC going exclusively to ESPN is going to hurt EVERY OTHER CONFERENCE as long as ESPN controls the College Football Playoffs and New Years 6.

We've lost New Years Day from what it was, to only having 4-5 games on. Where most bowls now don't mean much, are played in half empty stadiums, (looking at you Sugar Bowl), the Rose Bowl oozes tradition and is not losing any luster.

The semifinals SHOULD be played on Jan 1, but at 130 and 7. The Rose Bowl SHOULD ALWAYS be played at 4pm CST.