I Fixed College Football
This is the ultimate way to save College Football, in a way that fans and the TV executives who rule it can be happy with.
16 Divisions with between four and five members
- Northeast Division: Penn State, Rutgers, Syracuse, Boston College
- Mid-Atlantic: Virginia, Virginia Tech, Pitt, West Virginia
- Ohio River: Ohio State, Cincinnati, Kentucky, Louisville
- Lakes: Michigan, Michigan State, Northwestern, Wisconsin
- Midwest: Notre Dame, Indiana, Illinois, Purdue
- Mid-America: Minnesota, Iowa State, Iowa, Mizzou, Nebraska
- Breadbasket: Oklahoma, Oklahoma State, Kansas State, Kansas, Texas Tech
- Carolina: North Carolina, Duke, Wake Forest, NC State
- Savannah River: Georgia, Georgia Tech, Clemson, South Carolina
- Florida: Florida, Florida State, Miami, UCF
- Tennessee River: Tennessee, Alabama, Vanderbilt, Auburn
- Mississippi River: LSU, Ole Miss, Mississippi State, Arkansas, Houston
- Rockies: BYU, Utah, Arizona State, Arizona, Colorado
- Cascadia: Washington, Washington State, Oregon, Oregon State
- California: USC, UCLA, Cal, Stanford
- Texas: Texas, Texas A&M, Baylor, SMU, TCU
Each Division Winner advances to the playoffs.
The eight top AP Poll ranked second place teams also reach the playoff, with the top eight AP Poll ranked division winners receiving byes in the 24 team playoff.
The 24 remaining third and second place finishers will go to bowl games.
You play each team in your division once for a total of three or four games. Tiebreakers in the division are head-to-head, and then the AP Poll ranking.
You play each team in two separate and rotating divisions once for a total of three or four games. One is inside your conference, and one is outside. Conferences have no effect other than for scheduling purposes. These are geographically aligned to cut down on travel and increase rivalry games.
Conference One: Northeast, Midwest, Ohio River, Lakes, Mid-America
Conference Two: Breadbasket, Texas, Mississippi River, Tennessee River
Conference Three: Florida, Savannah River, Carolinas, Mid-Atlantic
Conference Four: California, Cascadia, Rockies
This will be a 15-week season, starting two Saturdays before Labor Day and ending on Thanksgiving weekend, with each team receiving two byes that are between weeks four and twelve, for a total of 13 games.
That means, with your division and conference schedules, any given team will have 9 to 12 of its games scheduled.
The remaining games will be the following:
- One Designated Rivalry Game. Each team will have multiple out-of-division rivals to ensure that in years where they do not play the rivals division, they still play a rival (with traditional rivalry game matchups always designated as such)
- Zero to three competition balancing games. Much as the NFL has teams play three games against non-scheduled opponents each year based on previous season standings, this will be very similar.
The playoffs will begin the week after the last game of the season, with top seeds hosting lower seeds in their stadium.
The second round of the playoffs will continue the previous weekend, and be scheduled for the weekend after the first playoff.
The quarterfinals will then be hosted the week after that, this time in neutral site bowl locations.
The semi-finals will be played on December 31st and January 1st.
The Championship game will be played on the second Friday in January.
There are two distinct periods for inter-school player and coach movements.
The first period begins after the semi-final, and ends on MLK Jr Day, and that is the intent to transfer portal. By declaring intent to go into the portal, a player has the ability to transfer teams, but is not required to be enrolled in a school for the spring semester, and can practice with their future team if:
- They were on track to graduate in five years before their transfer
- Maintain minimum eligibility requirements at the point of declaration
- Enroll upon the first opportunity at their new university
- A transfer fee has been agreed upon by the two schools
Transfer fees are exactly what they sound like. One team paying another for the right to add a player on one roster to their own. A team would still need to do this to negotiate for a player outside this league structure.
Once the intent-to-transfer portal closes at the end of January, there is a one-month dead period that ends on the 1st of March, when player movement is allowed, and stays open until the 15th of April.
The second movement window is the coach movement window. Coaches may move between member schools from the day after the National Championship to the last day of February (notwithstanding in-season firings). This also more easily allows for talent to move between the NFL and this new CFB structure.
The Spring practice window opens on the 1st of April.
How does all of the new proposed transfer business not work if there are no contracts? Simple answer, there are. Five-year contracts are signed between athletes and universities, and make them employees. Yes, real employees with all the pluses and minuses that go along with that. No, I will not side with the institutions that have been so strongly against labor for 125 years, as I think the $2 to 3+ Billion a year TV deal can help sort that all out.
How are those contracts paid for? By the Universities and there is a strict salary cap. NIL deals must be signed between an athlete and a business, and as with the clearinghouse now, must be approved for legitimate business interests. If wrongdoing is found, severe financial penalties will be given to the offending school, such as the inability to participate in the transfer window, limiting transfer players, reducing team size, and reducing the total salary cap available. No Kawhi and aspiration deals allowed in this new consortium.
What happens with the G6?
Honestly, I do not know. I would love to see a promtion/relagation system from this league, where something like every four years the top four teams of the G6/FCS hybrid I imagine plays the four worst of the new format in a one of playoff game at a neutral site, but I really do not know if TV execs would go for it.
As for the financials, it could get really tough without all the buy games. Maybe Bowl games between this group of teams and the bottom group of teams become contract requirements for the bigger teams to play, and the smaller schools get a portion of that buyout. But most of these schools will have to come to rely on transfer fees for their best players, but at least they no longer lose them for nothing.
Well that's all folks. I normally do not write about this. I normally write about the NFL draft and the best CFB prospects, and you can find the rest of my work on my site. However, if you enjoyed this, or had thoughts about it, let me know as I know this is not perfect, and will make some people extremely mad, but I don't know, I love college football and want to see it try and avoid the path of enshitification as best it can.