My Plan To Restructure College Football And Rescue Non-Football Student-Athletes
Schools are sacrificing their non-football athletes to chase football megabucks. Here is my plan to make help these student-athletes and generate even more money for universities through football.
I have written a lot of long, heavy posts of late in Perilous Times, so I thought I would do something lighter this weekend, even if that means I am departing from my theme of exploring threats to democracy. Subscribers who care not a whit about college sports – I’ll see you next week.
This post is about something I do care about, however, which is helping my students who are varsity athletes in a sport other than football (I have never had football player in my classes, but I have had students who went on to play in the NBA and WNBA and many other swimmers, runners and softball players)
There are a lot of problems with big time college sports (payments to players, corruption and scandals, sky-rocketing pay for coaches, and the athlete transfer portal), but I want to write about the conference realignment which has been going on for years, but is about to expand next season in unprecedented ways.
The driver for this realignment is college football.
Revenues for football greatly exceed all sports programs, even men’s college basketball. Indeed, most sports programs are money losers for universities with budgets heavily subsidized by football and men’s basketball. Over the past decade or more, the top conferences – known as the Power 5 – have grown in size to add teams that make their football TV contracts more lucrative. We are talking about staggering amounts of money. In 2020, the Southeastern Conference (SEC) signed a $3 billion 10-year deal with ABC scheduled to start in 2024 that bumps annual payments for football and basketball rights from $55 million to $300 million per year.
Take for example what has happened to Duke’s conference, the Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC). The ACC was the dominant conference in college basketball for about three decades, winning the NCCA tournament 14 times from 1982-2019 (as well as 6 runners-up). Back in 1982, the ACC was a cozy 8-team conference with most teams nestled in the Mid-Atlantic and Carolinas. The longest road trip for an ACC team was for Georgia Tech players to visit the University of Maryland (about 650 miles).
But in the 1990’s, the economics of college sports began to change, and the ACC knew it needed to bolster its standing in college football to continue as a major conference and compete for television contracts. In 1991, it added football powerhouse Florida State, which went on to win national football championships in 1999 and 2013. In 2004, it added strong football schools, Virginia Tech and Miami. The ACC added Boston College in 2005, mainly to have a 12th team so it could split into two divisions and have a televised conference championship football game. Pitt and Syracuse were added in 2011, making the ACC the largest major conference. In 2012, the conference was rocked when Maryland departed for the more lucrative midwestern Big-10 conference and the ACC responded by replacing it with Louisville. And then, it reached an agreement with huge football power Notre Dame to enter the ACC for all sports except football, in exchange for Notre Dame’s agreement to schedule 4-5 football games each year with ACC teams, again making the ACC television contract more attractive.
So, in comparison to 1982, when 6 of the 8 schools were within 400 miles of each other, the ACC now spans from Boston College in the north, to Miami in the south and west to Notre Dame, placing a severe travel burden on all college athletes. Who knew the Atlantic Coast extended to South Bend, Indiana.
This is bad, but things are about to get worse next year. It all began when the conference of the west coast, the Pacific Athletic Conference (PAC-12), started negotiating a new TV contract and found that its offerings would not bring in the kinds of revenue being generated by the two mega-powers of the Power Five – the SEC and Big-10. Schools began searching for greener pastures. In July, Colorado bolted the PAC-12 for the midwestern Big-12. Then, in a blockbuster move, the cornerstone schools of the conference, USC and UCLA, joined the Big-10. They were soon followed by Washington and Oregon. Then Arizona, Arizona State, and Utah made a deal to join the Big-12 as well. Clear that its conference was imploding, sun-drenched University of California- Berkeley and Stanford joined, you guessed it, the Atlantic Coast Conference.
The travel distances that these new conferences will require are not a problem for football. Football teams play 5-7 road games a year. They travel one day, play the next day, and travel back that night or the next day. Getting on a plane to travel from, let’s say Duluth to Los Angeles once a year is not a big deal.
But this is a problem for the student-athletes that I have taught. They usually have to do two-stop road trips over a 3-4 day weekend – let’s say from Duke to Florida State and Miami or a slog from Syracuse to Boston College and then back to Durham again. The new alignment is now going to require them to add a trip out to California every other year as part of their 20 or 30 game schedule on top of these other long road trips. Weekends are when other students get some rest and catch up on school work.
And let me say a few words about these student athletes. My impression is that they love their sports and they love school. They are extremely diligent and experts at time management because they have to handle all the burdens that being varsity athletes entail and the challenging academic program at Duke. And trust me, they do not enroll in my classes if they are looking for an easy way to get through their seasons.
These students feel a lot of stress with the current travel schedule, but they are managing. This new conference alignment may be a breaking point for many of them. I can’t even begin to imagine what is going to happen to Stanford student athletes who will be playing half their schedule against teams up and down the east coast. Did these athletes sign up with Stanford to have to travel for away games to Louisville?
So, what can be done?
I have been thinking about this for a while, but I am also borrowing some of the ideas I heard from UCLA football coach Chip Kelly being interviewed on ESPN in December.
The key is to separate football from all the other sports. Let football do what it can do to generate as much revenue as possible, but don’t let football’s needs dictate what happens to the women’s field hockey or men’s cross-country teams.
If possible, there needs to be a giant sit down between the top teams in men’s football, known as FBS Division 1A, and the major networks to totally restructure their relationship away from the current regional conference system, which works just fine for every sport except football. Doing so would require renegotiating big long-term contracts, but I think it can be done if the new package is going to generate even more money for both broadcasters and universities, which I think the plan I am about to lay out will. More money can drive even radical change.
In addition, a restructuring of college football will greatly improve the quality of product for the fans and viewers (which means, again — more money). Big football powerhouse schools, like Michigan, play most of their games against weak teams in their own regional conference. This year, Michigan’s average margin of victory in their 13 regular season wins was 26 points – blowouts that only diehard Michigan fans (nephew Eric, I am thinking of you) watch until the bitter end. This pattern is replicated in all the Power 5 conferences, so a lot of the college football games on TV during the regular season are lopsided and uninteresting. Moreover, teams also often schedule non-conference games, usually at the beginning of the year, against much weaker teams, essentially serving as practice scrimmages. The top two ranked teams at the beginning of the year, Georgia and Michigan, won their first games of the season by a total score of 78-10. They won their second week’s games by a total of 80-10. I doubt most of the starters even played in the second half of these games. By my calculations, the 133 FBS Division 1A teams played about 864 regular season games – only 41 of them (~5%) matched teams that were ranked in the top 25 the week they played.
Here is my plan to fix things, which borrows from both the NFL and the way soccer is organized in the UK.
Instead of breaking teams into ten conferences, the Division 1A teams would be placed in three leagues – Championship, Elite, and Power. There would be a global revenue sharing system where all the TV contract money is pooled (as is done in the NFL) and then distributed equally to teams depending on what league they are in. The Championship League teams will get a larger percentage of the pool and more money per team because they are the best teams and are responsible for generating the most revenue. There is some inequity under this system between the Championship League teams and the teams in the other two leagues (which is somewhat addressed by the delegation/promotion system explained below) but it is far fairer than the current system which produces vastly different economic results for teams depending on what regional conference they are currently in. And the key point is that teams who are playing in the same league are all getting the exact same amount of money from television, so the competition is fair.
The idea is to put the best teams in the top league so they would play more games against each other and keep the league small, so most of the teams would have a legitimate chance to make the post-season playoffs. The numbers are a bit arbitrary, but I propose 32 teams be placed in the top Championship league based on the top 5 finishers in each of the Power 5 conferences last year, with the remaining spots allotted to the winners of the non-Power 5 conferences, and filled out with teams that made the top 25 in the last Associated Press pool (sorry to #25 Tennessee that didn’t make the cut). I then split the 32 teams into four regional divisions. If you want to see how teams could potentially be placed, I have worked it all out below. (Remarkably, when you sort these teams into divisions, they will have loads of regional games against in-state schools or close neighbors).
Teams would still play 13 regular season games. Seven of them would be against the other teams in their division. Like the NFL, three games would be against teams in the other divisions that placed in the same divisional spot as them the previous season. To preserve the traditions and fun of college football, three games would be played to maintain rivalries against at least one Championship League and at least one Elite League team not scheduled by formula. Even without the rivalry games, this scheduling would result next year in 134 games between teams ranked in the top 25 (as of the end of this year), triple what this year’s schedule produced.
The post-season, like the NFL, would be determined by division rankings based on a team’s won-lost record, not by a committee making subjective decisions about how the teams should be ranked as is currently done. The top two teams from each division would qualify, plus four wild card teams from any division based on a predetermined set of rules and tie-breakers. The 12-team post-season playoff to determine the national champion would remain as planned for next year.
But in a new twist which Ted Lasso watchers will understand, there would also be a relegation of the worst performing teams down to the Elite League. I propose that the last place team in each division and 4 wild cards, again determined by NFL-like tie-breakers, be relegated. Not only will this system rid the best league of its underperforming teams, but it will add relevance to a lot of late season play for teams who otherwise would be playing meaningless games – good for the fans and good for TV ratings. Teams in the lower Elite League will have an incentive to invest in their programs to attempt to make it into the big time Championship League.
The same structure would apply to the 54-member Elite League, which would be populated in the first year with the remainder of the Power 5 teams and 2nd and 3rd place teams from the other Division 1A conferences. The league’s top eight teams will be promoted to the Championship League and bottom eight relegated to the Power League. To make the Elite League playoffs more meaningful, its winner would earn a 2-year exemption from delegation, giving it a better chance to ensconce itself in the Championship League. Teams would play each team in their division and two teams that placed in the same divisional rank as they did the previous year.
The Power League would consist of the remaining teams from Division 1A, plus 13 conference champions from the current Division 1AA. This would give teams from small conferences a chance at playing in the big leagues, just like the NCAA basketball tournament always benefits from having small obscure schools upsetting big powers in the opening rounds. Conferences that do not want to be part of this system could opt-out and just stick with their conference play.
8 Power League division leaders would be promoted to the Elite League each season. Division 1AA champs would be relegated back to their conference if they fall in the bottom 13 schools, (again, determined by rules and tie-breakers) but stay to play a second year (and gain a lot of money) if they win enough games and avoid relegation.
The only “losers” under this system are the 18 bottom-dwelling teams in the two richest Power Five conferences, the SEC and Big 10, who will receive less revenue by being assigned in the first year to the Elite Division. But this could be a blessing in disguise as their programs — removed from being perennial punching bags of the big powers — might actually post winning records for the first time in decades, a joy to their long suffering fans. Indiana, for example, has had only 4 winning football seasons out of the past 30. The response to the “losers” disgruntlement is that they will have a very fair shot under this system to get into the upper division by earning it on the playing field.
There will be far more “wins” under my proposal.
Most importantly, the NCAA can reorganize the Power 5 conferences on a tight regional basis for all other sports but football and put a stop to the madness that is scheduled to start next season. This will benefit the thousands of non-football playing student-athletes across the Power 5 conferences. The system should generate more revenue by producing more competitive regular season match ups. Post-season play is based entirely on performance instead of secretive committee deliberations. There is also excitement and fluidity produced by the promotion/relegation system.
Fans of college football will love it.
This makes so much common sense, even the obtuse NCAA might find it attractive.
CHAMPIONSHIP LEAGUE – 32 TEAMS
MIDEAST SOUTH SOUTHEAST WEST
Michigan Texas Florida State Washington Ohio State Alabama Georgia Oregon Penn State LSU Louisville. Arizona Iowa Oklahoma NC State Iowa State Northwestern Oklahoma St. Va. Tech Utah Notre Dame * Ole Miss Ga. Tech Kansas St. James Madison ** Missouri Tulane * Oregon St. Miami (OH)** SMU * Liberty ** Boise St. **
* = Top 25 in last 2023 AP Coaches Poll ** = FSB Non-Power 5 Conference Champs
ELITE LEAGUE – 56 TEAMS (Mostly Power Non-Top 5 Power Five Schools)
EAST SOUTHEAST SOUTH MIDWEST SOUTHWEST WEST
Maryland Clemson Tenn. Kansas Texas Tech. USC BC W. Va. Miami (FL) Wisconsin Texas A&M UCLA Rutgers UNC Auburn Minnesota Colorado U. Cal. Syracuse Duke U. Cent. Fl. Nebraska TCU Wash. St. Pitt. Kentucky Florida Illinois Houston Ariz. St. Army * S. Carolina Miss. St. Mich. St. Baylor BYU Memphis* Virginia Arkansas Purdue Colorado UNLV* Toledo* Wake For. Vanderbilt Indiana UTSA* San Jose St* Ohio* App. State * Jackson. St.* Cincinnati Air Force* NM St. *
*= FSB Div. IA Non-Power 5 Schools
POWER LEAGUE – 59 TEAMS
46 FSB Non-Power 5 Division IA Teams
13 Champions from Division IAA Conferences (Montana, Garner-Webb, Albany, Yale, Howard, S. Dakota St., Duquesne, Lafayette, Drake, Furman, Nicholls, Florida A&M, Austin-Peay)