It’s Time For All College Football Teams To Earn Their Keep
by The Football Vets
The heat from Texas and Oklahoma is raising the temperature in College Football to the boiling point. This is because there is pressure on the other conferences to find a way to keep eyeballs on their teams and games. The SEC, however, is gaining new eyeball magnets and expanding their market. The war for market share has begun.
As we discussed in the previous article on what a super conference should be, a super conference still must make the matchups that pique interest. There are two ways to do this. The easy way is marquee competitions. The best way is to have teams to fight for all the marbles or even their share of the marbles.
The conferences already fight for all the marbles when they have their conference championship games and with the new 12 Team play off they will be playing for definitive advantage. As far as the new 12 team Playoff system, the conference champions from the Power 4 will of course get a bye from the first round and the at larges would play for a chance at the prize. What would a 12 team play off look like? Let’s take a look:
12 Team Playoff Format
All the marbles are in play when the top 12 teams of the Power 4 enter the playoff starting from the opening round. The quarter finals will be four of our favorite bowls all aligned regionally: West/ Fiesta, North/ Cotton, Orange/East, Peach/South. The Semi-Final bowls will of course be the Rose and Sugar Bowls on January 1st. Finally, then just as now, the National Championship, will be played in a neutral site a week or so later.
BUT…is it really for all the marbles? We don’t think so. Here is the reason; some teams get to keep more marbles than others and all unearned. The bottom teams of the conferences repeatedly underperform. They lose all their conference games and even fall to the group teams that should be guaranteed wins. Does anyone seriously think this doesn’t need to change?
If Group of 4 teams are defeating Power 4 teams, wouldn’t it be fair that the winning teams have a chance to move up? Well, what if we told you there’s a way to give the winning Group of 4 teams a chance and inspire the bottom tier Power 4 teams to play up? Do we have news for you! It’s already being done in football-European Football. It’s called RELEGATION.
Brace yourself for some fun December football. This is how Relegation would work in the new 32 Team Regional Super Conference:
So, starting the week of the playoff, the conferences will also begin Relegation. In each Power 4 division the bottom two teams play a sudden death match to stay in. This is Round 1 of the Relegation Phase. The Loser of the sudden death match is replaced by the champion of the lower division. The Winner earns the chance at another sudden death against the lower Division number 2 team. We think this would be the opportunity for the smaller bowls such as the Liberty Bowl, Camelia Bowl, or Birmingham Bowl to fill seats and get solid eyes balls. These games will matter now.
Now let’s look at an example:
In the example above Vanderbilt plays South Carolina in Round 1 of the SEC East Relegation Phase; for this example, at the Birmingham Bowl. Vanderbilt loses and is automatically replaced by the Lower Division Champion the University of Alabama Birmingham (UAB). South Carolina survives to play Memphis now at the New Orleans Bowl for Round 2 of the Relegation Phase. South Carolina hangs on by their fingernails and remains in the SEC east. We think these would be good games leading up to the Semi-Finals of the CFB Play off.
Now if there are any questions what the SEC East Division or the Sunbelt East Division would like after this example. Here you go:
This will be some real football. I can hear your objections right now but, with the new system guaranteeing the best talent going to the big teams, there is almost no way they will ever be in danger of Relegation. If you’re saying the bowls won’t go for it, I'd counter with the bowls exist to make money and are due for a realignment of their own. That’s a topic for another article. Till next time...