College Football Broken

[tmcats]

women's sports make money?

[Hypeman]

College football is broken ... but you all still donate money to an organization that does things like pay the assistant film editor more than the governor. That’s where college sports are broken. The statements that college football makes money is a farce! What if they paid rent on the stadium? Paid royalty to the university to use their name? eliminated non-profit status? etc. It’s broken because of greed and gluttony.

[tmcats]

kansas's governor makes $100k/year. i doubt an assistant film editor is in that range.

[bshea85]

But it's not. Not when we have to play everybody and some teams win their conferences and don't play everybody. We could go 12-0 and lose our championship game to be 12-1 and get left out for a hypothetical Big 10 champ, who might finish 11-2 and didn't even play the toughest teams in their conference. How is that right? Not only that, Clemson has no test at all in their conference. Nobody but them was inside the top 20. You think they get through the SEC or Big 10 undefeated? I don't.

16 team playoff is the only fair and honest way of giving all teams from all conferences a chance. The P5 champs and 11 at larges that can include a couple of G5 champs. That would be a true "playoff" that would spread the talent wealth.

This is capitalism. Fair is making defined by making money. ESPN was the large market population teams to win and enough other teams to create the illusion of a competitive league,

This isn't Capitalism. This is a controlled economic system created to benefit those who are currently benefiting. It's the 'powerful' taking advantage of the 'weak' and college football fans. NCAA, bring some justice into it (that's why you EXIST) and create a 16 team playoff system. Make it mandatory that all conference champions get a seed.

OR... maybe the Group of 5 conferences create their own tournament outside of the NCAA, like the current 4-team playoff. That might be fun to watch.

[AJcat7755]

stlcatfan, can you explain the FCS two divisions comment? I thought Division 1 is what was split, FBS and FCS then Div 2, and Div 3.

Sure. Actually, it is the FBS that has the split. FCS has their own playoff. The FBS schools are all part of what used to be called NCAA Division IA (FCS was formerly Division IAA). In the FBS ranks, there are the five Power (P5) Conferences (e.g., Big 12, Big 10, SEC, etc.) and the Group of Five (G5) conferences (e.g., AAC, MWC, C-USA, etc.).

My point was that under the current setup, the G5 schools cannot even hope to get into the CFP. Heck, just two years ago, UCF went undefeated but was left out of the CFP. They went on to beat Auburn in the Peach Bowl, but did not have the opportunity to play for a national title. My thought was that maybe with this being the case, the G5 schools should have their own playoff since the powers that be will never let them in the big boys' club.

To be fair, if any team would have played UCF's schedule, they would have been left out as well, similar to a Baylor weak schedule. UCF can't control their conference schedule, but they can control their OOC. Playing FIU, Austin Peay, Maryland, Georgia Tech (game was cancelled), Maine (game was cancelled) is not a way to boost your schedule. While P5 teams can load up their schedule with cupcakes and still make it in due to the conference, G5 have to do the opposite. Some of that may be dictated on what P5 teams will actually play the G5 schools though.

They seem to have taken that resulted and tried to improve their schedule as a result, but it still could use some work.
2019 - Florida A&M, Stanford, @ Pittsburgh
2020 - UNC, FIU, @ Georgia Tech, Florida A&M
2021 - Boise State, @ Louisville, UConn
2022 - @ FIU, Louisville, Georgia Tech

They could really use to play some SEC schools, but I'm not sure if SEC schools want to play them.

[hilltopwildcat]

Sure. Actually, it is the FBS that has the split. FCS has their own playoff. The FBS schools are all part of what used to be called NCAA Division IA (FCS was formerly Division IAA). In the FBS ranks, there are the five Power (P5) Conferences (e.g., Big 12, Big 10, SEC, etc.) and the Group of Five (G5) conferences (e.g., AAC, MWC, C-USA, etc.).

My point was that under the current setup, the G5 schools cannot even hope to get into the CFP. Heck, just two years ago, UCF went undefeated but was left out of the CFP. They went on to beat Auburn in the Peach Bowl, but did not have the opportunity to play for a national title. My thought was that maybe with this being the case, the G5 schools should have their own playoff since the powers that be will never let them in the big boys' club.

To be fair, if any team would have played UCF's schedule, they would have been left out as well, similar to a Baylor weak schedule. UCF can't control their conference schedule, but they can control their OOC. Playing FIU, Austin Peay, Maryland, Georgia Tech (game was cancelled), Maine (game was cancelled) is not a way to boost your schedule. While P5 teams can load up their schedule with cupcakes and still make it in due to the conference, G5 have to do the opposite. Some of that may be dictated on what P5 teams will actually play the G5 schools though.

They seem to have taken that resulted and tried to improve their schedule as a result, but it still could use some work.
2019 - Florida A&M, Stanford, @ Pittsburgh
2020 - UNC, FIU, @ Georgia Tech, Florida A&M
2021 - Boise State, @ Louisville, UConn
2022 - @ FIU, Louisville, Georgia Tech

They could really use to play some SEC schools, but I'm not sure if SEC schools want to play them.

Which P5 would schedule them and would they even consider playing UCF at their place? System is still broken.

[Hypeman]

To be fair, if any team would have played UCF's schedule, they would have been left out as well, similar to a Baylor weak schedule. UCF can't control their conference schedule, but they can control their OOC. Playing FIU, Austin Peay, Maryland, Georgia Tech (game was cancelled), Maine (game was cancelled) is not a way to boost your schedule. While P5 teams can load up their schedule with cupcakes and still make it in due to the conference, G5 have to do the opposite. Some of that may be dictated on what P5 teams will actually play the G5 schools though.

They seem to have taken that resulted and tried to improve their schedule as a result, but it still could use some work.
2019 - Florida A&M, Stanford, @ Pittsburgh
2020 - UNC, FIU, @ Georgia Tech, Florida A&M
2021 - Boise State, @ Louisville, UConn
2022 - @ FIU, Louisville, Georgia Tech

They could really use to play some SEC schools, but I'm not sure if SEC schools want to play them.

Which P5 would schedule them and would they even consider playing UCF at their place? System is still broken.

Exactly! I recall about 8 or 10 years ago when we ponied up like a million bucks to cancel a game against a mountain west team that looked like the might be too good. We paid to get out of that game then found the weakest possible FCS opponent we could find and paid them to play us.

It’s much like the KSU, KU, WSU basketball issue. WSU is not as good as KSU or KU (according to the two schools), but KSU and KU won’t play them so we will never find out. Thank you NCAA for setting it up so we could find out a few years ago.

Look, OU player the big 12 schedule and even lost a game this year and didn’t get left out? Why should an undefeated UCF that was clearly better than a top flight SEC team he left out. It has nothing to do with who is better, it has to do with who ESPN has a contract with.

[KITNooga]

This is capitalism. Fair is making defined by making money. ESPN was the large market population teams to win and enough other teams to create the illusion of a competitive league,

This isn't Capitalism. This is a controlled economic system created to benefit those who are currently benefiting. It's the 'powerful' taking advantage of the 'weak' and college football fans. NCAA, bring some justice into it (that's why you EXIST) and create a 16 team playoff system. Make it mandatory that all conference champions get a seed.

OR... maybe the Group of 5 conferences create their own tournament outside of the NCAA, like the current 4-team playoff. That might be fun to watch.

in that scenario, should KSU be 'outside' at the end, I'll still watch, follow them. and somehow, I know, it won't be the end of the world.
might actually get better.

[Jax]

Honestly, this isn't new news. It's been broken for a long, long time. They use to use voting to determine a national champ. Joke! Then a computer formula. Joke! Now a 4 team playoff to make it appear that everyone has a shot. Joke! And honestly has broken it even more. It's been a farce forever guys. Imo, the greatest game (better than the NFL imo) in this country, but is the worst ran and it's so damn fun, we keep supporting it.

Until it's a true playoff where all conference P5 champs are in and 11 at large, it's a joke. That means 16, not 8. 8 would just be your P5 champs and 3 at large, which would be filled with the Georgia's and Bama's of this year and still exclude G5 champs.

I agree with everything you say wild@nite, except whether increasing the playoff teams will correct the problem. In the past 20 years, only five schools named someone other than Ohio State, Clemson (or just fill in the blank of a SEC school) has won a national championship. Increasing the number of teams is not equivalent to increasing parity within college football, for the reasons stated in the article.

What’s worse is that the best players are increasingly picking a smaller number of schools, meaning the rich continue to get richer. Add the recent boom of transfers, and the fact that the best among them are also choosing the most talent-rich schools, and you get the sort of playoff we just witnessed....

A concentration of the highest caliber players attend a handful of schools has led to where we are today. We have seen where those players go when they do expand to other teams (usually into the SEC more times than not).

It is too early to tell whether the transportal rule will exacerbate the existing problem, or correct the disparity. In my opinion a school who is already in national championship contention may benefit by picking up that missing piece in the transportal. Otherwise, we are going to continue to have 1-2 (maybe 3 like this year) teams that can compete while the OU's of the world are just happy for the invite.

[AJcat7755]

To be fair, if any team would have played UCF's schedule, they would have been left out as well, similar to a Baylor weak schedule. UCF can't control their conference schedule, but they can control their OOC. Playing FIU, Austin Peay, Maryland, Georgia Tech (game was cancelled), Maine (game was cancelled) is not a way to boost your schedule. While P5 teams can load up their schedule with cupcakes and still make it in due to the conference, G5 have to do the opposite. Some of that may be dictated on what P5 teams will actually play the G5 schools though.

They seem to have taken that resulted and tried to improve their schedule as a result, but it still could use some work.
2019 - Florida A&M, Stanford, @ Pittsburgh
2020 - UNC, FIU, @ Georgia Tech, Florida A&M
2021 - Boise State, @ Louisville, UConn
2022 - @ FIU, Louisville, Georgia Tech

They could really use to play some SEC schools, but I'm not sure if SEC schools want to play them.

Which P5 would schedule them and would they even consider playing UCF at their place? System is still broken.

Well obviously, there are a few they already have scheduled. And UCF doesn't need to be demanding they play at UCF, or else they won't get very many games as it is. The SOS will go up for road games to counter the weaker conference SOS.

I wonder if UF or FSU would consider bringing in UCF for a home game.