From Paul Zeise's article this morning:
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COLLEGE PRESIDENTS AND ADMINISTRATORS HAVE OFFICIALLY LOST THEIR MINDS
West Virginia is now in a conference with Utah and Arizona but not Pitt, Penn State and Syracuse.
Penn State is now in a conference with UCLA, USC, Oregon and Washington but not Pitt, West Virginia or Syracuse.
Pitt is now in a conference — well actually by today’s standards, Pitt’s conference actually somewhat makes sense given they only have to travel to Florida to play games ...
Have no, fear, though, Pitt fans, as there are some rumors swirling that Stanford and California are coming soon to the ACC. No, seriously, we are a few strokes of the pen away from that incredible and budding Wake Forest-Cal rivalry game.
You get the idea that it has all reached an asinine level of asininity. And if there was some rhyme or reason for this latest round of conference re-alignment, I indeed can’t find it.
I am not one of these people who waxes poetic about the good old days of rivalries and “Whoa Nelly, it’s Keith Jackson” and all that nonsense. I am not.
I think that the world evolves, life changes, and what was good 30 years ago may not be good today. Would I like to see some more regional rivalry games come back? Yep, but I don’t spend a single minute obsessing about the changing world of college athletics because change is a part of life.
I don’t love the transfer portal, but I understand it and know it is necessary.
I’m all for the NIL because it means athletes get their piece of the pie without schools having to bankrupt themselves to try and achieve it. NIL is a good thing, even though it has turned into something it probably wasn’t designed to do, either.
Unintended consequences are always going to be a part of change and right now the world of college athletics is trying to handle some of the unintended consequences of NIL and the transfer portal.
Those things are OK, but this conference stuff is ridiculously stupid because the people who are supposed to be the smartest people in the room are apparently the dumbest.
Here is how simple this all could be: Take the top 80 teams, form four 20-team super conferences with two divisions each, and negotiate a TV deal that covers all 80 teams. Make sure the conferences are loosely built around previous conferences and they make some semblance of regional sense and negotiate all as one big block of teams.
And that could be accomplished if the football programs formed their own league separate from the NCAA that includes a commissioner and its own rule books.
Some might say, “That is too much like the NFL,” to which I would say, “And?”
If you have four conferences with two divisions, you could have your 12-team playoff built exactly like the NFL playoffs. The four conference champs get an automatic bye, and there are eight wild card teams. A bunch of other teams could still go to bowl games, keeping that mostly antiquated tradition alive.
The commissioner could negotiate the TV deal for the entire package, and all these teams could stay in their current conference configurations for every other sport.
Don’t tell me it can’t be done because Notre Dame has been doing this for at least 30 years.
Notre Dame’s football is independent and all the rest of its sports are in the ACC. Every other team could do the same thing, except their football would be part of this mega conference idea and not be independent. That’s just how it could happen and how it should happen.
Of course, Notre Dame would be forced to make a decision, and my guess is it would reluctantly join the mega conference deal seeing as being independent isn’t a lot of fun when there is nobody to play and you can’t get into the playoffs.
Sure, this seems far-fetched, but that’s because it is a very simple common sense solution to ensure the sport remains strong and viable. This current model is ridiculous and not sustainable because there will always be schools searching out better deals and greener pastures.
How is it a good thing if teams are changing conferences or rumoring to change conferences every year? Florida State and Clemson aren’t happy with their current deal, so the answer is to add two teams from the West Coast? Give me a break with that nonsense.
College football is killing itself for no reason. And I wouldn’t say that is because some traditional rivals have been killed, but because the current model does not make sense. It isn’t sustainable and will never be stable.
The people that run college athletics are stupid for continuing to allow these things to happen. The power teams and conferences need to all get in one room and figure out how to stop this madness. There are simple solutions, but those would require a lot less ego and a lot more common sense than most college administrators seemingly have.
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This model is not sustainable in the long run...
