G’s Exploration or Controversy Abounds, College Football Solved

First, my sincerest apologies for missing Tuesday – I’m sure it didn’t really impact anything, but I was putting the time to good use.  Last week, the Tuesday Rant was all about Voice of the Customer – what would the readers like to hear about? I still want to know your questions/thoughts/ideas – so keep them coming! There were some ideas that came in that really got me thinking.  The issue at hand relates to the parity, or lack thereof, in college football.  There have always been elites, but is there a realistic chance for an outsider to break in.  The answer is yes – it’s been done before.  While Clemson is certainly an elite school now, it wasn’t always so.  And, while I am decidedly not a Clemson fan, Swinney has built a dynasty there.  Teams ebb and flow, but some seem to ebb less. More on that in a minute. How much is coaching vs recruiting?  I am still thinking about how to demonstrate that.  It’s very in depth with having to look at “good”, “medium”, and “poor” coaches – how much did his team improve/decline after arrival and post departure?  Is there consistency when coaching multiple schools?  Les Miles has a reputation for being a high-end coach, but he was 28-21 at Oklahoma State (below their winning pct for the last 10 years), 114-34 at LSU (above and higher than Saban before him and Orgeron after him), and 2-3 (above) so far at Kansas.  His story and that analysis for nature/nurture of college football is to come.  There was a second piece to the issue and that is why do some schools have an advantage over others? Is Columbus really a better place to go to school than Minneapolis?  If you look at football records, it’s clearly yes.  How about Clemson SC over Raleigh?  One specific ask was, will Illinois ever be relevant.  They’ve won the fewest games in the Big 10 in the last 10 years and would have a long road.  How do you recruit to Urbana/Champaign when Chicago is just 3 hours away? How do you compete against Nebraska, Wisconsin, and Iowa who have better reputations?  I think it is difficult, but Clemson did it in a market that is one of the smallest in the country.  So yes, it is possible for teams, in theory even teams that are traditionally are near the cellar of their divisions, to make the playoffs, but it’s rare and a rough road. 

I can’t really answer the questions raised before.  Not without a team of people interviewing players, coaches, the player’s families, scouts, etc. to find out.  That said, I did have a brainstorm that will allow for elite teams (that ebb and flow) and success for the rest of us.  I’m a big believer that nothing breeds success like success so I’m thinking that this plan will help create something closer to parity while rewarding teams that do well consistently.  Before I get into the changes I’m submitting for your discussion/debate, I’ll explain the methodology.  I wanted to isolate the “best” teams.  If I polled 100 fans, I’d have at least 20 different ways to do this, maybe more.  In my mind, the best indicator for the quality of a team is number of wins.  In Baseball, the Astros won 107 games – the most in the MLB.  To say they are the best team in baseball right now is hard to argue – certainly we can break it down to hitting and pitching, power and speed, bench strength and injuries, but it starts with the wins.  The Yankee fan (103 wins) must debunk Houston’s win total to win the argument.  The playoffs will decide who the winner for sure, but now it’s a sprint to 11 wins instead of a marathon of 162 games. All that other stuff, in sport, is secondary to wins.  I used this logic for the upcoming controversy (see what I did there?). I looked at all FBS schools – Power 5 and Group of 5 – who played all of the last 10 years in the FBS.  That means teams like App State, Georgia Southern, UAB, etc. are excluded because they promoted from the FCS within the last decade.  Then I looked at the records for all of the teams – cumulative wins and losses. 

The team with the most wins should not be a surprise.  Alabama is 127-13 during that span.  Ohio State is 115-19, Clemson is 112-27, and Boise State is 109-25 to round out the top 4.  Wait a minute: Boise State is a Group of 5 team who doesn’t play as tough a schedule.  I know, but in this analysis, I simply looked at wins/losses.  Other teams averaging at least 10 wins a season over this extended period are Wisconsin (102), Oklahoma (105), and Stanford (102).  I am making the statement that these are the best 7 teams over the last 10 years.  Can you argue? Of course, but like the Yankees fan, you have to combat the win totals.  As for the Boise State argument, I would counter that it is more difficult for a Go5 team to amass large win totals because of the “normal” 2-3 games played “up” each year.  If you look at the winningest 32 teams during the last decade (2009-2018 to be clear), only BYU, Northern Illinois, UCF, San Diego State, Houston and Ohio join the Broncos.  There are about 55 qualified Go5 (played FBS for the last 10 years) teams and only 7 (13%) of those are in the top 32.  By contrast 25 of the 65 (38%) Power 5 are in.  Ok, Robert, that’s, um, fascinating, but where are you going with this, I mean, this post is already like a novel? Times are changing and while some traditions are awesome, many hinder progress more than anything else.  If we accept the current state of college football is the rich get richer (and only the super rich really have a viable chance at a title) with the occasional but very exciting nouveau riche who show up for a year or two because of a great player or coach. But, most fade away.  Even Illinois, already established not a powerhouse, played in the Rose Bowl in 2007 and won the Big 10 in 2001.  It can and does happen.  My thought on all of this was how could we make it better?  How do we maintain some level of tradition while creating opportunities for more teams to grow and be successful?  Clemson’s rise to power has, overall, weakened the ACC (or at the least the last couple of years and this year, so far, is no exception). It’s to the point now, that if they lose even once, they will be out (compare to anyone in the Pac 12).  So do we balance parity and dominance?

Here comes the controversy.  I took those 32 and pretended we haven’t started the 2019 season yet.  Over the summer, we made this change and came up with the rules (detailed below).  Keep in mind that if this was miraculously adopted after the 2019 season, the 32-team mix would be different as well as the seeding (coming up). This will provide more teams a chance to succeed in the current year and puts pressure/allows opportunity for teams that have struggled before to get recognition.  First, determine who the “elite” really are.  Let’s creatively call them for the rest of the post, The Elite.  Everybody else in FBS we are going to call FBS.  So, 32 elite teams and 98 FBS.  For this discussion we are ignoring FCS – they have their own thing already.  The 32 were decided by looking at the last 10 seasons and, it turns out, anyone that averaged more than 8.0 wins during that stretch fit in.  There were 4 teams that just missed it: Cincinnati, Kansas State, Navy, and Nebraska all had 80.    So, these 32 teams are “promoted” – more on how this works in a minute – to The Elite League.  This is NOT a permanent placement and I will explain how that works coming up.  The Elite is a fully got-to-earn-it-to-stay-there league.  These 32 teams are placed in logical Regions (as closely connected geographically as possible).  There are no conference affiliations – the Regions replace that.  Within the Regions, each of the 8 members is seeded based on the win total of the 10 years (this is a year-one only distinction – seeding rules in future years are coming up).  To break any win-total ties, I went with winning percentage. There were no ties past that. The seeding is important.  Here are the 32 by Region (Region Names are just a convention)

The way the schedule would work is each team plays each other team in the respective Region (vertical on chart) and the other teams in their seed (horizontal on chart).  So, Virginia Tech, as an example, would play Clemson, Florida State, Georgia, Florida, Penn State, UCF, South Carolina, Houston, Ohio, and Utah in the Elite.  Because the 12-game schedule still works, they would work out a game with 2 FBS teams (no FCS teams allowed for the Elite).   This guarantees two things: 1) the Elite play elite schedules – it should be equally brutal for all, and 2) some of these Elite schools will have losing records which is important later.  At the end of the season, the top 4 teams meet in a playoff for the Elite championship.  Any other Elite team with 6+ wins earns the right to a goal. The FBS teams would still play 12 games (one can be an FCS team) but would be differently aligned than today (for example, in 2019, there would only be 7 SEC teams left).  Some sort of regional realignment would have to happen, and conference championships would go away.  The way to solve these for post season is simple.  The top 16 of the FBS compete in a playoff and any other FBS team with 6+ wins can be invited to bowl games just as they are now.  No more conference ties to bowl games.

Now here’s the really fun part.  In 2020, there would be no changes in leagues, but the seeding would switch around in each region using the combined 2018-2019 season wins (post season games count for both Elite and FBS). Before the 2021 season, there would be changes.  I mentioned before that teams have to earn their way into the Elite and earn the privilege to stay there.  Once the playoffs are over in 2020, each team in the Elite is ranked by win total.  The bottom 8, regardless of region, will be relegated, Premiere League style, to the FBS.  The top 8 FBS teams are then promoted into the Elite.  The Regions are redrawn, the existing Elite teams get the top seeds based on wins and the newbies get the bottom spots based on their win totals and we start again.  Each year after that the relegation recurs, with the single rule that no team can change leagues in successive years so a promoted team is protected the first year (to get a running two year Elite total) and the relegated teams have two years to prove their worth to get back in.  New teams coming into the FBS ranks (from FCS or as a new football program) would be eligible after 2 seasons. 

This would a) allow for 20 teams to make the playoffs for a championship (compared to 4 now), b) allow teams that are not perennial powerhouses to play more equal competition and build their program, and c) make every game count every season – that win late in the season when your team is already out of the playoff hunt could mean the difference between another season in the current league or a change.  If they ever put me in charge of college football (and clearly, they should), I would do something like this.  It may be chaotic at first, but it will add excitement for everyone. 

That’s it for this week – again, sorry for the delay, but I’d like to think it was worth it. Comment, discuss, debate, and share with friends.

Thanks, r