College Football Taking Steps in the Wrong Direction

Has the NCAA college football management council ever watched the NCAA basketball tournament? Have they ever seen how exciting each and every game is and how many people are thoroughly enthralled by it? Why are these idiots talking about adding a 12th football game to all Division I schools for the 2006 season? Why not eliminate a regular season game and limit teams to ten games and then have the top 16 teams in a playoff format? If they want to add a game…make it a worthwhile game, the first round to the 'NCAA College Football BCS Championship'. I threw in the BCS because unfortunately, they’re not going away anytime soon.

As it exists now, both Division I-A and I-AA football teams play 11 regular season games - except in years when there happens to be fourteen Saturdays from the first acceptable playing date until the last playing date in November. Only twice in the last seven years, 2002 and 2003, did they qualify for the extra game. Without the new legislation the next time it could happen is 2008.

So if you’re the lucky (and good) two teams that make it to the Championship game you’ll get to play a total of 14 games…just one more than the 13 that a good school will play if they add a 12th game before the bowls.

This will provide the millions of college football fans the opportunity to see who the real champion is. They can continue to have their silly BCS power rankings, ranking the top 16 teams in the nation. The Elite Eight, Final Four and Championship games can play at the host site of the big bowl games – Sugar Bowl, Rose Bowl, Orange Bowl etc. All they would have to do is rotate who gets what game. Inevitably you’ll have several upsets and a bunch of thrilling games that will grab the public’s attention and make it a popular tournament. We can even have a seeding committee every year…so that we can talk about how stupid they are. I can hear it now, “How did Florida State get the #5 seed?” or “There’s no way that Texas Tech should be in this tournament.”

This new idea was given tentative approval by the management council at its off-season meeting on Monday and will be sent to the NCAA Board of Directors for a final vote on April 28th. Interestingly enough, the 12-game proposal for college football was one of more than one hundred ideas considered by the council on Monday.

To me college football has all of the potential to be even more exciting than college basketball. Right now, it’s just not. There is finality with college b-ball, but it seems like every other year we’re left wondering if the #1 team really is the best.

Will they ever learn? Probably not…