As the sports world braces for more information and movement following the move of USC and UCLA to the Big Ten, one has to wonder what the future holds when it comes to college football.
It seems more and more likely as if we are heading towards superconferences in college football, which will further the chasm between the haves and the have-nots. Right now, Mountain West or WAC teams are not on the same level as teams in the Big 12 and Pac-12, and then another gap follows before the SEC and Big Ten. As those conferences continue to poach the Texas’s and USC’s of the world, it will become harder and harder to justify having Vanderbilt or Northwestern joining that upper crust of college football. One way to level the playing field could be to implement a relegation-type system
Relegation has been used very successfully in the English soccer leagues for many years and I believe it should be the future of college football as well. The basic premise of relegation is to have different tiers to your league in order for like-competition to compete together with the hopes of moving to the next tier. The English Premier League, for example, holds the most prestige and offers the most opportunity for money — this would be the SEC/Big Ten tier in my future setup. Here’s how I see it breaking down:
- Power Five tier: Top 65 teams in Division I college football
- Group of Five tier: Bottom (or next) 65 teams in Division I college football
For each tier, there would be their own playoff structure and championship. The top 10 teams from the Group of Five tier would move up while the bottom 10 of the Power Five would move down. This would allow teams to compete with teams more closely aligned with their talent levels and will give them an actual shot at a championship.
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Money coming from TV markets will be the ultimate decider of where teams are initially placed. But this will force teams to “earn” their place in college football in order to keep the luxuries that come with being in that upper tier. As of now, bolstered by its history and TV market, Colorado would most likely place in the Power Five tier, but CU would have to take a major step forward from its recent history to hold that spot.
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