(Photo from ASU media.)
@MarkKnudson41
Everyone knows that college football is becoming more and more professionalized every year. Players are about to start getting paid by their schools (including a pseudo salary cap), the playoffs have been expanded and leagues are becoming bi-coastal. So why is it that these college football mega conferences refuse to go back to having two (or more) divisions like the NFL?
There’s simply nothing more ridiculous than an 18-team conference.
A few years back when realignment had created some imbalance in conferences like the Big 10, where the West was significantly weaker than the East, the uproar was that “the two best teams in the conference should play each other for the conference championship.” Fine. But what has actually happened? Now that conferences have cannibalized themselves into mega-conferences where some conference foes meet only once every few season, we need a complicated set of tiebreakers to determine who those top two teams are.
Somewhere along the way teams are getting screwed over…worse than before.
Take the Big 12 this season. With one game to go, there’s a four-way tie for first. All four teams could win because none play each other. What happens then is that two teams – with the same record as the other two – get to watch the title game on TV.
It would be one thing if they had all actually played each other during the season – then you have a natural tiebreaker. But in the case of the Colorado Buffaloes, for example, they haven’t played ANY of the other teams in contention for the title. Not one.
The Buffs are likely finish 7-2 in their new conference only to be kept out of the title game due to convoluted tie breakers.
Their in-state rival Colorado State is in a similar situation in the Mountain West. The Rams could win their last game, finish with just one conference loss, and watch another one-loss team, who they did not play, play for the MW title. If the MW still had divisions, Colorado State would win theirs and be playing for the conference title.
So exactly how is this “tiebreaker” arrangement better than having two division winners play in the conference championship game?
It would be simple to put the 18-team Big Ten for example, into two divisions, and guess what? This year you’d have Oregon winning the West and Ohio State winning the East and it would be nice and neat. They’d play for the conference title and a playoff bye and there’d be zero gripes.
And if there’s and East and West, travel will be simpler and more reasonable. What’s the logic of having a team like UCLA making two or even three trips to the eastern time zone in a single season and not playing conference rival Oregon, for example?
There’s a reason the NFL has divisions, and it’s not so there’s some sort of “guarantee” that the best two teams in each conference play for the title. That’s what the playoffs are for.
This season, if there was a Western division of the 16-team Big 12, Colorado would have played BYU and Arizona State instead of Central Florida and Cincinnati. Head to head would be the only tiebreaker needed to determine who plays in the title game. No complications, no voting, no rankings or even stupid computer tiebreakers. No gripes. What happened on the field would be the determining factor.
Isn’t that how it’s supposed to be?
It’s so simple. Why hasn’t anyone thought of this before? Oh, wait. They did. Then they stupidly changed it.
An 18-team Big Ten. An 18-team SEC. A 17-team ACC (Notre Dame needs to get with the program here) and a 16-team Big 12.
No divisions. Champs determined partly by voters and tiebreakers instead of head-to-head competition. Kinda like figure skating.
Ridiculous.
