AJC > Sports > Tech > Blog > Archives > 2008 > August > 27
Wednesday, August 27, 2008
What If You Ruled the NCAA?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
On the eve of the college football season, there isn’t a whole lot more to say about Georgia Tech. The offense and defense are going to be completely different than what we’re accustomed to and the incoming competition is less than thrilling. Most fans, like myself, are just looking forward to getting into the stadium and seeing some live football…we’re curious as much as we are excited.
While perusing the message boards earlier this evening someone asked a pretty good question.
If you ruled or owned the NCAA what would you change about college football.
Several improvements jumped out at me right away and still others took some thought. Below is a brief list of the first things I’d do.
1) There would be no polls or rankings until early October. This would do away with alot of the early season bias that puts surprise and potential Cinderella teams behind the curve and in the nearly impossible position of climbing into the true mix for the national title.
2) There would be no exclusive TV packages at the individual team or conference level. If you think NBC is sickening as a shill for Notre Dame football, just wait until ESPN starts pimping out the SEC in an effort to enhance their investment.
I say this in spite of the fact that I think the next ACC hoops / football deal will be huge and likely dwarf the ESPN / SEC joint venture. As big as SEC football is, ACC hoops will bring more games and larger viewership and advertisement dollars…in better TV markets.
3) Regular season schedules would be reduced to 10 games and would start in early / mid August. I’m sick of all the BCS schools padding their schedule up to 12 games with cupcakes and lower division teams. And I’d need a few more weeks to accomodate a playoff.
4) The BCS would be used to seed a 16 team playoff that would tie games in with the existing bowls. The additional play off games would be offset by reducing the regular season to 10 games. And the playoff games would be played in neutral “bowl” locations so that there wouldn’t be any perception of the top 16 teams getting richer from a longer schedule with more games. The playoff revenues would go into an bucket that would be shared amongst all the conferences proportionately.
5) Officiating crews would be mixed and not aligned with specific conferences. Officiating is horrendous lately and there are always allegations of favoritism from the refs. Creation of mixed crews from the various conferences would negate the perception of bias.
6) Pay the refs more and hold them to a higher status. The NCAA football season generates millions of dollars. Pay the refs well enough to ensure that you have highly skilled and reliable people making the decisions on game day.
7) Mandatory redshirts for all true freshmen. Graduation rates stink and make a mockery of the term “student athlete”. Allow true freshmen to focus on school as their priority while settling into campus life and determining which course of study they’d like to pursue.
What say you, fellow football fans?
If you could mandate the rules and laws of college football, what would you do?
Obligatory GT prediction: Jackets 38, Gamecocks 13
