There are plenty of things that bug me about college football. There are a lot of things that bug me about Notre Dame football. The ‘how to improve college football’ articles have been numerous and wide ranging in recent years, especially since the playoff and conference realignment shifted the landscape.
Almost two months ago SB Nation’s Bill Connelly unveiled a series of improvements to the college game revolving around the creation of a commissioner for the sport. Here were his ideas:
Student-Athlete Bill of Rights
I like it but I’m not overly passionate about it. I’ve grown to become very pro-players on almost all these issues but I have limits for two reasons. One, there are limits to the amount of money to spend on players. Two, we’ve come a long way in the discussions over the last 5 years and I feel like things will get better eventually.
Modernizing Amateurism
This is basically an extension of the above rule changes. Yeah, I’m okay with sitting down and giving this a real hard look but it doesn’t really bother me from an entertainment standpoint.
Fix Recruiting
Some good things, some bad things. A lot of proposed changes are solutions looking for problems which I’ve made my thoughts well known on something like the early signing period. We’ll always be trying to fix recruiting but there’s so much of it that can’t be fixed.
Bring Back the NCAA Football Video GameÂ
You pretty much don’t have a soul if you don’t want this to return.
Promotion and Relegation
As a budding soccer fan I love this idea but it’s just way too unrealistic. If it was truly enacted it would be awesome on so many levels, though. It’d be even better if we shrunk down the size of the current FBS division to start things off and then implement a soccer-style system.
Expand the Playoff to 8 Teams
Not much of a hot take, a pretty standard expansion of the playoff that if you are in agreement to expand you’ll probably be okay with this plan. I’m fine with it.
Scrap Divisions
Scrapping divisions in favor of pods as described by Bill is the most common sense and easiest change to enact.
Bracket Buster Non-Conference Scheduling
If this was the only change out of everything discussed it’d be interesting to try out for a season and see how it goes. When compared to the rest of the changes this isn’t really that high on my priority list because other changes could bring the same quality non-league matchups.
Decrease the Time of Games
If we’re talking about what’s best for the fans this, and the return of NCAA Football, should have happened already.
***
Most of these ideas are fun to discuss, especially the ones that really have a chance to be implemented. Over the last couple months I’ve been watching the NBA and I can’t help but see and read over and over how professional basketball now rivals–and in some cases has exceeded–the NFL in the amount of sustained attention the game receives in the off-season.
The NFL and NBA are now fully 365 days-a-year sports. Should college football be too?
I’m a little biased because the market I live in is 65% NFL coverage, 30% NHL coverage, and 5% to everything else. It’s sad for a college football fan but also really humorous when the NFL Draft comes around and you have a bunch of people so clueless about 99% of the prospects. It’s like this great vibrant sport in college doesn’t exist!
Be that as it may, I don’t think anything bugs me on a more consistent basis than the college football calendar. If you’re reading this on the day its published it has been 228 days since Notre Dame’s last football game. When the opener against Temple rolls around it will have been 280 days in between football games.
280 days!!
Granted, a lack of a bowl game exaggerates those numbers. But still, the college football season is way too short. It’s even pretty annoying when the season rolls around and as a writer you’re constantly forced to start covering the next game when 70% of the time you just want to keep thoroughly recapping the previous game.
Another interesting tidbit that I’ve noticed over the last couple years is how our site and writers have more of a future outlook with basketball as opposed to a more in-the-moment outlook for college football. For example, our Slack basketball channel is pretty much vibrant and interesting most days whereas our college football talk can run dry for a week or longer. During the respective seasons I’ve also noticed how much a game drives discussion of what’s to come in basketball whereas with football we’re looking ahead so much less. I don’t know which way is better, and the set up the sports is a huge factor, but I do think it helps to keep basketball relevant when the games end.
This is just a long way of saying the college football schedule sucks. I’ve been advocating for games to be played every 2 weeks and I see so many positives against few if any negatives. For example, for the upcoming season Notre Dame’s season would look like this played every 2 weeks:
September 2nd
September 16th
September 30th
October 14th
October 28th
November 11th
November 25th
December 9th
December 23rd
January 6th
January 20th
February 3rd
I really long for the days of having football games breathe for a couple weeks and then a game preview isn’t needed in a 48-hour turn around. From a media standpoint the season stretches out and is talked about longer and can conveniently finish up right before March Madness. This all seems like a win for everyone.
Mostly, I don’t know how player health and safety isn’t leading the charge for a stretched out schedule. You could argue the season being longer hurts students but you could also reduce practice times over the longer breaks in between games and that should help the focus on academics. The extra recovery time for injuries should be a no-brainer, too.
If the college football schedule is stretched out then you could push things like spring ball and National Signing Day back a little further on the calendar, as well. Are any of these dates sacred?
Lastly, I’d like more time to think about ideas of sprucing up the college football off-season but I’ll leave that for another day. In my opinion, spring ball all across the country has grown really stale and there could be plenty of opportunities to try out something new for greater media access and fan entertainment. Any ideas from our readers?
Most importantly. FOR THE LOVE OF GOD BRING BACK EA’s NCAA FOOTBALL!
I have been calling for more bye weeks in college and the NFL for years. NFL should add a bye week for every team before their Thursday night game. It is such an easy way to extend the season a week (i.e. increase TV revenue) without increasing games. Thursday games wont suck so hard, more rest for players in season.
For CFB, I think 2 weeks for EVERY game is a bit excessive, and while it would be great for southern state schools (where many more people can get back and forth to campus easily and it’s warmish all year), those last 4 games at ND would be a combination of hard to get to for students (and all people on the 23rd) and not overly enjoyable to attend. As an alum, I would never boterh going to a game in Jan/Feb.
That said, I would love to see 3 bye weeks (for us just add one before and after Navy). As an adult with a life that revolves around CFB way more than it should (I have skipped weddings for @OU and @Clem), it would be great if there were 2 extra weeks in the fall where I could do things and not have to plan around watching ND football. Early December is probably the least interesting time of the year. Too cold to casually enjoy the outdoors, no skiing yet, no one does cool vacations, so playing games the first two weeks of December would be awesome for me personally.
I’d love games being played in Dec/Jan/Feb. My HS season lasts until the last week of October and then playoffs start. I almost cant get up to SB at all unless I get lucky to have an off-week or I risk not being in town for the first week of playoffs. I’d definitely welcome a chance to get up there a few months later in the year.
Not sure how many trips a Texas boy will want to make to SB in Feb. I am from Maine and have no interest traveling there Jan-Feb. Early December, all for it, and that would give opportunities to a bunch more people (although not all) like you who are involved with football every weekend.
I prefer making a trip to ND when it’s frigid cold out. It’s so darn hot here in the winter, going up to SB has been the only chance I get to see snow the last few years. I went to a game in September one year and it was like being at a game here in Dallas, not SB. I like cold weather, so that’s not a prob for me at all
But in the future with decreased attendance and smaller stadiums I don’t think butts in seats is a real big driver for decision making.
Plus, we got field turf for a reason!
Every Saturday in January interferes with ski season. That probably influenced my opinions more than my concern for clearwall or students freezing their tuchas(es/i/ae/a? I am not familiar with Yiddish plural declensions) off. Just wanted to make it sound like I was considering the well being and overall enjoyment of others.
“Most importantly. FOR THE LOVE OF GOD BRING BACK EA’s NCAA FOOTBALL!”
This is all I wanted to say and vote up for.
And while it seems inevitable that the NCAA has to eventually relent and allow players the obvious: to enable those able to benefit financially (selling autographs, etc) from selling their likeness and celebrity, I could see them still trying like they have over the past few years to hold the line on it, which obviously means shying away from a video game that clearly uses thousands of player likenesses.
Shame, since the players lose out on a little bit of coin from it, and the fans lose out on an enjoyable game. Also a shame that despite popularity of NCAA 13 (the final one), Microsoft and Sony can’t or won’t offer any NCAA football to be reverse-engineered to be played on their latest consoles.
An idea from a former college athlete:
What the fans want and what the players need are two totally separate things. I’m well aware that all sports are year-round endeavors these days, but off-season hours aren’t as bad as in-season. When it comes to college in general, I’m pro-degree attainment. Protracting the CFB season would be great for fans, but pretty brutal on players, so I’m not in favor.
I often feel that we, as Americans, have lost sight of what college ought to be, now that our major research institutions are inextricably linked to major sports and entertainment programs. I’m a staunch supporter of knowledge and truth, even if it comes at the expense of our beloved college sports. I cringe when I listen to interviews of certain players in certain sports because they can hardly construct a coherent sentence. Is that really who we want representing some of the best institutions on the planet?
My idea for college sports is to move basketball and football onto the baseball system. Create a true developmental system for prospects and establish an amateur draft so that kids who don’t want to play school don’t have to waste the time and resources of barely passing for 3 years only to leave and never finish the degree. I think the Ivy League has the right model, although I’m OK with allowing athletic scholarships (for those who can get into the school on merit) and playing 12 football games per season.
I could write a novel on this, but I’ll stop here. Bring on the other opinions.
I couldn’t agree more with your last paragraph. I had just written up a novella on how we should divide CFB into minor league and an Ivy2.0. But no one wants to read that.
Why make football players go to college when they frequently have no interest in it whatsoever and are getting nothing out of it, other than it being a drain on their time and energy (if they attend class at all)????? Makes no sense.
Schools that don’t care about academics should simply pull FB from the NCAA and create a minor league where they pay players as employees. Saban can be the commissioner and create his own rules. They already have built in fan bases and infrastructure, which has been the downfall of so many alt FB leagues. I doubt they would lose fans as they would still be the Alabama Crimson Tide or Ohio State Buckeyes, and would only play class slightly less than now.
The rest of schools can go back to offering something actually valuable to students for their service of playing football. Hopefully, although this definitely won’t happen, it will take some of the pressures off of schools and students to win, so the students can be actual students. Basically, a small group of schools leave, the rest turn into Ivies (but offer scholarships).
Well that started getting long quickly. Basically, I think the current setup is a total farce and needs to be completely ripped apart.
There aren’t any “schools that don’t care about academics”. Look at any roster in the country, and there will invariably be some kids that do care about their academics and are getting a shot at an education, sometimes one they wouldn’t otherwise get. I know it’s a shocker to some people, but there are actually some smart, earnest kids playing football at Alabama and Ohio State.
You can’t make something that is all shades of gray to be so black and white and then develop “solutions” based on that. It just doesn’t reflect reality.
I’m not at all against some sort of minor league system, if that’s of interest and value to the top prospects of any given class, but I really don’t like painting other programs we may not like with such a broad, unflattering brush and telling them they should just play a different game because we say so. I’ve seen some version of this roughly a billion times on ND websites. It’s just so silly and petty.
That is a classic fallacy of composition. Because members of a team care about academics does not mean that the school does. School caring !=> players care. Players caring !=> schools care.
There are schools that have made it pretty clear they don’t care about academics for their athletes, and some very prestigious academic schools at that. Barrett Jones won the Outland, Rimington, and was an academic all-American. That does not mean that Alabama cares about the academic side of their football program.
Honestly, Alabama isn’t the best example, they are generally top 5 in SEC grad rates. Better examples are Cal and UNC. But Bama is an easy example because it seems obvious to the entire country that what Saban says goes.
Kids like Barrett Jones would just have to go to another school (I mention above I don’t see more than 30 or so schools doing this), or play minor league at Bama. He could even be a minor leaguer for Bama, and still attend the University of Bama, assuming they pay him at least the cost of tuition.
My idea will never happen. If a minor league is ever created, it won’t be from existing colleges. University presidents in particular would never go for it. But this would make so much sense as a way to create a minor league. After all the outrage for like 3 years, it would probably function quite nicely, with almost no lost fans.
I also want to clarify something here.
For me, the point of creating this separate league, has nothing to do with wanting Bama, tOSU, all the other good teams, to move to some separate league with no laws because I don’t like them. I personally have no problem with what Saban does, and probably think it a lot more moral than most people.
My inspiration is purely to create a situation in which kids who want to play football, but don’t want to play school, can do so. The whole, create a league out of existing colleges is because it is a way to create a minor league that might actually work, where so many others have failed. It also stems from stories I have heard about places like KU, where they build an amazing athlete dorm, but the local word was they did it to actually get the basketball players as removed from the regular student body as possible, for everyone’s sake.
I don’t think some desire to separate a football team from school should be considered a negative reflection on the school (but it is by most people). It is just a logical way to create a
My only actual ire at schools is for places like UNC where they created a fake major, UGA where Malcolm Mitchell couldn’t read until he was like a JR and learned on his own from a local book club, and Cal who graduate less than 50% of their African-American football players despite being a great school.
Yeah, I’m not really keen on having this discussion today. At least that wasn’t my intent. I do agree there’s a difference between fan entertainment and the student athlete…sometimes.
I do think a longer season with one hour practices spread out over two weeks is far healthier for the mind and body than longer practices and more games in a shorter time frame jam packed into the beginning of the school year.
We just had an offseason where we found out players were missing workouts because of school work. Shorter time commitments and more prep time for each game just has to make their lives easier.
As much as I enjoy watching a bunch of college football games, I think it might be a good idea to shorten the season down from 12 games. This would benefit the players’ health and keep the season to one semester (so that they can concentrate on academics during the offseason.
The one thing that I think MUST HAPPEN is that games need to be shortened – it seems like some games are cracking the 4 hour mark in recent years. Fewer / shorter ads and commercial breaks (make up for this with some background ads during gameplay like in soccer, slightly shorter halftime, let the clock keep running after first downs (except for the last few minutes of a half), and set a time limit for replay reviews.
Is there anything that keeps college football from having a running clock? I know they stop the clock to reset the first down markers, but how does the NFL do it?
NFL Rule is that the clock runs continuously except for injury, timeouts, scores, and change of possession, incomplete passes. The NCAA does the same except inside 2 mins of either half, the clock stops on 1st down and does not start again until the ball is legally snapped.
I meant is there any technical reason for the difference. Could colleges adopt NFL rules?
Rules changes occur every two years. It’d have to be brought before the committee and implemented. This is going to happen this season with a couple new ones and there cant be any new rules except for safety-related ones for another 2 years.
We could go back to 10 games if D1 morphed into Power 5 teams playing only Power 5 teams again. And maybe tweak the conference alignments.
I’m just going to address one point of yours and simply give my perspective. I’m not saying you’re wrong, but wanted to point something out. The game time is really not affected much by the first down clock rule. Although if we did go to the NFL system, that would definitely help a little bit.
I did some rough calculation(and if anyone can think of a better methodology, please let me know) and I come up with about 10 mins or so saved if you continue running the clock after a 1st down. I know this number is not exactly right because inside 2:00 the clock COMPLETELY stops after a 1st and some first downs come from change of possessions, but the average is probably pretty close. What I did was I google searched for total first downs per game. I got a list here:
http://www.esportsbookreviews.com/college-football-team-first-downs-per-game/
Averaged all of those up and got the average for all of CFB to be 22-23 first downs per game. Officials have a philosophy that we try to get the ball spotted by :31 seconds on the play clock(so 9 seconds). I stretched that out to 15 to try to account for the odd deep ball and the occasional play where it might delay that timing. So 22 plays times 15 got me 337 seconds. Divide that by 60 and I get 5.6 mins per team per game. Double that and 10-12 mins per game is what you save by having the running clock. I mean, that’s significant sure but I dont think that’s going to help your problem of games “lasting 4 hours.”
I’ve always maintained that what will REALLY help is putting rules restricting the use of instant replay. I dont advocate completely removing it because in general, I think it’s a good thing, but once IR is invoked this is what takes WAAAAAAAAAAY too long and has been the #1 culprit in extending games. I’ve posted back on the old site before(while Eric still ran it) my strategy for simplifying and shortening it and it begins with limiting the number of views and the number of times the replay official can view it. In the end, a replay should not take more than about a minute to make a decision. I’m sure most of us would agree that in the first one or two replays we see on a broadcast we’re thinking “that’s a ____” or “that’s definitely not _____.” The major delay comes when replay spends 5 mins going through 5 views of 1/500th speed videos for EVERY….FREAKING….SINGLE….REVIEW. Im thinking my strategy, and if we threw yours in as well, we could shave 30 mins easily.
I agree wholeheartedly on the idea to trim replay time. As you pointed out, replay review should be a 1 minute process – improve something that was missed on the field and then move on.
How do you feel about the NFL replay? At most a few a game, and I think one of the reasons they moved it to a centralized person/team is to improve efficiency along with consistency. Would you rather have CFB adopt full NFL replay rules, or do you think just cutting down on time per replay would be enough?
I think it is even worse at ND, as it seems to generally go to commercial, and then we have to wait for Orange Arm Man to let play resume even after the replay is sorted out.
I’ve also thought they should significantly rethink reviews. My favorite idea is to give the coaches 3 or 4 reviews and eliminate the booth review. Too many 3 yard passes get reviewed.
I’ll reply to you, but I’ll address NDJB up above as well.
Here’s my summarized plan for replay:
*You get infinite number or replays…as long as you keep getting them right(kind of like Family Feud style). Every one you get wrong, you get a strike. 2 Strikes and you’re out of replays the rest of the game.
*Standard rules for what can and cannot be reviewed stand for coaches challenges
Here’s where it really starts getting different:
*Each replay follows a pre-defined process:
1. A live speed replay focusing on the specific area of concern is shown. I do this because
officials have to make split-second decisions and I feel that the replay official should
also be under that same pressure. It would help him understand the thought process of
the calling official.
2. The replay booth has at a max 3 different angles they can pick out of all the camera
angles available. After the live speed video is shown, they must select the three, after
which all other angles go blank and cannot be viewed.
3. Only three speeds are available 1/4 speed, 1/2 speed, full speed
4. Each replay angle can be viewed ONLY two times. The official can select the frame rate
desired for each angle but once the two viewings are complete, they cannot be viewed
again. For instance, the official can watch the full speed and 1/4 speed but not the 1/2,
1/4, AND full.
5. Have a 2:00 clock running from the time the first replay video is shown. After the 2:00
is hit, the entire system goes blank and the call must be made.
6. Eliminate the touchdown confirmation on plays that do not include the goalline or
sideline or endline. We don’t need to confirm catch/no catch in the middle of the EZ. If
a coach wants to challenge, then fine but otherwise, kick the darn XP
I do like the centralized command center idea, but I don’t think it’s really necessary. The NFL can do it because they only have about 12 games going at a time, CFB has about 30 of them. It would kind of get tough to accurately have that much staff at a central location. Plus, I’m more about making the replay official more of an on-field official than I am distancing him from the crew. I think part of why so many fans get upset with replay decisions is because they overthink it too much and get wrapped up in too much minutiae.
I apologize for taking us down this path.
I think we forget that practices aren’t the only things required of student-athletes. They’re also expected to lift (1-1.5 hours), review film (1 hour), and attend position group meetings (1 hour), all of which aren’t covered under the NCAA’s 2-hour practice limit. Reducing practices to 1 hour but nearly doubling the amount of time during the school year in which the kids have to do film and meetings, I think, is even worse than the condensed schedule they have now.
From an entertainment standpoint, I agree. Bring back EA NCAA Football, make the season longer, and promote during the off-season. From a student and university standpoint, please, no.
Decrease lifting, film, etc. as well. Easy!
Not when multi-million dollar salaries and TV contracts are involved.
I can see it happening before we solve the 150+ year problem of athletes being in college and not really caring about academics.
Touché
How has this not been mentioned yet… MORE GAMES IN AUGUST! When ND goes undefeated it is indubitably, undeniably, categorically good for college football. Ipso facto, the only concern for the college game should be how to fit an entire season in the month of August.
Keeping football season in football season is important enough to me that the ‘bye between every game’ idea seems a bit too radical, though I like where it comes from. I think the scarcity of CFB makes those 14 or so Saturdays every autumn more special than if it were spread out more, but I recognize the idea of ‘less is more’ has completely disappeared from the world of sports.
Minimalism FTW!
Two birds, one stone for Eric. NDSU might be the only team that would go to South Bend for a January game.
Re: Academics. How about using graduation rates to penalize schools for scholarships? For example, “Hey Cal, you only graduated 48% of athletes, so you only get 70 scholarships next year.” Probably would create all kinds of UNC phony majors, so maybe this kind of thing would simply open new cans of worms.
Good article and interesting points. Just one small thing: it’s ‘relegation’ and not ‘regulation’. And I love that idea not just for CFB, but for all sports!
Fixed, why did it take so long for someone to point that out!?!?