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 Game 

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.

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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?