Now that the College Football Playoff has culminated with Nick Saban and the Alabama Crimson Tide winning their sixth national championship in the last 12 years, the pundits have already penciled in Saban’s Cyborgs as the preseason favorite next year. Not only that, but we pretty much already know that Clemson, Ohio State and probably either Oklahoma or Georgia will join the Crimson Tide in the 2021 College Football Playoff semifinals.
In other words, it will be the same cast of characters; like one of those dusty, old sitcoms you’ve seen a million times on MeTV. … Hey, this is the one where the rock ‘n’ roll band ends up on Gilligan’s Island.
It’s reached a point where everybody agrees that something must be done to jazz up college football’s boring, snoring, monotonous, mundane postseason.
“We really need to look at ways to make the football postseason more meaningful,” says University of Florida athletics director Scott Stricklin, a former member of the College Football Playoff selection committee. “With all the bowl opt-outs happening and — even in non-COVID seasons — bowl-game attendance continuing to go down from what it used to be, our players and our fans are telling us that they would like a more meaningful postseason.”
Translation: It’s time to expand the playoffs and quit pretending like the bowls actually matter.
Florida Gators coach Dan Mullen, whose team was decimated by opt-outs that ruined UF’s Cotton Bowl game against Oklahoma, elaborated on what needs to be done during a live appearance on ESPN’s “Championship Drive” before Monday’s national title game in Miami.
“I think what we have to do to expand the playoffs is we have to be able to let go of the bowl system,” Mullen said. “Now for a lot of people, that will be a sad day. … What bowl games mean are really special.”
But you can still have the bowls in some form or fashion. In an expanded eight- or 16-team playoff, more of the bigger bowls could be incorporated to host the additional playoff games. And there will always be some teams eager to attend bowl games. For instance, the Cure Bowl game this year in Orlando between Coastal Carolina and Liberty was a really fun game that both teams and both fan bases loved playing in.
Mullen also broached the idea of spring exhibition games as an alternative to bowl games.
“Bowl games started as an exhibition,” Mullen told ESPN while on the set in Miami. “You know what would be a really interesting bowl game is to come down here [to Miami] after spring ball and do an exhibition. ... Florida-Southern Cal in May. … A spring game. ... I think you’d have a pretty good fan base and pretty much excitement that kicks off leading into the season. That could be a way to maintain some of the energy and excitement around bowl games.”
And, best of all, there would be no opt-outs!!!
As long as we’re coming up with ideas to improve the college football season, here is a list I have compiled after talking with college administrators, other media members and my peeps on social media.
— Adjust the playoff schedule so the College Football National Championship Game doesn’t get usurped by that massive attention magnet known as the NFL playoffs. There was very little buzz or build-up for Monday night’s national title game because sports fans spent all weekend watching the NFL’s Super Wildcard Weekend games and all day Monday talking about those NFL Super Wildcard Weekend games. By the time the Alabama-Ohio State national championship game was finally played on Monday night, America was all footballed out.
Case in point: Ohio State-Alabama was the lowest-rated national championship game of the playoff era and drew even less viewers than the semifinals on New Year’s Day. So we ask: Why not make New Year’s Day special again by playing bowl games during the day and the national championship game on the night of Jan. 1?
— Force Nick Saban to take the Detroit Lions coaching job.
— Flexible scheduling. If we’ve learned anything during the pandemic, it’s that college football teams can schedule games four days ahead of time instead of 10 years ahead of time. Why couldn’t college football programs all leave open one week during the season, work with their network partners and schedule marquee matchups? For instance, who didn’t want to see a “Battle for the State of Ohio” this season in which undefeated Cincinnati and undefeated Ohio State played in a game that might have determined who made the College Football Playoff? Seriously, would Cincinnati have fared any worse against Alabama than Ohio State did?
— More meat and potatoes; less cupcakes. Use the NFL model and let some innovative master schedule-maker come up with a nonconference schedule for all of the big-boy leagues. That would allow us to avoid Florida’s game next year against Samford and FSU’s games against UMass and Jacksonville State.
— Each Power 5 conference adopts a Group of 5 conference and college football creates a relegation system. This will never happen, but wouldn’t it be awesome if the American Athletic Conference had been paired up with the SEC a couple of years ago, allowing unbeaten UCF to be promoted to the SEC while Vanderbilt would be shipped down to the American? Let’s face it, many of the dead-wood programs at the bottom of Power 5 leagues are just cashing checks.
— Make the games shorter. As the Wall Street Journal wrote a couple of years ago, “You can fly across the country in the time it takes to play a regulation college football game these days.” Believe me, I’ve sat through many a UCF game that has lasted four hours because of all the plays being run and all the passes being thrown. In today’s lack-of-attention-span Twitter world, games need to be closer to three hours than four hours.
— Create more parity by cutting scholarships to 75, which would mean Alabama, Ohio State, Clemson and all of the other big dogs would have 10 fewer stud recruits per season. Those big-time recruits would then trickle down and be dispersed throughout the rest of college football. Who knows, maybe then Florida State would actually be able to get a couple of Clemson’s leftovers!!!
— Put Alabama in the NFC East.
