How an Online Forum Helped Me Fix College Football

I know there are some of you out there who would object to the notion that college football needs fixing, and there's a decent argument. It's immensely popular, rakes in money, and the new playoff system has generated a boatload of intrigue. Put aside the issue where they scheduled this year's semifinals on New Years Eve, assuring no one under the age of 30 would watch, and the NCAA seems to be doing just fine.

But dig a little deeper and you start to see some holes that need fixing. Quality of competition in the power conferences gets dragged down by teams who don't belong by either talent or location. My alma mater of Syracuse University is no exception. They're about as close to Ohio as they are to the Atlantic Coast, yet continue to stink it up in the ACC.

And by no means should we stop there. What are Colorado and Utah doing in the PAC 12? Who put West Virginia in the Big 12? And seriously, who thought it was a good idea to put teams from Philadelphia and Houston in the same conference? Realignment needs to be reined in to maintain some semblance of geographic consistency.

There's also that inevitable moment coming, when two teams have an equally valid claim for the 4th and final spot and only one of them can make it. It already reared its ugly head back in 2014, when Ohio State leapfrogged TCU (pun intended?) to get in and then wound up winning the whole thing.

This thing looks more like a triceratops that can stand upright 
than a horned frog. And that's WAY more terrifying...

So why not prevent that scenario from happening altogether? Why not devise a system where it's clear-cut who makes the playoffs and who doesn't? And what if it simultaneously kept conferences geographically intact, competitively tiered, and featured realignment every year? Well thanks to one of the greatest websites on Earth, it can. And I've already been putting it to the test.

Take a quick peek over at OperationSports.com. Anyone who plays a sports video game will be quick to see how useful it can be. It helps you get started on the perfect gameplay and slider settings to make your game feel as real as possible. It points you to the best downloads, so you can play MLB the Show 15 with rosters from 1998. You know, back when baseball was fun. And you'll also find plenty of unconventional ways to make the experience even better.

So following the lead of the man, the myth, the legend JoshC1977, it's time to devise a promotion/relegation system in college football.

Check out the link if you want the nitty-gritty details, I'll go over the basics here. Conferences are split into 3 tiers of 4, and within each conference every team is assigned a different sub-region corresponding to its home state. For instance in the SEC, teams from the Carolinas, Tennessee, and Georgia join the Bluegrass Division; while teams from Florida, Mississippi, and Alabama join the Swamp Division. Even for teams in the lower tiers like the ACC and Sun Belt, which don't have enough teams for divisions, those correspondences remain in place for the program that gets promoted.

At the end of every season, the tier 3 conference champ heads up to tier 2, replacing the last place team in that conference. The tier 2 conference champ also heads up to tier 1. It's all simple enough, and while determining who gets sent down from tier 1 is a bit more complex to maintain divisional balance, the premise remains the same.

So what's the point of all this, and how does it make college football better? Let me refer to my dynasty file on my PS3 version NCAA 14, in which I used the custom conferences feature to put this all to action. You know how the first few weeks of the season are always littered with heavyweights playing cupcakes? In the first 3 weeks here, I've seen Oregon vs. Texas, Alabama vs. Florida State, Michigan vs. Notre Dame, and Florida vs. Miami. The big boys can't hide anymore. And as the competition gets tougher, the stakes get higher.

Imagine the traditional USC-UCLA matchup on the last Saturday of the regular season. Only, after a lost season for the Trojans, the Bruins have a chance to knock them down to the Mountain West. It's not as crazy as it sounds. UCLA themselves were flirting with last place not too long ago. It's a system where college football's traditional rivalries are not only preserved, but possibly enhanced.

And while we're looking towards the end of the season, might as well explain how this is perfect for the playoffs. 4 teams are crowned champions of the 4 tier 1 conferences. Those 4 teams make the playoffs. Simple, clean, and no human judgment involved whatsoever. If you throw in the conference championship games as de facto quarterfinals, you now in essence have an 8-team playoff without any extra strain on the players.

The change would the entire college football season compelling, from start to finish. It's far from perfect, but it's about as close to it as any sports system--real or imaginary--that I've ever seen. Would it ever happen in real life? No chance. the ACC would throw a hissy fit, and programs like Kentucky and Colorado would be absolutely screwed. But hey, we once thought a playoff was impossible altogether, and look where we are now. So in conclusion, fuck that Dr. Pepper guy. He may have invented the playoff, but I just perfected it.