College football is a borderline anarchy. While the sport’s decades of disorder have produced plenty of what we love about it, it’s still a lumbering beast that’s hard to redirect when necessary.
If you were in charge of college football, what’s the first thing you’d change?
Say you got to instantly make one major change to this sport. What would it be? Let us know in the comments.
Photo by Bill Pugliano/Getty Images
Bill Connelly — my colleague who annually writes in great detail about every FBS team, among other things — is running for the title of college football commissioner, a job that’s never existed. He has a nine-point plan, ranging from better student-athlete representation to hacking conference schedules, to expanding the Playoff responsibly.
We’d like to hear from you on all this as well. When Shutdown Fullcast, the bizarre college football podcast I co-host with Spencer Hall and Ryan Nanni, posed the following to our listeners, we got a lot to discuss.
Let’s go through a few categories of response, based on how urgent our listeners as a group seemed to deem them.
1. The first chronological reply to that tweet, with others agreeing: Let the players make money somehow.
The issue of how to compensate players in a modern amateur sport isn’t simple. Bill’s proposal calls for an updated definition of amateurism that includes a universal athlete Bill of Rights and allows players to make money in the free market but doesn’t require schools to pay salaries. I’m not smart enough to know the perfect way to make sure the millions of dollars that flow through this sport also flow proportionately to the athletes, so that’s as good of a general idea as I know of.
2. Bring back the damn video game.
Lots of comments like these:
This goes hand-in-hand with No. 1. EA Sports has said it wanted to pay players for their appearances in NCAA Football, which could’ve headed off the legal battles that killed the game series. If we find a way for players to make money from third parties, the game can return.
3. Make Power 5 status something teams have to earn and defend on the field.
We’ve been having fun for years with the idea of soccer-style promotion and relegation in college football. Bill sums up the argument here. This might’ve been the most popular suggestion, actually.
4. BRING BACK OLD STUFF
5. Hack something.
Tons of loosie ideas, including:
6. Be sure the new commissioner makes a lot of money.
Some of the most honest tweets:
7. Knock Nick Saban down a peg.
Many of you seem to have had enough of Alabama winning all the time. Other entities The People really want to see punished include Larry Culpepper, the SEC, Notre Dame, Florida’s road schedule, Lane Kiffin, neutral-site games, FBS vs. FCS games, and Jim Delany.
Your turn. What would you do as college football commish?
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