Hamburgers, College Football, Relegation and You

Hamburgers are one of my favorite foods. Not to start a confrontation with any German readers, but the hamburger is perhaps the most American of foods. We created it. We made it glorious. We made it terrible. We make them everywhere and we eat more of them than anyone else. Eating hamburgers is an American national pastime: ranked right up there with winning world wars, winning the Stanley Cup and the NCAA proving time and again that they are a bunch of degenerate troglodytes that offer us nothing we couldn’t find elsewhere. 

Currently, the most famous hamburgers in the world are any that Jim Harbaugh is being suspended over because he doesn’t remember buying them. While the rest of the country celebrates the making, grilling, consuming and purchasing of hamburgers, the NCAA, in all its vainglory, considers failing to remember purchasing something that Jim Harbaugh purchases probably 3 - 4 times a week - red meat and all that - a punishable offense. With this move, the NCAA has finally - for perhaps only the 200 or 300th time - proven that it is a cumbersome relic of a bygone past and is no longer a suitable enterprise in the modern world. 

All of this is to say that it is time for the powers that be - namely the Power 5 conferences - to jettison the NCAA for a model of collegiate athletics that entertains, excites and enlightens, while also empowering its athletes and treating them like what we have long known they are - employees (who should be allowed to unionize and collectively bargain as is their right as workers). 

With this in mind, I give to you one human’s very humble proposal for college football realignment. For the purposes of both brevity and my sanity, I will leave other sports to other folks, so long as they fix the college hockey tournament and let northern baseball teams achieve some semblance of competitive balance. The key element of this proposal is to follow English football’s tiered stratum of competition, along with its system of relegation, which will provide American viewers with a vested interest for teams who are not historically good to move up, thus increasing both their standing and revenue in the sport, as well as creating intrigue in matchups that would normally have very little. Want to watch Vanderbilt versus UT San Antonio right now? Not particularly. Want to watch it if the winner jumped up to the second division? Or the loser was relegated to the third? Yes. Yes you do. Before we get to the specifics, some background knowledge might be handy. 

What is relegation and why do I care about it? 

Relegation exists in soccer leagues throughout the world, but for the purposes of this article I will focus on the English football pyramid. The theory is simple: the worst teams in a league probably don’t belong in that league and should do everything in their power to not suffer the ignominy and shame of being relegated to a lower league. Conversely, the very best teams in the league deserve to be celebrated and given the opportunity to succeed at higher levels. In England the pyramid looks like this: 

Let’s forget about everything below League Two for now and focus on the top four levels of English football. The Premier League, widely regarded as the best soccer league in the world, boasts some of the most recognizable and successful clubs in the world, as well as one complete turd sandwich. The lower divisions are an assemblage of clubs that vary wildly from former Premier League winners, to teams at least partially owned by American sports icons, or Mac and Deadpool, each with differing ambitions, finances and histories. 

For anyone who watched the Welcome to Wrexham documentary, or has ever watched the Championship playoffs, there is an element of suspense, drama, excitement, and heft that is unsurpassed by anything in American sports. We might dominate the Stanley Cup (shameless plug) - and hamburgers - but watching the emotions of a club that staved off relegation on the final day of the season has no comparable in USA#1. Spend some time and watch that video of Everton’s survival to stay in the Premier League. Those are fans going absolutely bonkers simply because they didn’t suck enough to be relegated. They were still terrible, but not as terrible as three other teams, and because of that there is reason to celebrate. This is what relegation and promotion brings you. 

Applying that to college football adds a level of excitement and drama to what is already America’s most intense, emotional and passionate sport. Not only does this add to the sheer insanity and madness of an already mad sport, but it also creates intrigue, excitement and anxiety throughout all levels because at every step of the way there is something to be fighting for. I am sure that there are folks out there who will poo poo any plan to add promotion and relegation into American sports as unfeasible, but those people are probably too busy having absolutely no joy in their soulless, trite and far too serious lives to read this article in the first place. Either way, don’t listen to them. We need less curmudgeons and more Taylor Swift* in the world. 

*Meaning: if you are going to be sad, at least turn that sadness power pop gold instead of sitting on your front porch complaining about the sun showing up again.

As stated earlier, we are, for the purposes of this thought exercise, focusing on the Power Five conference teams, of which there are 69 since we are apparently legally obligated to include Notre Dame in whatever the hell they want to be included in. The theory being that if there were indeed a breakaway in college athletics it would be led by the P5 teams and they would be loath to suddenly jettison conference rivals in such a move. 69, however nice it might be, is a rather odd number and odd numbers are no fun. So, we will bring in the top eleven Group of Five teams as well to give us an even 80 teams to work with across four divisions. Using the final standings from last season as a guide, let’s reimagine college football in a post NCAA world where colleges and universities realize the power they have had all along to make all of the money and not allow themselves to have punishments and rules dictated to them by an entity that cares only about making money and parades amateurism as some sort of honorable model that totally isn’t about the exploitation of a workforce largely made up of men of color in its revenue sports. 

The Tiers

College Football Premier League (CFPL)

Georgia Bulldogs
Texas Christian Horned Frogs
Michigan Wolverines
Ohio State Buckeyes
Alabama Crimson Tide
Tennesseee Volunteers
Penn State Nittany Lions
Washington Huskies
Tulane Green Wave (G5)
Utah Utes
Florida State Seminoles
Southern Cal Trojans
Clemson Tigers
Kansas State Wildcats
Oregon Ducks
Louisiana State Tigers
Oregon State Beavers
Notre Dame Fighting Irish
Troy Trojans (G5)
Mississippi State Bulldogs

Taken from the AP Top 25 poll at the end of last season, two G5 teams enter directly into the Premier League. The who’s who of college football resides here with Georgia, Alabama, USC, Notre Dame, etc… making it. Also The Game will have more stakes than ever as they both enter into this new college football paradigm in the highest division. Oregon, perhaps, has the best of it all. The Civil War - one of the more underrated intrastate rivalries in college football - as well as their rivalry with Washington - which most Oregon fans will tell you is more important than their rivalry with Oregon State - are preserved not only on a continued-to-be-played level, but both games also carry that much more weight since they are against fellow CFPL opponents. Other fun games include Tulane vs LSU carrying a lot more heft than it ever has, potential Troy vs Alabama interstate matchups and Notre Dame continuing to pretend its rivals care about their continued existence by playing USC and Michigan again. 

Championship-ish League

UCLA Bruins
Pittsburgh Panthers
South Carolina Gamecocks
Fresno State Bulldogs (G5)
Texas Longhorns
Duke Blue Devils
Univ. of Texas San Antonio Roadrunners (G5)
Air Force Falcons (G5)
Boise State Broncos (G5)
Minnesota Golden Gophers
Texas Tech Red Raiders
North Carolina Tarheels
North Carolina St Wolfpack
Iowa Hawkeyes
Purdue Boilermakers
Louisville Cardinals
Maryland Terrapins
Marshall Thundering Herd (G5)
Illinois Fighting Illini
Cincinnati Bearcats 

The second tier includes all teams who received votes for the final AP Top 25 and brings us up to eight G5 teams and locks in another 20. Most of tobacco road is here with NCSt, UNC and Duke all tagging as well as a swath of the former B1G West. Cincinnati also sneaks into this group which feels right after having a lot of success in the previous half decade under now Wisconsin coach Luke Fickell, whose new team will show up somewhere in the next tier. Boise State enters in the second tier which seems about right after the last 20 or so years of their history. Three teams from Texas also make this tier, creating some Lone Star State intrigue for season one of our new competitive format. 

Third Tier

Syracuse Orange
Wake Forest Demon Deacons
Oklahoma State Cowboys
Wisconsin Badgers
Washington State Cougars
Ole Miss Rebels
Arkansas Razorbacks
Kentucky Wildcats
Ohio Bobcats (G5)
Coastal Carolina Chanticleers (G5)
Central Florida Knights
Florida Gators
Missouri Tigers
Baylor Bears
Kansas Jayhawks
Oklahoma Sooners
Eastern Michigan Eagles (G5)
Toledo Rockets (G5)
BYU Cougars
Houston Cougars

 The third tier features some traditional heavyweights who will be hoping to move up into the second tier during season one. Florida, Oklahoma and Auburn have all won national titles in the last 20 years, where Wisconsin, Baylor and other big names will hope to return to (second tier) glory as soon as possible. The bottom teams were filled out by overall record and then conference record. Big games would include Bedlam between OU and OK St, and a couple more G5 teams sneaking in with the Rawrcatz and Chanticleers both making it into this original iteration. 2022 was a perfect year to peak for both Toledo and EMU, who find themselves into the third tier, thus giving themselves some runway to stay up in the new football pyramid for at least a couple years, and giving themselves some recruiting cache over their peers. Fun fact, with no Group of Five teams falling in tier 4, that makes room for some of the more depressing, stagnant or abusive P5 teams to fall out entirely next year should they have similar records to what they produced in 2022. 

Power Five Bottom Tier

Michigan State Spartans
Cal Bears
Texas A&M Aggies
Vanderbilt Commodores
Miami Hurricanes
Indiana Hoosiers
Iowa State Cyclones
Nebraska Cornhuskers
Rutgers Scarlet Knights
Arizona State Sun Devils
Stanford Cardinal
Boston College Eagles
Virginia Cavaliers
Virginia Tech Hokies
Colorado Buffaloes
Northwestern Wildcats
West Virginia Mountaineers
Arizona Wildcats
Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets
Auburn Tigers

Tier Four brings us the high water mark for the Mel Tucker era as well as the death throes of Northwestern, the Virginia schools and the David Shaw era. Coach Prime’s road to glory would be much tougher in this scenario, but seeing as how his gravitational pull has players signing on left and right who would not normally consider Boulder a destination, it feels like Colorado’s time down in the dregs would be short lived. Would Colorado, under this set up, have been able to pull Neon Deion from Jackson State knowing he would start in the fourth tier? Probably not. But since this is all hypothetical that doesn’t matter one bit.

But what about the rest of the G5 schools?

Much like Wrexham, they will need to claw and scrape their way back into both relevant existence and the cognizant thoughts of anyone other than Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney. If we were looking at this as a thought experiment prior to NIL there would assuredly be a rough go trying to get out of whatever dregs lie below Tier Four and into the upper echelon of college football. However, with NIL, it really only takes one magnanimous and prolific benefactor to set a program in the right direction towards competitiveness or the national consciousness. With how magnificently inept the NCAA is, I find it hard to believe that colleges and universities would do a worse job of creating a stable and sustainable model for college athletics in a NIL world. That said, to paraphrase from Brian, some people are only in charge because someone needs to be. Even an optimist would be hard-pressed to have faith in anyone in charge in the current landscape of (waives hand at the entirety of the world)...

The Premier League plays everyone home and away. Are you advocating for a 38 game college football season? 

In a word: No. In two words: God no. Ain’t nobody got time for that nonsense, most importantly the athletes who are living in a post CTE world. Honestly, I wouldn’t be surprised if we’ve only got 20 - 30 more years of college football left. That said, if you had asked me five years ago, I would’ve said 15 - 20, such has been the power of the NFL in shunting CTE (as well as domestic assault, etc…) out of the national consciousness. Still, asking college athletes - not student athletes, we need some new nomenclature - to play 38 games is an absolute nonstarter. The change from conferences to tiers creates some internal drama in the “Team X is my biggest rival and if we don’t play them I will burn down city hall and write a tersely worded op ed in the comments section of some random online news source” vein. Someone who does numbers and algorithms and making things fancy - probably someone who writes for or reads this here blog - hint hint: there’s a comments section - could do a better job than me, who has a masters in English, and not in quantum physics in creating a scheduling solution. I would imagine that the solution would lean towards something similar to what is in place now with tiers replacing conferences, but with protected rivalries being part of the equation. Regardless of tier, Michigan and Ohio State are going to play every year. Michigan vs North til you smell it, west til you step in it will probably be on the docket as well. Notre Dame, which has no actual rivals, except Dana Jacobson, will play Georgia fifteen times regardless of tier. To make things extra spicy let’s have the bottom 4 teams from each division get relegated and the top 4 teams from each division - sans the Premier League - get promoted. 

So, Mr Smartypants - yes, that’s what we’re calling you - if not everyone plays twice how do you crown a champion?

With a playoff, obviously. Four teams are too few. Twenty would be absurd. So, what about we copy an existing model and have twelve teams enter the octagon playoff. Want to make things even more entertaining? How about the top six teams in the Premier League enter the playoff and then two teams from tiers 2 - 4 also make it. The playoff does not influence promotion / relegation, but it does give lower division teams a shot at all the glory. As an example that would have meant a playoff seeding along the lines of: 

Byes: 1) Georgia 2) Michigan 3) TCU 4) Ohio State

First round matchups: 

5) Alabama vs 12) Georgia Tech
6) Tennessee vs 11) Auburn
7) UCLA vs 10) Ohio
8) Pitt vs 9) Syracuse

We all know how playoffs work in these parts, so I won’t belabor any points, but Georgia would get the lowest remaining seed, Michigan the second lowest, etc… In this scenario Michigan wouldn’t have crapped the bed and would’ve gotten their shot at Georgia in the national championship game where they obviously would’ve won and Blake Corum would already have his well earned statue outside of the building formerly known as Schembechler Hall. 

Fallout

Due to the perennial chaos of college football there are some intriguing aspects in play here. Traditional powers dot each of the tiers with Oklahoma and Florida in tier three, Miami (YTM) in tier four. With no G5 schools in tier four that means that at least a couple former P5 schools would be watching themselves fall out of at least this pyramid. 

Who says no? 

Curmudgeons. That’s who. We don’t need ‘em. 

Final Thoughts 

This is, obviously, a pipe dream for the future of college football. With all of the realignment currently happening and with the NCAA obviously being not hamburgers, but turd burgers, there is an opportunity to greatly remake the college football landscape in whichever way we wish. I stated above that this is but one human’s attempt at negotiating the future landscape of college football. We are on the cusp of what could be a massive shift in not just college football, but college athletics as a whole. With that thought in mind I would encourage us all to think bigger and more boldly than - say the BCS - has thought before. Hopefully the powers that be - and I assure you I am not one of them - have some foresight, ingenuity and / or are on lots of hallucinogens when they create a future landscape that is ever-shifting before our eyes. As a Michigan fan and alumnus what I am most hopeful for is that Jim Harbaugh goes fully nuclear - not actually nuclear, I sincerely hope that he does not have any sort of launch codes - on the NCAA and brings about its quick and painful death. I have no reason to doubt Harbaugh’s desires to conquer the world in the name of Michigan Football, but if hamburgers mean much to him, and I think they do, he put the first nail in the coffin of the NCAA and lead the march against its continued, bloated and flatulent existence.