Could dreams come true?
As the Mountain West & Pac-2 continue talks, an unconventional proposal has emerged: A 2-conference relegation model like the Premier League.It's one of many options (maybe a long shot) in exploratory stage.Said one AD: "We have to think differently."https://t.co/iATYMUGGco— Ross Dellenger (@RossDellenger) September 19, 2023
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It's maybe not a true promotion/relegation depending on how they split the financial distributions between the two levels, but it's a good way to make sure your better teams play the other better teams in your league(s) for strength of schedule purposes, and gives fans of worse teams something concrete to root for.
Definitely a cool plan if they do it!
I wanted this so bad for the ACC. Instead of desperation adding the western schools, they should have expanded within our footprint and moved to a setup like this.
It's not too late to do both.
But it would likely screw up our rivalry with UVa.
We're definitely both in the relegated bracket atm.
Just because you're not in the top division doesn't mean you can't play the lower division, you can create whatever rules you want.
the big issue with Pro-Rel in CFB is that the designations are trailing by a year. being *really* good last year doesn't mean a whole lot in CFB and doesn't really guarantee the best teams are playing each other.
This is a great point. But I love the idea regardless. This sort needs something fresh
Maybe some kind of rolling 3yr average?
I realize it would be way hard to implement this, but man this could make some games that would not be on anyone's radar WAY more interesting with relegation involved.
How does this work across sports? If your Football team is great you move up but of your bball team is horrible you move down? Teams within a single unviersity would be competing in different conferences?
I still think this works better in basketball without eligibility requirements and incorporating the NBA as the Premier League. College football requires too much development to really make this effective, but it's worth a shot.
So would you de-relegate back to College from the NBA? 30 year old juniors wandering around campus?
All the players would be professional and the teams would be affiliated with the school but not made up of students. Basically Lawrence and Austin having professional teams. So UNC and Kentucky would probably be promoted into the NBA and play the Lakers, while the Charlotte Hornets get relegated and play Purdue.
Relegation does NOT work in CFB....
Maybe a blue blood with a down year doesn't get pummeled, but as a middling team who just got relegated, how do you recruit? Fundraise?
There's no draft or equalizers here. There's already egregious recruiting/facilities/money iniquities. Adding relegation will usually hurt the smaller players here. Occasionally reward the overachievers, but not enough imo
The portal is nuts now. Imagine the transfers when a team gets sent down. Or worse, the kids that would sit out the last 2, 3, 4 games because they are being sent down, saving themselves for the portal and next team.
Kids wouldn't sit out the last few games because there would be something to actually play for. There would be very few "meaningless" games.
I meant if they were 2-7 with no chance of staying up and guaranteed relegation with a few games to go. At that point, those games don't matter to their team.
No draft might be a problem but I think that's something that can be mitigated. Imagine a D1-wide relegation model where the top 32 (just making a number up here) comprise the premier tier, another 32 tier for the 2nd, and so on. Each year, teams from one tier HAVE to play x number of games with teams as friendlys or what we currently know as out of conference to give the players a taste at what the adjacent tier is like.
No to address the draft. My overly simple solution 1) no such things as walk-ons. You declare for a school and you and the school are obligated to each other, and every player counts against a hard scholarship count. 2) only permit transfers to a team in a different tier. No intra-tier transfers. And a player transferring up results in a transfer payment from the inheriting school to the team losing. Transfer drafts happen just like MLB, with the worst team getting the first chance to pick.
The top 6 teams from the lower tiers graduate, and the bottom 6 get relegated.
Remember kids are choosing schools for "education", NCAA would have to become an NFL minor league in order to implement any kind of draft and restrict which schools a player could go to.
then break away from the NCAA. Treat the students athletes like employees, form a players union, enact free-agency, add some agents and more lawyers, let HBO come in and do another version of Hard Knocks, etc etc. The NCAA doesn't do a damn thing any way other than put on a basketball tournament.
You say draft, Coach Prime says Portal.
Works fine in European soccer
European soccer doesnt have nearly the restrictions on eligibility that college football does. And i dont think european soccer is quite the measuring stick of parity college football should aim for
I mean, I don't think College Football should be aiming for parity, but that's another conversation...
"The promise" doesn't get you top recruits. It gets you classes ranked 30-60....
First of all, it's not like these teams would be getting top 25 classes anyways. Promo/relegation at least offers a path to relevance other than getting an invite to a new conference. VT, TCU, Utah made it out. Boise and Fresno probably never will. Cincy, UCF, SMU... might be too little, too late for them, we'll see.
Also, you could relegate/promote 2-3 teams each year instead of just one. Would keep most teams from being bottom dwellers.
Epl bottom 3 teams drop and 3 teams come up each year. I could see the same thing with football
EPL is a bigger league though.
I'm thinking 4-8 'conferences', each with 2-3 tiers (so each conference/tier is 8-10 teams), each promoting/relegating 2-3 teams per season. So across the sport, >12 teams are switching tiers each season.
Epl (20 teams) is bigger than any one conference, but not bigger than cfb at large. 130 fbs teams. Regardless of conference number or size, if you break it up into 2 tiers (65 teams in the top tier vs 20 in epl) or 3 tiers (43ish teams each) you're still dealing with double or triple the number of teams in the premier league (20). Extrapolate that and there should be between 6 and 9 teams moving up and another 6 to 9 relegated each year. (The analog here is that the top tier of cfb is the epl and the 2nd (and 3rd) tier would be the championship (and league 1) respectively)
You might have meant that the whole English foorball system (not just the premier league) is much larger than cfb and that is true.
I might have edited my comment before you finished your response, but my thought is that each (existing) conference would be broken into multiple tiers.
I'd love to see different types of promo/relo too. Some conference with 3 tiers, others with 2. maybe a couple conferences with none. Every conference promotes/relegates a different amount of teams.
Cfb was never meant to be 'equal' - it's not supposed to be an equal playing field, the leagues aren't supposed to be symmetric. Let's lean into that.
I do think any form of promo/rele would be interesting. I'm here for it