The past few weeks have been amazing. As ‘westerner’ from the state of Washington, I grew up watching the Apple Cup every year and attending a few. I never imagined the Pac-10 changing, but always thought that Colorado seemed more fitting to me to be in the conference. In fact there are a few others like BYU, Boise State, Idaho and a few of my Eastern Washington rivals from the Big Sky I-AA (yes, I still call it that) like Montana and Montana State that should probably be incorporated based on location and the western mindset. It seems a bit strange to me that the Pacific Conference (let’s lose the silly numbers in the names already) would have Texan and other schools from area – it’s just a completely different vibe that comes with them.
But it is the business of college football, and it ultimately comes down to the almighty dollar. Change is coming.
But it is not going far enough.
I have felt for many years that the college ranks need to be reconfigured. I still absolutely fervently believe a playoff is a must (if I-AA and the other lower levels with less resources can manage, why can’t they build a playoff/bowl hybrid system for the top flight) but the other need change is in the levels themselves. It looks like the restructuring that may be taking place in college football is naturally headed in the direction I think the big sports need to go by creating super-conferences.
So what needs to happen? Two things…
Shrinking the Top Flight: Let’s face, the top levels of college football and basketball are too big. I grew up cheering for the Washington State, but the Cougars are rarely among the elite any more. And then there are the mid-majors, who on occasion produce a big bowl upset or bust everyone’s tournament bracket. But there is no need for them to be on the same level. The top level in football needs to be cut to 50-60 teams, creating a new second level with the dominant I-AA schools moving up. And basketball needs to shrink down to 80-100 so that the regular season means something and you don’t see schools beating minnows by 20+ points because they need to schedule non-conference opponents without endangering their overall record.
But here is the big concept…
Separation of Sports: If there is one thing all this restructuring talk points to is, it’s that the money behind football drives everything when it comes to the conference structures. But why should all of a school’s sports programs be affected by what one team of dozens is doing. Even if you go back a few years, there was movement among conferences for basketball, the other big money college sport. These schools are all grouped together today because of football and basketball with no regard for the other athletic programs. You shouldn’t look at a conference’s full list of sports programs and see a quarter or half of its member schools not fielding a men’s soccer team, for instance, while the others do.
Collegiate athletics are at such an advanced state, there is no reason why each sport shouldn’t have its own governing structure and conference alignments to allow themselves to maximize their goals and efforts. How much better would soccer and women’s basketball be if they were all separated out and allowed to build their own super-conferences so that it is not just one or two teams dominating every year because the other schools in the ‘football conference’ don’t emphasize that sport as the others do. This would also benefit the big sports too. Look at basketball and my hometown school Gonzaga, which doesn’t play football. They should be in the PMBC (Pacific Men’s Basketball Conference) with Washington, USC, UCLA, Arizona in place of schools like Oregon and Oregon State, who rarely fare well on the court.
This idea will one day come, I am sure of it. It may take another 10-20 years before the business and operation of collegiate athletics forces this change, but it is the next logical step. I am sure there are administrators in the game who have thought of it, maybe even discussed it secretly among their peers. But to publicly suggest the idea would finally destroy the myth that the schools are connected as they are for ‘academic’ purposes.
