Originally, I intended this post to be a comprehensive reform and restructuring of college football that fixed everything from the conferences to the postseason to the portal and NIL. But that proved to be a bit too ambitious, so what I’ll focus on instead is I would reorganize the sport in a way that brings it into the 21st century while at the same time preserving all the things that make the sport so unique and so great.

What spurred this was the discussions happening online regarding the “College Sports Tomorrow” Plan that was released in the past month or two, which basically proposed a permanent 70-team “Super League” with a constantly changing 10-team “appendix” conference featuring promotion and relegation.

What I don’t like about the idea of a “Super League,” however, is that the members of it are permanent and unchangeable. The only thing that can change is that 10 team appendix division, which is nominally part of the Super League, but in reality is subject to completely different rules.

I don’t want the top league to be permanent and fixed. I want it all to be fluid. I don’t want anybody to have a permanent seat, and I don’t want the top league to be wholly inaccessible to everyone else.

Further, this CST Super League is based on, what, exactly? What league were you in when this plan was put into action? So Vanderbilt is a permanent member of the Super League simply because they’re in the SEC? UCF is a permanent member of the Super League because they’ve been good the past few years?

That’s just silly. If this were made 10 years ago, UCF wouldn’t even be in it, and Boise State would’ve been in it. But now, because permanent membership in the Super League is based entirely on a single snapshot of the college football landscape from a specific moment in time, UCF is in and for Boise State, the best they can ever hope to do is be a tentative member of the rotating under-division? That’s just silly.

And I’ve got nothing against UCF. In fact, I think UCF would be more deserving of a spot in the permanent Super League than Vanderbilt. But you get what I’m saying.

Membership should not be fixed or permanent. That’s why I don’t like the idea of a Super League where even though the Super League teams can play teams outside the Super League, there is still an impenetrable wall around them that can never be breached under any circumstances.

Membership in the top league should be merit-based and earned continually. Period. No grandfathering in. You’re only in the top league as long as you’re good enough to be in the top league. As soon as you aren’t, down you go–somebody more deserving is taking your place.

This is why I prefer the Premier League model, or the “football pyramid” model over the Super League model. If I was in charge, I would make college football look more like the EPL.

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The Structure

Let’s start with the overall structure.

There are currently 760 college football programs from the FBS down to the NAIA and everything in between. This is how I’d reorganize that:

So we’ve got 9 different levels of college football.

The top two levels feature just 40 teams apiece, split up into 4 “conferences” of 10 teams apiece.

Why 10 teams apiece? Because any bigger than that and you end up with these bloated behemoth conferences where, for instance, Mizzou and Auburn have only played one another three times despite Mizzou joining the conference in 2012–and one of those games was the 2013 SEC Championship. Their first actual scheduled regular season meeting wasn’t until 2017.

That’s not a conference. That’s just strength in numbers to have more leverage when the SEC is negotiating a new TV megadeal. But for all intents and purposes, Auburn and Mizzou are hardly even in the same conference.

So 10 teams per “conference.”

These “conferences” are organized geographically: North, South, East and West. In the Premier League, we can call these four conferences by their traditional conference names: the North can be the Big Ten, the South can be the SEC, the East can be the ACC, and the West, which is basically just a fusion of the old Big 12 and the Pac 12, we can just call the “Big Pac.”

So I would completely get rid of all conferences. All of college football is unified under one giant umbrella with a single commissioner. The negotiation leverage for TV money increases significantly if college football is unified, and having a single commissioner with decision-making authority makes it easier for the sport to adapt to changes and make necessary tweaks and improvements (of course the commissioner would be accountable to and empowered by a representative board of directors from various schools.)

The conferences are dead in all but name. I don’t want to be constrained by conferences when it comes to scheduling. I want to group and schedule the sport as it should be. Conferences are built based on money. I would structure the sport based on competitiveness and preserving rivalries. More on that in a bit.

I want to talk about the overall structure first.

The top league–the CFB “Premier League”–will relegate the last-place team in each of the four conferences down to Level 2. Obviously you can’t be promoted from the Premier League as it’s the highest level.

However, even if you finish in last place, you don’t necessarily get relegated.

What will happen is you will play a relegation match against the team that finishes first in the level down from you. So, for example, if Nebraska places last in the “Big Ten,” then the corresponding conference for that in Level 2 is the North, and that is where Nebraska would be relegated to. Let’s say Minnesota wins the North Division in Level 2, they would then be eligible for promotion.

What happens next is Nebraska and Minnesota will play a game at the end of the season to determine who plays where the next season. The team at risk of relegation will play at home, so they’ll have the advantage here, while the team seeking promotion will really have to earn it.

If Nebraska wins the game, they stay in the Premier League–they’ve avoided relegation. But if Minnesota wins, they move up to the Premier League and take Nebraska’s place. Nebraska moves down to Level 2.

Level 2 works differently from the Premier League. In Level 2, there are 4 promotions and 8 relegations. This means the bottom two teams in each of the four divisions will have to play a relegation match.

Level 3, however, is much bigger than the Premier League and Level 2. Level 3 will feature 4 divisions of 24 teams apiece, so 96 total teams. Every other division on down will be structured this way: 4 divisions of 24 teams apiece, except for in Level 3, 16 teams will be placed into relegation matches–so the bottom four teams in each division.

In Level 4 and down, there are 16 promotions and 16 relegations. I figured that with 96 teams in each level, only promoting 8 of them each year is just too restrictive–we want more teams alive for promotion (and relegation) as late into the season as possible.

When will the relegation matches happen?

The week after the regular season concludes.

There are no conference championship games. It’s time to be rid of those.

The top team in each division will play the bottom team in the corresponding division above it in a relegation match, while the second place team in the lower level will play the second-last place team in the higher level in a relegation match. And so on and so forth–the bottom line is there will be 16 relegation matches from Level 3 on down.

This means that there is no playoff for any league below the Premier League.

The relegation matches essentially are the playoff for the lower levels.

The reason for this is, I just couldn’t figure out how to have a playoff and pro/rel at the same time. Say you have a 16 team playoff in Level 3, but those 16 teams are already qualified for promotion matches. What, then, are they actually playing for in the postseason other than pride?

I just think promotion is a bigger prize, personally. 

NIL spending is uncapped at all levels, however, the top leagues get the largest shares of the TV money, which means there is a lot of money on the line in these relegation matches.

If I’m a team like Bowling Green playing in Level 3, and I qualify for a promotion match against, say, Illinois, I just think that’s way more exciting than a playoff at every level.

So the Premier League is the only level that will have a playoff. That playoff will begin two weeks after the conclusion of the regular season.

The last weekend of the regular season will be rivalry games, then, following that, it’s the pro/rel matches. And then the College Football Playoff begins the week after that.

I personally think the pro/rel matches will be electric–you’re looking at 28 games in total between the top 3 levels of the sport in which promotion and relegation are on the line. I think it would be absolute madness.

The reason I love pro/rel is because every game is important. You’re always playing to avoid relegation, so there’s no packing it in, ever. And, it’ll create an element of desperation for the weaker teams as you get later in the season. Imagine a 10-0 Florida State playing a 2-8 Georgia Tech in November: Georgia Tech will be desperate, and that makes them incredibly dangerous.

On the flip side, because my College Football Playoff is only 8 teams (out of 40 in the Premier League), Florida State will have a lot on the line. If Miami and Clemson are both 9-1, they’re nipping at FSU’s heels, so if FSU loses that game to Georgia Tech, with a rivalry game still to play, they’re in jeopardy of missing out on the playoff.

In my view, 8 teams is enough. I think it’s a great number to be inclusive while also preserving the high-stakes nature of the regular season. I don’t want to see teams packing it in the last couple weeks of the season. I want it to be high-octane and tense the whole way through. If you have a 12 team playoff, then 10-2 probably gets in most of the time. But not in an 8 team playoff. In an 8 team playoff, 10-2 is no guarantee to make it.

In my “Big Ten” division, you’ve got Ohio State, Michigan, Penn State and Notre Dame. In an 8 team playoff, only two of them can make it. I like that–it gives those games a ton of pressure. However, there is still some leeway if you slip up once. I think the 4 team playoff we have now is overly-punitive and restrictive, so that’s why I like 8 teams.

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Scheduling

Okay, but what about scheduling? And how are the playoff teams determined? Will there be rankings?

No, there won’t be any rankings. No more committee, no more AP Poll–none of that. It will all be determined based on your record. No conference records, either. Just your overall record.

• You will play all 9 other teams in your division, plus 3 non-conference (or even inter-level) rivalry games (flex rivalry games), and that’s your schedule.
• Each team has 3 protected, permanent rivals that they will play every year even if they get relegated or promoted.
• If one of your non-conference permanent rivals plays in a different level, if they get promoted and wind up in your conference on the same level, that will just obviously become one of your 9 fixed conference games, which leaves you with an available spot in your three flex rivalries
• I based the protected permanent rivalries off of who your historical rivals are, not who your current conference opponents are. For teams that have undergone conference changes over the years, they have dormant rivalries from their old conferences. We’re bringing them all back. 

We are also able to open up so many regional matchups that, because of conferences, were never really cultivated or developed into rivalries. For example, Tennessee and Virginia Tech are just a two hour drive apart, but don’t really play a ton because they’re in different conferences. 

But because both teams were missing a non-conference rivalry game and needed one more spot to fill, why not just have them play one another annually and develop that into a rivalry? The close proximity between the two schools means there’s already some kindling there ready to ignite. I did the same thing for Tennessee and North Carolina–they’re just a few hours drive apart.

Seeing the four Premier League conferences visualized on a map underscores the emphasis I’ve placed on regionality. Because all of your 12 regular season games are set every year, it’s just going to be 6 home and 6 away games, so I tried to cut down on the travel to mitigate that (currently most major programs do an imbalanced home/away split).

The SEC conference:

Nothing crazy in the way of travel here. Everything is in either Eastern time zone or Central.

ACC conference:

Furthest trip here is from Pitt to Miami, and Louisville-Miami is a bit of a haul, but nothing more than a 3 hour flight tops.

I really would prefer to have Pitt in the Big Ten, I’ve never liked Pitt being in the ACC. but it just wouldn’t work with how I’d have to move everything else around. Because whose spot would they take? K-State or Mizzou? Then whichever one I choose to bump out and replace with Pitt, they’ve got to take somebody else’s spot in another conference–it just creates a whole chain reaction that screws everything up.

Big Ten conference:

Two time zones, that’s it. 

Kansas State and Missouri should be in the West, but there’s really no room for them. 

And finally the Big Pac:

This would definitely be the most problematic conference, as it spans three time zones, but there’s really no other way to do it. Most of the top programs in college football are situated east of the Rocky Mountains, and really east of the Mississippi river to be honest.

We could include Nebraska and/or Kansas State in this conference, but then you’d have to get rid of one or two of the schools in it, and what would that solve? Say you get rid of Texas Tech for K-State, you’re still in basically the same situation. Where does Texas Tech then go that makes sense?

The way to mitigate the travel difficulties is the non-conference protected rivalries. So USC will have UCLA and Stanford, as well as Notre Dame. You can’t get rid of the Notre Dame game, but at least USC will have one in-state opponent in Stanford plus their crosstown rivals UCLA.

For Utah, they’ve got BYU, Utah State and Colorado as their non-conference annual rivalry games. Two of those are in-state: it’s about an hour and a half’s drive to Utah State, and under an hour to BYU. Colorado is a bit further, but it’s still only one state over.

The toughest part here is the Texas/Oklahoma cluster having to travel to the Pacific Northwest to play that Oregon/Washington cluster, but if you think about it, it’s actually better than what we have going now. Texas and Oklahoma are now in a conference with Kentucky, Florida and South Carolina. And Oregon, Washington and USC are in a conference with Maryland, Rutgers and Penn State. So the travel will definitely be by far the worst in this conference, but it’s better than the real life situation. The furthest the Pacific Northwest teams have to travel is Austin, Texas, rather than Piscataway, New Jersey.

The problems with the totally set schedules every year:

• There’s not much variety other than teams getting relegated and promoted. Otherwise, it’s completely set in stone. However, it pretty much is this way already, and actually I don’t like the fact that the conferences are so big you don’t play everyone each year. In the NBA and NHL, you play every team in the league at least once a year. Same with the EPL–you play everyone twice. Pro/rel will add some variety into the mix so it’s not the exact same schedule every year.
• Some teams have really tough non-conference rivalries, like for instance I made Florida State and Georgia non-conference rivals. I think they should be because their states border each other, and that’s what I went off of when trying to invent rivalries. But other power programs have three relatively weak non-conference rivals. The thing is, though, this stuff changes over time. It wasn’t so long ago that Florida State was in the dumps. Programs have their ups and downs.
  • I tried to make it so that each Premier League team would have at least one, preferably two, of their permanent non-conference rivals be non-Premier League teams, in order to provide something close to a cupcake opponent. But I wasn’t able to do it for every team.
  • Arkansas: Missouri, Texas, Oklahoma. This is by far the hardest non-con trio, plus they play in the SEC.
  • Florida: FSU, Miami, UCF. Tough, but two of those are traditional rivals and UCF, while they’re on the up-and-up as a program, that’s manageable. I wanted to include UCF into that Florida Three and make it a Florida Four, add another corner to that in-state group.
  • Georgia: Georgia Tech, Clemson, Florida State. Tech shouldn’t be an issue so I’m not worried about this, but having FSU and Clemson as your non-con rivals in addition to the SEC schedule is really difficult. But I wanted to build up Florida State’s rivalries with some of those SEC programs.
  • Miami: Florida, UCF, Nebraska. I don’t think this is problematic really. Nebraska has not shown any real signs of life in a while.
  • Oklahoma: Nebraska, Missouri, Arkansas. Again, not problematic in my view.
• Teams are going to kind of be siloed off again by conference affiliation, meaning we will not see much (if any) regular season matchups between, say, Georgia and Michigan, or Alabama and Ohio State. The only real potential for these matchups is in the playoff. This would be even more restrictive scheduling than we have now.
• But that’s fine with me. We are not trying to be the NFL here. We’re trying to preserve the soul and spirit of college football. It’s a regional game at heart, and those regional traditions and rivalries are the lifeblood. I’m really trying to play up the historical and rivalry aspect of the sport, and basically the regular season is all rivalries or at least regional matchups with some history. 

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Rivalries & Regionality

College football is really about that regionality, which leads to familiarity, and rivalries.

I compiled a list of what I believe to be the most important rivalries in college football, and the ones that I was most concerned with preserving:

The ones in green are preserved in my system either through conference play or thorough the non-conference protected (“flex”) rivalries.

We’ve gone over the permanent conference schedules, now here is each of the 40 teams in the Premier League’s three permanent “flex” rivalries, as well as the distance in miles they’ll have to travel for each matchup (I tried to keep the mileage as low as I could):

Rivalries are the lifeblood of college football. It’s what makes the sport mean so much to us. Rivalries must be preserved at all costs, and I’ve structured my plan with that in mind. The games have so much more meaning and consequence and emotional charge when there’s that mutual hatred built up over decades and decades. It just gives everything such a different energy and buzz.

It’s more than just a conference championship or a National Championship on the line–with many of these rivalries, you live among the enemy. You win, you get to rub it in their face for a whole year. You lose, you have to deal with their crowing and bragging for a whole year. That’s what it’s all about.

Without rivalries, there is no college football. Period. It would just be kids in different colored jerseys playing catch. Preserving and cultivating the rivalries is of the utmost importance.

There are some rivalries that I only know of from my dad, or from watching old game replays on YouTube, reading about them, things like that. Like, for instance, I know that in the 90s and earlier, when Nebraska was the program of the decade, they had brutal rivalries with Big Eight conference rivals like Oklahoma, and Colorado. But none of those games are played anymore–at least not with regularity. I remember the Kansas vs. Missouri game in 2007. And the Backyard Brawl game in 2007 when Pitt infamously ruined West Virginia’s National Title hopes. I went to a Pitt vs. Penn State game with my dad back in the early 2000s, but that rivalry is long dormant. All of them need to come back.

We should care more about preserving rivalries than conference play. Conferences were built and designed around money; rivalries are built off of hatred and history. Give me Penn State vs. Pitt over Penn State vs. Maryland 100 times out of 100, you know what I’m saying?

So, instead of structuring these schedules around conferences and then, if it’s possible, you can schedule your rival(s), I think it should be flipped. We start off from the perspective that the rivalry games must be played every year, and then we fill out the rest of your schedule from there. The rivalries take the top priority. No longer should an Oklahoma vs. Vanderbilt game take precedence over Oklahoma vs. Oklahoma State. Don’t give me that bullshit about how there’s just no room on the schedule for the rivalry. There is nothing more important than the rivalry games. Everything else should have to fit around that. Rivalries eat first when it comes to scheduling.

While the NFL’s rivalries aren’t as great as CFB’s, the NFL does a great job of ensuring the rivals are in the same division and play one another twice a year. You will never see the Browns and Steelers go a decade without playing one another. The NFL’s divisions are aligned geographically and around historical rivalries, and those six division rivalry games form the foundation of an NFL team’s schedule every year. They’re ALWAYS a given, and then the remaining 11 games are figured out later on.

There is a contingent of college football fans in the media, I won’t name any names, but it seems like these folks consider themselves the “keepers of the flame.” They and they alone know What Is Best For The Sport. Common themes are that they yearn for a return to the BCS, but they also harbor the most venom and disdain for what they call “the NFL-ization” of college football. And I get it–I want to preserve the soul of our sport, too. But at the same time, the NFL gets a lot right, as evidenced by the fact that it is by far the most popular sport in America. And I’ll just say this: the NFL wouldn’t allow a rivalry to die just because a team moves conferences.

A good rivalry should have three main ingredients: history, hatred and high stakes. The best rivalries–like Ohio State-Michigan–have all three in spades. These rivalries are more than just one Saturday in the fall, and even more than the week leading up to them. They are a way of life; 365 days a year of hatred–on social media, on the message boards, in the comments sections, and of course, in real life. It’s “us vs. them,” it’s tribalistic, it’s divisive, and it’s toxic as fuck. 

Everything we hate about politics is what makes college football rivalries integral and beautiful parts of the fabric of this country. I honestly feel sorry for people who are not part of a college football rivalry and don’t get to feel that sweet, sweet hatred. It’s sick, it’s twisted, it comes from the worst part of the human psyche, and it’s probably unhealthy, but God, I love it. And you know what? It’s natural. It’s in our nature as human beings. College football is where we indulge that in a (mostly) safe and harmless manner.

The Kansas vs. Missouri “Border War” rivalry, which sadly has been dormant since 2011 due to conference realignment, is one of the most bitter and hateful rivalries in all of sports. Former Kansas Coach Don Fambrough described it best when he said, “Kansas State is our rival; Missouri is our enemy.” That’s how it should be. Rivalries are more than just rivalries–they’re blood feuds.

I even love observing other rivalries, and seeing that pure, unbridled hatred from a neutral position. I don’t hate Texas at all, but it does put a smile on my face when I see an OU fan hit the “Horns Down,” and then Texas fans get all upset about it. It’s just beautiful seeing people have so much passion.

There’s a common belief that, you know, if these two sides just got to know each other better, they wouldn’t hate each other so much. To the contrary, it is that familiarity that breeds such intense hatred, which is why so many of these great rivalries are between programs that are close in proximity to one another. Even on a national scale, the British vs. the French, South Korea vs. North Korea, Israel vs. Palestine, Greece vs. Turkey, Brazil vs. Argentina, China vs. Japan–they’re all neighbors. Nobody ever talks about the long history of hatred between Sweden and Thailand, do they? And so that leads to the next point… Regionality.

The parochial nature of college football is a special thing. It’s why these rivalries developed in the first place. America itself is a country with great regional differences.

The NFL tries to mitigate this while still preserving regional divisions and rivalries for the sake of making travel more manageable and efficient, and while it is good that the league preserves that familiarity among teams close to one another–like the AFC North teams, for example–the rivalries in the NFL don’t quite stack up to those of college football.

But what I mean about regionality is basically like secondary rivalries. All teams that share a conference over decades and decades become rivalries to some extent. Again, it’s that familiarity. Even though Ohio State and Indiana aren’t true rivals on the field, per se, there is still that familiarity and mutual distaste.

The worst thing about realignment is that it essentially resets the rivalries. The notable exception to the rule is Texas A&M in the SEC–that situation feels like they’ve been there for decades given how much hatred there is between their fans and the rest of the conference. But it does feel like wherever Texas A&M goes they manage to make a lot of enemies quickly.

You think about Nebraska in the Big Ten, Missouri in the SEC; it’s kind of like “You’re not really one of us.” Rivalries take time to develop that foundation of hatred. There’s got to be history.

And again, this is more of an extension of the rivalries thing, but the overall point here is that regionality and familiarity is an integral part of the soul of college football.

Even more than that, though: regionality breeds different play styles. Big Ten teams, for instance, are built to play in the cold and the elements. They’re known for defense and running the ball. West coast teams are typically seen as more finesse and offensively-driven.

I want to preserve all those regional differences and. Let the Big Ten teams play like Big Ten team, let the West Coast teams play like West Coast teams. They’re all going to ultimately be under the same umbrella when it comes to the postseason, but for the regular season, it’s going to be heavily regional. That’s really how you preserve the soul of the sport, in my opinion.

Rivalries of note:

• Texas vs. Texas A&M: This storied rivalry is already coming back IRL with Texas moving to the SEC but I just want to reiterate what a travesty it was that it was dormant for over a decade. They hate each other. I think with Texas-OU there’s a grudging mutual respect, and it’s more of like, “You are standing in our way of winning the National Championship, so for that reason I hate you. But not with A&M. It’s a sibling rivalry, in all the worst ways. Texas hates A&M because they’re weird and culty, A&M hates Texas because of their smug superiority complex and years and years of humiliation at UT’s hands. For most of its history the rivalry was a little brother/big brother dynamic because A&M was never truly on Texas’ level, but since A&M joined the SEC and started spending like crazy on football, little brother ain’t so little anymore. I know the Aggies despise the Longhorns–that thing they do where their whole crowd sways side to side, that’s supposed to symbolize sawing the horns off the Texas Longhorn. Yeah. Conference realignment took that away from us. I absolutely cannot wait to see these teams go at it on the last weekend of the season in College Station–it’s one of those rare rivalries I think is on the level of Ohio State-Michigan, where both sides are like “I’d rather cut off my arm than lose to them.”
• Miami vs. Nebraska will be an annual rivalry. These programs squared off against one another with at least one of them playing for a National Championship four times between 1983-2001. Miami was the program of the decade during the 80s, Nebraska was the program of the decade in the 90s. This is one of those old-school blue blood cross-country rivalries that has some historical basis, so it wouldn’t just be a gratuitous, forced fake “rivalry” invented out of thin air.
• Michigan State vs. Cincinnati: I had to find a third non-conference rival for Michigan State and I chose Cincinnati. They’ve actually never played before but they’re close, and you have that Ohio vs. Michigan baseline hatred already. I think this could develop into a rivalry, and it would give Cincy a great opportunity to test their mettle against a Premier League team that is closer to their level than Ohio State is. I am heavy on regionality here, and this matchup fits that theme.
• Ohio State vs. Pitt: Pitt is actually Ohio State’s 12th-most played opponent in program history. The schools have played 25 times, but the last instance was 1996. Power Five-level teams that are as close as these two programs are should not go nearly 30 years between matchups. There’s a natural foundation for a rivalry here–many Ohio State fans are Browns fans, who naturally hate the Steelers and all things Pittsburgh. Many Steelers fans are Pitt fans, so there’s mutual disdain. These schools are just too close to one another to have as little history as they have.
• Missouri vs. Illinois: Neighboring states, a lot of Chicago people go to both schools. There’s just a lot of Missouri fans and alumni in Illinois, and obviously a lot of Illinois fans and alumni as well. This is a natural rivalry that needs to be cultivated.
• Nebraska vs. Colorado and Oklahoma: I could not bring the Big Eight conference back, so I did the next best thing and revived as many of its great rivalries as I could. Nebraska and Oklahoma have played 88 times historically, but only twice since 2010. This is a rivalry that needs to come back. Nebraska and Colorado have played 72 times historically, but only three times since 2010 (although they have been scheduling one another more as of late).
• Clemson’s three rivalries: Obviously South Carolina is #1, but I’ve also made Auburn and Georgia permanent annual rivals as well. Clemson and Auburn have played 51 times before, but only 7 times since 1972. However, in fairness, 5 of those 7 matchups have been since 2010. Clemson and Georgia are rivals; they have played a whopping 65 times historically, but only 5 times since 1996, because they’re Not In The Same Conference. They’re so close to one another (the stadiums are only 59 miles apart as the crow flies) that this rivalry has to be cultivated more. Other than Georgia Tech, there is no Power Five school closer to Athens than Clemson.
• Georgia Tech vs. Alabama & Auburn: Georgia Tech was a founding member of the SEC and in the conference until 1964, so they’ve played Alabama 52 times, but the last meeting was 1984. Lots of history there, but the rivalry is long dormant. We don’t want to let these ancient rivalries lay dormant so long that they die out–that’s important to me. Eventually the younger generations will have no idea that this was ever a rivalry. Georgia Tech and Auburn have played 92 times historically, but only twice since 1987. We can’t let these rivalries die out.
• Missouri vs. Kansas: The Border War HAS to come back. There is a massive amount of hatred and bitterness between these two programs. They played every year from 1892-2011, and now they haven’t played one time since. These states literally went to war with each other back in the 1850s over slavery, and then later that hatred between the two states carried over into football. The fact that this rivalry is dormant is a sin. A SIN. This might be the most hate-fueled rivalry there is. Those rivalries that are built on hate, rather than mutual respect–those are the best rivalries.
• Pitt vs. West Virginia, Pitt vs. Penn State: Both games would come back. Pitt and Penn State have played 100 times, but only 8 of those games have been since Penn State joined the Big Ten back in 1993. I was pretty young when my family moved out of Pittsburgh but from what I understand, Pitt vs. Penn State is sneakily one of the most toxic rivalries in sports.
  • Pitt and WVU have played each of the past two seasons, but prior to that they hadn’t played since 2011. The Backyard Brawl is a rivalry that began in 1895 and has 106 total meetings between the two teams. Penn State vs. West Virginia is less historic, but still two teams very closely situated. Prior to their 2023 matchup, the last time they’d played was 1992, but this is a series with 60 total meetings. It was played almost uninterrupted from 1940-1992.
  • Fans of other Big Ten schools always make fun of Penn State for having no real rivals in the conference. Like, “Ha ha, you think Ohio State and Michigan are your rivals but they don’t think you’re their rivals. You’re the third wheel.” Well, this is because Penn State only joined the Big Ten in 1993. Ohio State and Michigan had already been playing each other for a century by that point.
  • Penn State’s true rivals aren’t in the Big Ten, they’re Pitt and West Virginia. We’re reviving those rivalry games.

We have to bring that regionality back to the sport. I want college football to be parochial. I noticed that as I was going through and pairing up all these rivalries (it took a surprising amount of time), most of them already existed, but were long-dormant due to realignment.

In other words, this is how college football used to be. All these rivalries that are coming back–they used to be played every year, or close to it, in addition to the conference rivalries. This is just how the sport used to be–rivalry week wasn’t just a week, it was a whole season. That’s how college football is supposed to be–it’s supposed to be about renewing that hate every year, and winning those bragging rights over your neighbors.

You want to make the regular season matter while still having a sensible and reasonably inclusive playoff? This is how you do it. You turn the college football season into basically 12 straight weeks of rivalry games.

Let’s just give an example of what Alabama’s 12 regular season games would look like under my plan: Troy, Georgia Tech, Mississippi State, Florida, Georgia, Ole Miss, Texas A&M, LSU, Tennessee, Kentucky, Arkansas, Auburn

That is a full 12 games of rivalries. Even Troy is an in-state school. Think of how intense that schedule would be on just about every weekend.

Let’s look at Ohio State’s: Cincinnati, Pitt, Illinois, Iowa, Wisconsin, K-State, Notre Dame, Penn State, Michigan State, Missouri, Nebraska, Michigan.

Even the non-traditional matchups against K-State and Missouri, those schools are at least “Big Ten adjacent.”

And another thing, we are doing these rivalry games with both teams wearing home unis. It’s not 1957 anymore, we have HDTV, we can see the difference between the teams. It’s not black and white anymore where you need one team to wear light and dark. For fuck’s sake, if their uniforms are distinct enough (like USC and UCLA), then there’s absolutely no reason one should have to wear whites. Obviously if there are two red teams, like Wisconsin and Nebraska, that can’t fly.

But Ohio State and Michigan, FSU and Florida, Bama and Auburn, Florida and Georgia, Notre Dame and USC, Texas and Oklahoma–come on, there’s no reason they both shouldn’t be able to wear colors.

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Playoff Structure

So we’ve gone through how college football will be restructured, we’ve gone into the new “conferences” (which are really just divisions), and discussed how my plan will not only preserve but strengthen the regionality and rivalries that are so fundamental to college football.

Now let’s talk about the playoff system.

As I said earlier, it will be 8 teams. I think 12 is already too many, but 4 is too few.

If you have a league of 40 teams, 8 is actually a very restrictive postseason. Think about the NFL, there are 32 teams, they’ve got a 14-team playoff.

But this is college football, it’s different from the NFL in that there aren’t as many potential contenders. The NFL and pro sports in general are much more level playing fields, but even in a CFB Premier League model, I understand there are really only a handful of teams that can realistically win a Championship.

So I settled on 8 teams.

The winners of each of the four conferences will be the top four seeds, with record determining the order.  Then the second place teams from each conference will be seeds 5-8.

All the playoff games will be at neutral sites, but if you’re a higher seed it will be in your region:

The Big Ten winner will play the South runner-up in Indianapolis and Chicago, the two cities will go back and forth every year. Chicago is planning on building either a new domed stadium out in the suburbs or close to the existing Soldier Field location–either way, they’re going to have a domed stadium in that city which will make it capable of hosting winter events.

The South winner will play the North runner-up in New Orleans or Atlanta, the Sugar Bowl and the Peach Bowl, again alternating every year.

The East winner plays the West runner-up in Miami, the Orange Bowl, or Tampa. We could also consider Jacksonville as they’re building a new state of the art stadium for the Jaguars, but I think Tampa is the more attractive destination.

The West winner will play the East runner-up in Phoenix, the Fiesta Bowl, and Dallas, the Cotton Bowl.

I chose this alternating structure so we could include all six major bowl venues. It wouldn’t be fair if all four quarterfinal games didn’t alternate–for instance, if we just alternated between New Orleans and Atlanta, but not Miami and Tampa, then over time the Orange Bowl would be making double the money of the Sugar and Peach Bowls, so all four sites have to alternate yearly to make it fair for everyone.

The first round I wanted them to be not-so-neutral sites to really give that advantage to the Conference winners. Like the North winner will get to play the game in Indianapolis and Chicago while the South runner-up will have to travel up there.

My original plan was to have one of the North playoff sites be Green Bay to really give the North winner an advantage, but that feels a little excessive to me as it gets absolutely freezing up there in the winter.

But dammit, I do think we should have some major postseason games played up North. I still think the SEC is the strongest conference, but they do get a major advantage in having most of the postseason games played down in SEC country. LSU has played for the National Title four times since 2003 and all four of those games were in New Orleans–that’s a 45 minute drive from the LSU campus. Georgia got to play Ohio State in the Peach Bowl in Atlanta in 2022, that’s barely an hour drive from campus for Georgia, but like an 8-hour drive for Ohio State.

Again, I’m not saying this is why SEC teams do so well in postseason games, but it’s definitely part of it. New Orleans, Atlanta, Miami–they get all these games at home, essentially. Shit, SEC teams hardly even play in the Fiesta Bowl–the only legacy SEC team (meaning excluding Texas and Oklahoma) that has played in a Fiesta Bowl game in the last 20 years was LSU in 2018.

So fuck that: the SEC runner-up in my system will have to travel up to Big Ten country. No more of this system where everyone always has to travel down to SEC country for postseason games. They already have all the best high school recruits down South, let’s not make it even easier on them.

For the second round, I wanted them to be true neutral site games.

That’s why I chose Nashville for the Semifinal game between the winner of the South and North quarterfinal games–it’s technically in the South, but still close enough to the “Big Ten footprint” that it would be easy enough for both teams’ fan bases to travel to. Nashville is pretty centrally located when you’re talking about the Big Ten and the SEC.

The Titans are building a brand new domed stadium there in the next few years so I think that would be perfect for this game. Nashville is basically turning into the Vegas of the South, it’s a huge travel destination that will be attractive and fun for everyone.

But it’s also possible that the semifinal game is South 1 vs. South 2, or North 1 vs. North 2. Nashville works for either option.

As for the East-West semifinal game, I chose Las Vegas because yes, while it’s definitely in the West, it’s also much more neutral. It’s Vegas. Certainly if the game is Florida State vs. USC, USC fans will have an easier trip out there, but again, Vegas is pretty neutral on the whole. It’s not a huge college football city, but it’s still a major destination that fans will be excited to travel to.

The National Championship will be played in the Rose Bowl every year.

No exceptions.

The Rose Bowl is the most storied and iconic stadium in all of football, it’s where the National Championship should be played every year. Maybe that’s just me because one of my first vivid memories of college football was the 2005 National Championship between Texas and USC at the Rose Bowl, but in my mind, that’s the only venue suitable for the biggest game of the year.

As for a TV contract, I am envisioning an NFL-style contract with all the major networks–ESPN, Fox, CBS and NBC. Each will get one quarterfinal game a year, and then every year, it will rotate which network gets to air the semifinals and National Championship.

I thought about doing it where three of the four networks get to air one of the final three games and one gets left out every year, but that’s just too complicated for me to figure out, so we’ll just do it NFL-style, where they rotate which network gets to have the Super Bowl on a three year cycle.

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FAQs, Etc.

1. Why do we actually NEED pro/rel in college football? Isn’t this just a WANT?
   1. Besides the fact that it’s a ubiquitous and integral part of the most popular sport in the world and is simply a good idea that introduces merit and accountability to sports?
   2. Well, because as we’ve seen over the past 50 years or so, the structure and framework of college football doesn’t work anymore. And it hasn’t for a long time. We can certainly redraw the lines again, fencing the different levels of college football off from one another once again as NCAA leaders did in the 1970s, but we’ll have to redraw them again in another 20-30 years. Probably much sooner at the rate we’re seeing realignment happen lately.
   3. So why not just implement a permanent solution, where Boise State in the 2000s could have simply ascended the ranks of college football to the top league, instead of repeatedly being that “mid-major” on the outside looking in hoping to get an invite to the BCS? Programs rise and fall all the time. Pro/rel is the only way to actually account for that permanently.
   4. We change and realign the conferences all the time now–it’s clear that the whole structure we have just doesn’t work.
   5. So let’s build a new structure where upward and downward mobility is a feature, and the system is built to accommodate the fact that the teams that are weaker right now may not always be weak, and the teams that are stronger right now may not always be strong.
   6. It’s a way to future-proof the sport, simple as.
2. Are there any other issues that will need to be ironed out, including those not necessarily directly pertinent to the Premier League? 
   1. Yes, absolutely.
   2. The transfer portal: It can’t just be a free-for-all. There has to be some form of commitment. Right now dudes can sign their NLI, then transfer in April. They can literally leave after three and a half months.
      1. That said, I do like the “water finding its level” aspect of the transfer portal. There are missed evals in recruiting. Some guys go to Ohio State and Georgia and it becomes evident that they will never see the field there, so they should be able to transfer to a lesser program where they are more likely to see the field.
      2. At the end of the day, we want these kids developing and living out their dreams of playing football, not wasting away buried on the depth chart for four years. And for kids who were late bloomers, or overlooked during recruiting, and “outgrow” their original program, let them maximize their earnings and go get developed at one of the elite programs. Let water find its level!
      3. We need to limit the number of transfers that a player has, preferably one. If you want to transfer a second time, you better have a damn good reason.
   3. NIL/Paying Players: I believe this is being sorted out right now with that lawsuit settlement, but just quickly, to me, it would all go through the schools, ideally. The athletic departments would be paying these kids, not sleazy booster collectives. Bring it all in-house–boosters can just go back to donating to the athletic departments rather than the collectives.
      • Players would of course still be able to sign ACTUAL NIL deals with car dealerships, corporate sponsors and the like. But the actual pay for play would be going through the universities themselves, and it would be transparent and regulated. I wouldn’t make a salary cap, but we should at least know how much players are making and how much programs are spending on player salaries.
3. Is this plan actually likely to happen? 
   1. Probably not, but who knows. As it stands right now, there is really no good reason for the big time programs of college football to accede to a structure like this because it’s all downside for them. They’re already locked in to making a ton of money, now you’re telling them if they have a bad season or two they can be relegated and miss out on a ton of money? They’d never go for that. So sadly this is a pipe dream, but the good news is, a lot of people out there seem favorable to the idea of pro/rel in college football, and if enough people want it, it could happen.
   2. I remember in the 2000s the idea of a college football playoff seemed like a pipe dream. As Victor Hugo once said… “Nothing else in the world, not all the armies, is so powerful as an idea whose time has come.”
4. What is the television theme music for the CFB Premier League? 
   1. The CBS College Football track, of course. That’s a given. Every network will be required to use it, and that’s final.
5. What do you say to someone who says this couldn’t work?
   1. It’s literally the exact structure of European soccer. Does European soccer work? The English Premier league is one of the richest and most popular sports leagues on the planet. 
   2. Why couldn’t we simply fashion college football after it? This is not some crackpot idea–pro/rel is tried and true and tested, just not here in America.
   3. More importantly: why shouldn’t a team be able to work its way up and down the hierarchy? Why should there be a ceiling, and a floor?
   4. I am not saying this would make college football fair, because it won’t. College football is an inherently unfair sport. But having pro/rel will at least make it less unfair, if only slightly.
   5. And if all else fails and someone is still opposed to this plan, my only question to them would be this: Why don’t you like accountability?