Relegation: how college football could change from rewarding politics to rewarding merit
It’s no secret that the last few years have been turbulent ones for college football, with conferences like the Pac-12 expanding and others like the Big East stumbling as members leave for greener pastures. Teams’ affiliations seem perpetually in flux, and even conferences that recently expanded like the ACC could still lose members (creating awkward broadcast rights issues in the process).
This comes from a simple fundamental premise; not all schools are of equal value from a broadcast point of view, so that’s led every school to try and maximize its broadcast rights by partnering with as many other high-value football teams as possible, leaving some historical rivals and less-valuable television markets in the dust.
From one standpoint, that’s not all that bad; there’s room for upward mobility in this system if you can boost your on-field product (see how Boise State and TCU have gone from mid-majors to more prominent conferences, or how Oklahoma State‘s gone from an also-ran in a good conference to a national title contender). However, the unpredictability of realignment leads to chaos and backroom politics playing substantial roles, and that’s not desirable. There is a way for college football to potentially have its cake and eat it too, though, even if it’s something more familiar to futbol fans: relegation.
[php snippet=1]
SB Nation recently did a week-long series on the idea of relegation in college football, and authors Spencer Hall, Jason Kirk and Bill Connelly made some excellent points on why the concept commonly seen in overseas soccer would translate very well to the NCAA gridiron. In particular, Hall’s comment that relegation wouldn’t ruin things at the top, but rather improve things at the bottom stands out:
The rich still get richer under relegation. No one here wants to stand in the way of that. What relegation would allow, however, is the possibility that underperforming teams not living up to the aristocratic standard would be booted off into the mob to prove their worth anew, and perhaps lose their seat permanently to a hungrier, scrappier underling determined to bend the system and its rules to their advantage. If that and possibly screwing someone else out of a spot in the penthouse at the same time isn’t the American dream, we don’t know what is.
What’s particularly notable about relegation as it works in overseas soccer is that it actually does make every game count for those near the bottom of the standings. The finishes at the bottom are often as notable, if not more so, than the ones at the top, which was on display during this year’s English Premier League final day of insanity.
That would bring plenty of excitement and attention to even teams having terrible years, as they’d be fighting for continued places in top leagues, and that in turn would dramatically boost TV ratings for matchups that look lacklustre under the current system; all of a sudden, a clash of 2-9 teams has huge stakes. It’s worth noting that promotion and relegation tends to work no matter which teams fall and rise, too; it’s more challenging in the U.S. than England given the greater geographic gaps, but that could be solved simply by assigning a lower-tier conference in a similar geographic area to each higher-tier conference (for example, pairing the Mountain West and the Pac-12).
Top teams will usually bounce back from relegation after a year or two, while minnows without the finances to compete at the top level don’t tend to stay long. In essence, relegation would keep most of what we have now in college football, but make conference realignment predictable, formulaic and fair, rewarding or punishing teams based solely on performance rather than backroom deals.
From a structural point of view, college football is the one American sport relegation could work in, too. Although it’s fun to speculate about the idea in baseball or hockey, that’s not going to happen, as current big league owners would never go for the chance that their franchise might wind up in the minors someday.
College football doesn’t have owners, though, and it already has a de facto relegation system; some schools move up to more rewarding conferences and affiliations, while others are forced to pair up with whoever’s left. All relegation would do is change this system to a meritocracy based on teams’ on-field showings rather than something that rewards the schools with the most political heft and the biggest television markets.
There obviously would still be challenges in getting this through, but it would make much more sense than the current chaos of realignment.
[php snippet=1]
