Not So Big 8

[Guy Chamberlin]

No, parity doesn't mean a day when teams that didn't use to go 12 - 0 are now going 12 - 0. Parity means when everybody in the league is going 8 - 8.

 

And that's not where we're going. We simply have a few new and exciting teams that don't happen to be named Michigan, Nebraska and Notre Dame (at the moment). And Ohio State, Texas and USC have reclaimed dynasties after some lean years.

 

The notion that these legacy programs -- who have often hired the wrong high-salaried coaches, gotten burned on five star recruits, and suffered upsets when trying to schedule patsies -- need to be protected from up and coming football programs is pretty much everything college competition shouldn't be.

[newenglandhusker]

Man...that JTrain guy really speaks a lot of sense. Agree with both the "plus 1 post" and the "scholarship limits" posts.

[Glendower]

There have been scholarship limits for decades. I don't think most people know this. When Switzer and Osborne were dominating the Big 8, there was a 105 scholarship limit and then it was cut to 95 starting in 1978. And that cut didn't stop us from winning over 100 games and being one of the dominant programs of the '80s. And further cuts to 92 and then 88 scholarships in the early '90s didn't stop us from one of the most impressive runs in college football history from 93-97. I'm not denying that the gradual cut to 85 has had an effect, but there is a lot more going on that contributes to parity in college football.

 

Both you and the Buff fellow make a lot of sense. Trying to nail "parity" down to one or two causes is as futile as trying to find one ultimate cause for any phenomenon. In the 80s and 90s, some schools (like UNL) had fairly revolutionary ideas about strength and conditioning that have since been adopted by others. The dissemination of those ideas combined with a (newer) scholarship limit, a new generation of coaches who were brought up in the modern ear of football, and a myriad of other evolutions in programs, funding, etc (I don't know for sure, but it would be interesting to see if a school like TCU suddenly allotted more money for the coaching staff and facilities in the 90s and earlier 2000s). There's also something to be said for the prestige showered on coaches this generation which may attract brighter minds that may have applied themselves in other ways 40 years ago. Sure, in the 40s people liked football, but it wasn't the same sort of high prestige job that it became with the rise of the NFL and the crazy salaries that coaches get now. Someone who might have, say, gone into accounting, business administration, the sciences, and so on might be more likely to seriously apply his/her faculties to coaching. Not saying that there weren't always brilliant coaches, but it *might* be that there are more generally brilliant people choosing coaching as a profession. Also, high schools have adopted some of the strength training and conditioning practices that used to be limited to colleges, which helps produce more really great athletes (no, not as intense or well equipped programs, but much closer to the way colleges were 20-25 years ago than high schools were 20-25 years ago ). Just saying that there are soooo many possible causes, that it's hard to nail one down as the inus condition.

 

Giving a team the option to have an additional 10 scholarships wouldn't completely derail the trend toward parity we're seeing now-- maybe slow it a bit. However, I do think that this leads fairly naturally into a discussion about a playoff system. There are too many teams that are too good and that have no contact with one another for the current system to remain intact and be allowed to carry on much longer into the future in good faith. Pretty soon, almost everyone is going to have to admit publicly or privately that you simply can't rank teams relative to one another with much precision if they haven't played. Sure, you can say, "Well, Team A beat team B who beat team C who beat team D, therefore A is better than D," but hypothetical football syllogisms rarely work out in practice. Just look at our season!