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Spencer Hall, Jason Kirk and Bill Connelly, writers on SB Nation, devoted much of last week to a very interesting thought experiment...College Football Relegation.
Their articles: Monday (Introduction) Tuesday (Q&A, Comparison to Soccer) Wednesday (The proposal, tier possibilities) Thursday (Year-by-year breakdown assuming relegation)
For those unfamiliar with the promotion and relegation concept (I still am for the most part) it is a process used in many sports, or at least and most notably in European Soccer, in which teams move up and down between different leagues/tiers from year to year depending on their performance.
There are many different forms of relegation...the Premier league picks three teams a year while other leagues pick only one depending on performance from the last three years, so there are a number of ways we could apply such a principle to CFB. The writers imagine a system by which we break up into a BCS-FBS-FCS-D2-D3 allignment and send the worst team from each team to play the best team from its lower league for each respective berth. For example, last year Indiana would have played Northern Illinois for the right to play in the Big Ten. Our conference(s)/tiers would shake out like this:
1. Big Ten
2. MAC
3. Missouri Valley
4. Ohio Valley
5. Northeast, Pennslyvania, Great Lakes and GLVC
6. Centennial, CCIW, Ohio, MIAC, MIAA, NCAC, UMAC, NATHC, WIAC
7. Great Plains and Heartland
Several arguments are made to support implementing relegation:
1. Our current conferences and methods of realignment are profoundly un-American and do not allow for merit based team mobility.
2. Relegation will bring fresh energy in to the sport by acknowledging success. It gives smaller schools hope and makes games at lower levels actually matter.
Problems:
1. Lost rivalries
2. The sport will still be driven by money, an issue not solved by relegation.
3. Complicated situation when considering academic standards and qualities of facilities.
Its in interesting idea to ponder but I find that it ignores the fact that these are schools, not clubs like in Europe or South America. A School supports sports teams as part of a wider mission to develop and educate while clubs exist solely to entertain and make money. Just thinking of the Big Ten, something like this might ruin the nature of the CIC. What do you think?
Their articles: Monday (Introduction) Tuesday (Q&A, Comparison to Soccer) Wednesday (The proposal, tier possibilities) Thursday (Year-by-year breakdown assuming relegation)
For those unfamiliar with the promotion and relegation concept (I still am for the most part) it is a process used in many sports, or at least and most notably in European Soccer, in which teams move up and down between different leagues/tiers from year to year depending on their performance.
There are many different forms of relegation...the Premier league picks three teams a year while other leagues pick only one depending on performance from the last three years, so there are a number of ways we could apply such a principle to CFB. The writers imagine a system by which we break up into a BCS-FBS-FCS-D2-D3 allignment and send the worst team from each team to play the best team from its lower league for each respective berth. For example, last year Indiana would have played Northern Illinois for the right to play in the Big Ten. Our conference(s)/tiers would shake out like this:
1. Big Ten
2. MAC
3. Missouri Valley
4. Ohio Valley
5. Northeast, Pennslyvania, Great Lakes and GLVC
6. Centennial, CCIW, Ohio, MIAC, MIAA, NCAC, UMAC, NATHC, WIAC
7. Great Plains and Heartland
You can click on the link from Thurdsay to see exactly how this system would have played out over the past seven years, had it existed, but just for 2012 in the Big Ten:
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The Big Ten: Illinois, Iowa, Michigan, Michigan State, Nebraska, Northwestern, Notre Dame (an assumption), Ohio State, Penn State, Purdue and Wisconsin with NIU and Toledo moving up from the MAC.
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The MAC: Ball State, Bowling Green, Buffalo, Central Michigan, Miami (Ohio), Ohio, Western Michigan, with Southern Illinois, North Dakota State and Northern Iowa moving up to the MAC and Minnesota and Indiana moving down from the Big Ten.
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Missouri Valley: Illinois State, Indiana State, Missouri State, Western Illinois, Youngstown State, with Jacksonville State, Eastern Kentucky, Kent State changing conferences.
Several arguments are made to support implementing relegation:
1. Our current conferences and methods of realignment are profoundly un-American and do not allow for merit based team mobility.
2. Relegation will bring fresh energy in to the sport by acknowledging success. It gives smaller schools hope and makes games at lower levels actually matter.
Problems:
1. Lost rivalries
2. The sport will still be driven by money, an issue not solved by relegation.
3. Complicated situation when considering academic standards and qualities of facilities.
Its in interesting idea to ponder but I find that it ignores the fact that these are schools, not clubs like in Europe or South America. A School supports sports teams as part of a wider mission to develop and educate while clubs exist solely to entertain and make money. Just thinking of the Big Ten, something like this might ruin the nature of the CIC. What do you think?
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