Relegation

I'm not the first one with the idea, but for nearly 15 years, I've bantered the idea of relegation in major college football with friends and family. I'll freely admit I don't understand how professional soccer around the world determines who is demoted or promoted leagues, but I know it is done and generally works.

Thankfully, the world has Bill Connelly who is one of the world's nation's Missouri's foremost experts on major world football. And American college football.

Why would I support relegation? Take it away, Bill:

Promotion and relegation would bring an extra layer of drama and excitement to a sport already full of it. You want conference battles to matter more? You want directionless legacy programs to be punished for playing awful football for years on end? You want better, more deserving programs to fill the spots of the legacies? You want the top tier of college football to be nearly free of dead weight? Promotion and relegation are for you.

If you want to see what relegation would look like in American college football, read his post. My favorite? His prediction that North Dakota State would have likely played in the CapitalOne Bowl, and remain competitive in the B1.5G Of course, Connelly has a dose of reality:

But after two more years of this experiment, I'm no less sure that a) this would be an incredible thing for college football, in terms of excitement, competitiveness, drama, etc., and b) it would never, ever, ever, ever happen. It would reward currently powerless entities, and it would give entrenched, struggling programs no reason to say yes. But it's February; it's the time in the offseason where we can all do a little dreaming.

Preach on, Bill. Preach on.
TD

Tweet