The Great Debate

College football is full of tradition, culture, controversy, competition, and rivalry. In many ways, college football is the perfect representation of the university spirit; the unfettered examination of everything. The university system was set up to be, academically anyway, the place of unimpeded competition of ideas, regardless of how extreme or how strange. Ideas and theories have competed over time to examine truth, correctness, and advancement. College football’s unique traditions and cultures meet each Saturday in the fall where legacy and history rewrite themselves on the turf to determine who is the best team.

In many ways, college football has also followed some of the unfortunate trends of the university, the limiting of competition against old ideas and tradition to maintain one idea, to prop up one idea by limiting new competing ideas. If we were in a lecture setting I could compare college football today to a lecture given by a college professor where he states his theory as correct because no other idea exists. A student raises his hand and says, what about… and the professor dismisses the comment without a response.

It is true that the ancient programs around the country have incredible traditions and histories. But the past is no guarantor of the future. The same goes for college football. By limiting the number of competitions between the BCS conferences and the Others college football is denying itself the greatness its tradition demands. The longer the NCAA waits to reform the system, the more devastating the transition will be when it comes.

College football has already showed a great equalization when schools like Utah and Boise State defeat BCS schools in BCS Bowl games, when the Mountain West Conference goes undefeated against the PAC-10, and even when a school like South Florida who is a part of the BCS system finds success in only a few years with a college football team. Now even schools like Troy, East Carolina, and UNLV are able to upset ranked opponents on the road.

To avoid greater embarrassment in the future or more claims of illegitimacy, college football needs to make changes allow all teams equal opportunity to demonstrate their ability. Here are four suggestions:

1. The NCAA needs to forbid Division I-A football programs from playing outside of the division and scheduling I-AA teams. This will encourage and even force teams to play more I-A opponents so that conference and team strength will be validated and assessed more accurately.
2. There needs to be an additional penalty imposed by the NCAA for teams that back out of existing contracts. This doesn’t necessarily need to be financial, maybe veto a bowl invitation or the NCAA getting to choose a replacement team. Too many teams, especially BCS teams have the money to break contracts to avoid up and coming competition. Even the Others sometimes avoid each other in fear of the competition. Nevada tried to break its contract with BYU recently and succeeded in postponing the game scheduled for this year to 2010 and BYU was forced to schedule a I-AA opponent instead. Notre Dame magically disappeared off of BYU’s future competition recently as well.
3. An organization other than the NCAA should not determine the National Champion of college football. I think bowl games should still be involved, but the NCAA must set the guidelines for a sport it regulates for determining a champion.
4. A system must be in place either through a bowl system or otherwise that gives equal opportunity to all programs and conferences in I-A college football for a national title and financial success.