These days, college football’s landscape is never set in stone. With the College Football Playoff format under consideration and a sport that appears to be hurtling toward a professional-like look, On3’s Andy Staples and Ari Wasserman hypothesized a system unlike any in American sports.
Would College Football Benefit From a Relegation System?
“You know how I go on my diatribe about Arizona fans and I’m like, ‘What’s the point sometimes of showing up every day and bleeding red and blue and knowing in the back of your heart or in your soul that you can’t win the national title?'” Wasserman said Monday on “Andy & Ari On3.”
“If Arizona was relegated to a smaller league and you had a super league of 64 teams and you had the ‘Tier B’ league … and the national champion or the playoff participants in the second-tier league got promoted to the super league and the super league’s teams got relegated down, then they could still be a part of the same system.
“But would an Arizona fan celebrate a national championship of the beer team league the same way they would (otherwise)?”
Staples pointed out that the English Football League Championship, a tier below the Premier League, draws respectable crowds.
Wasserman asked if Staples thinks lesser-regard college football programs would want more to be in a system where they had a theoretical chance to win a national title or have the hope to one day compete with the powers. Staples chose the latter.
“They’d rather be a guppy that might eat enough fish and get big enough to one day (compete)?” Wasserman said. “The thing is, like, Boise (State). What’s more gratifying to Boise: Getting to the 16-team or the 12-team playoff and playing a competitive football game against Penn State? Or beating somebody like Wyoming in the championship in a league that doesn’t include the big dogs?”
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Appalachian State fans have told Staples that the Mountaineers’ upset win over Michigan was more exciting than winning the FCS national crown. Wasserman is intrigued by the concept of relegation, but Staples doesn’t believe Americans would accept the system.
This offseason has already begun to detail what college football might be morphing into in the near future. The SEC and Big Ten, already the powers in the sport, want four auto-bids each into a 16-team College Football Playoff. While the Big 12 and ACC are both hesitant, the two strongest conferences seem to hold a good deal of the power.
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