Toward Parity In College Football: The Awful Eight

Hello Followers. Hope you are having great week.

As for me, well, lets just say that I’m looking forward to greener pastures.

And, unfortunately, the same can be said for our beloved Washington State Cougars.

For this reason, I began to think about a few policy changes that the NCAA might employ to help out programs in similar predicaments as ours.

So, if you’re interested in how the NCAA might work to create NFL-type parity in College Football, Read on..

As I noted earlier in the year, one of the things that makes building or re-building a College Football program so darn hard, is that non-bowl bound teams play considerably less football than winning programs. Consider that: When a team travels to a bowl game, they are granted 15 extra practices each year!

This means that teams that go to a bowl game are granted what amounts to be an additional slate of spring practices each year.

So:

1) A fourth year junior in a perennial bowl bound program (PBBD), has 45 more practices than a WSU player (who has never been to a bowl game) in the same class. Translation: That is three more full sessions of spring ball–and that doesn’t even include differences in the quality of competition each player has played against along the way.

2) A fifth year senior in a PBBD has 60 more practices than a WSU player in the same class—and that’s before the season begins. By the end of their time in the program, a PBBD player over the past five years has participated in 75 more practices than a player at WSU. That’s six extra spring sessions and about two and half training camps of extra football!!!

When you factor into this mix the differences in talent, you get a lethal formula:

 MORE TALENT + MORE WORK/EXPERIENCE = DOMINATION

So, in order to change that landscape a bit, I bring you all the following proposal–which I am calling the AWFUL EIGHT. Here’s the idea:

1) At the end of each season, coaches from each of the 11 FBS conferences–plus independents, would be able to nominate two teams from their league for AWFUL EIGHT status.

The catch:
A) Coaches cannot nominate their own teams.
B) Teams with more than one conference win are not eligible for nomination.

The RATIONALE for having coaches nominate teams within their own conference is two-fold:
a) Coaches cannot vote for teams in their own conference once the real voting begins.
b) Allowing coaches to determine elibigle teams allows them to avoid nominating those programs that they think folded in order to benefit from AWFUL EIGHT STATUS.

2) FBS coaches would then be able to cast, you guessed it, 8 votes for teams that were nominated in conferences outside of their own.

The catch:
1) 4 of those schools must be from non-BCS conferences
2) 4 of those school must be from BCS conferences.

3) The top 4 “worst teams” in both the BCS conferences (including Independents) and the non-BCS conferences would be crowned the “AWFUL EIGHT.”

And for becoming a member of the awful eight, those teams would be allowed:

1) 15 additional practices to be used by the end of College Bowl season.

2) An exemption to carry an extra scholarship the year that they become a crowned member.

3) A featured game. Each of the 8 teams would play against each other in games that would start off the College Football season the third week in August the following year (Game 1, Tuesday Night; Game 2 Wednesday, Game 3 Thursday, Game 4, Friday).

4) And to prepare for a 13th game, each team would be allowed 5 extra pre-season practices for that year.

So, there you have it, a quick bye-week idea for how teams like ours might be able to speed up the rebuilding process.

Granted it will never happen, but imagine what we might look like next year if Tuel had 20 extra formal practices to learn the offense between the off-season and the start of next year????…

Have a great end to your week..