College football is not fair. I realize that might be some big revelation, an epiphany, to some of you, but college football has to be full of the most lopsided haves and have nots of any major sport anywhere. Go on, think of another sport where a school like Texas, that has all the money in the world, the athletes, and the coaches, plays against a school like Louisiana-Monroe and it counts as part of the regular season instead of being seen as the exhibition game that it is.
Then you got all these guys screaming for playoffs, even a bunch of lawyers that started a playoff PAC, as if the government can solve the problem. Even if they got a law passed that forced a playoff, it wouldn't make college football any more even than it is right now, so any playoff system put in place would still be a joke.
So, I tell you what. I tell you that I get to be in charge, and instead of coming up with some fancy, schmancy playoff system, I make the changes that need to make things more fair than they are right now.
And my changes won't involve lasers or a moat.
Schools can choose to spend it on whatever athletic endeavor they choose, whether it be football, basketball, or putting together a great women's soccer team. They do not get to spend it on coaches salaries. More on that in a bit.
Next thing - do away with recruiting and have a college draft. It'd work much better than the current situation where the recruiting has gone all bonkers, and it'd make more money for the sport (all of which would go into the big kitty). ESPN would get in on it a lot more than they do now - they've have a week-long draft to show on TV, heck, they'd go bonkers with it.
Even the recruiting people would love it. They'd get to analyze players and drafts, hell, they could even do a college combine if the ESPN people would pay for it. People'd watch it, so I don't know why ESPN wouldn't go for that too.
Back to the coaches. Thirty percent of the kitty money would set aside for coaches salaries, and the same allotment given to every school. Schools could then split the same amount of money amongst their entire staff.
Starting in 2013, should the world survive that long, all existing coaches that wanted to stay in Division IA football would sign up for their desired position, and no, they can't all be head coaches. In order to sign up for a head coaching position, a coach would have to have been a coordinator for at least five years. And in order to be a coordinator, you'd first have to be a position coach for five years.
After they all signed up, you can probably guess what comes next. The Coaches Draft! Schools would draft their head coaches, coordinators and position coaches just like they'd draft their players. They'd have to keep their coaching staff for a period of four years, then they'd do it all over again. Think of that, just like the Olympics!
Now that doesn't mean that head coach stays the head coach for the full four years. At the end of every season, each set of coaches could get together and choose their next year's head coach. That way if the head guy sucked, they could replace him as the head guy, and demote him back into the lower ranks.
By God the reality shows that could spring forth from this arrangement pale anything that might exist in the world of sports right now. It'd be like Survivor and that show where Donald Trump tells people they're fired, and it would be great entertainment throughout the off-season!
Imagine Nick Saban's entire staff getting together and voting him demoted to being an offensive line coach and taking orders from someone else. You'd watch that, wouldn't you? I sure as hell would, just to see the look on the Sabinator's face!
I know what you're thinking. Hey, how you going to determine what school gets to go first in the draft? Well... certainly over a four-year span, some teams are going to suck regardless of what conference affiliation they have. You'll still have your toilet teams, ‘cause some schools athletic directors just don't have a clue about what they're doing when it comes to making these decisions.
Does all this seem crazy? Perhaps, but is it any more crazy than the college football landscape that currently exists? Hell, no, it's not! Some immature boob has just become the head coach of one of the best teams in the nation, while recruits still pull that stupid "pull the hat out of a bag, put it on my head, oh, not really, not that one, this one" stuff they do when the cameras are rolling to pick a school.
Tell you what, before you get a playoff you first got to make it fair. My proposal makes it as fair as college football can possibly be. All it needs is some laws changed, and me becoming the country's college football czar, a position I would more than gladly accept.
I await your call, President Obama. Great things are ahead for college football. People want change, and this is it!