The ultimate stat: you could take away LSU, Georgia and Alabama from the SEC’s three-round draft tally and the league still would have had more picks (18) than any other.
In terms of both NFL player production and competing for a spot in the College Football Playoff, the sport’s power base currently is consolidated in the following locales: the top third of the SEC, Ohio State, Clemson and an incomplete Oklahoma program that needs to figure out defense in order to compete with the others.
This is not ideal.
Far better for the sport to regain some semblance of regional balance and conference depth, wherein other programs have the upward mobility to compete for a national title.
Yeah? Shame he doesn’t have a solution for that. I thought for sure he was this close to offering playoff expansion as a cure for college football’s ills.
Get The Picture 
Yes, Pat. Shut it all down so the NCAA can rebuild it more equitably.
(Not for the student-athletes, but for the conferences!)
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Since it’s now pro have a draft. Problem solved. And I know there are a ton of problems with this idea, but they do it in the NFL so surely they can figure out college.
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You’re not going to let kids pick where they go to school? How do you choose the selection order between competing conferences? How do you do any of it without a labor agreement?
I think you’re selling yourself short with “a ton of problems”.
But I guess that “since it’s now pro” makes you feel better. Though I don’t think pro means what you think it means.
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I relied to this comment similarly on Friday.
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Replied
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Not a bad idea.
You could restrict it regionally. Louisiana, Georgia, Mississippi, Alabama, Tennessee and Kentucky kids are eligible for the SEC draft.
Florida, SC, NC, Virginia, Maryland and WV high school players go into the ACC draft.
Etc, etc.
All players take an online set of academic classes via the NCAA to ensure all players get the same basic education.
Everybody gets $35,000 a year.
No athletic eligibility after transferring.
Definitely workable.
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Except it would violate the Sherman Antitrust Act.
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In the last couples of sentences….It looked as though he was proposing cfp expansion
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Does “regional balance” mean teams actually being competitive or merely being included?
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I’m 56 and I’ve known this all my life.
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The only cure is reducing the scholarship limit.
I hope we get a title first, but I wouldn’t exactly oppose a less top heavy CFB world.
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But hasn’t it always been top heavy? Look back through college football history and there have always been small groups that dominated. It will change again. Saban will retire. Clemson will get caught with ‘roids again. Some other school will finally get it together for a run (I hope that’s us). But it will change.
I think the playoffs highlight the imbalance more. In the past, stupid bowl alliances kept many of the supposedly great teams from playing so more of the country could argue their team was better. Now that there’s an avenue to determine it on the field, those schools can’t argue.
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It has never been this top heavy. There have been individual teams making Years long runs, but never such a small pod of teams that have a realistic shot.
Now how drastic the difference is between now and before is surely debatable. I’d love to see the change in trailing 10 year averages of stats like the number of teams with mathematical chances of a title with two weeks left in the season and other similar stats.
But whether reducing scholarship limits would have a trickle down effect that would increase competition is not debatable. It is very simple math: if Georgia can have, say, 10 fewer players on scholarship each year, those 10 players will be on scholarship somewhere else.
Let’s say those ten go to South Carolina. It only do ten of their less talented players get replaced by ten better players, they were already culling their ten least talented players, so now 20 former South Carolina scholarship worthy players are going to somewhere else. If those 20 go to Vandy, now you’ve got 40 Vandy worthy players going elsewhere.
It wouldn’t work so directly or cleanly but that’s how the math works. Tier one teams lose 10 players; a total loss (average player quality would go up, but you lose depth to lesser teams, whose average player quality would also rise, closing the gap dramatically). The trickle down effect is roughly exponential as it works it’s way down all the way through FCS.
The effect is less drastic as it works down through the quality tiers and divisions, but it would be extremely dramatic for P5 and the top levels of G5.
But far fewer kids get to play college football.
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*It has never been this top heavy. *
90’s Florida, Florida State, Tennessee and Nebraska would like a word..
Check your snarkometer
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Chill man I literally said my point was debatable.
But if you do want some snark, 90’s Tech, Michigan, Miami, Washington, Alabama, and Colorado would also like a word, to say nothing of the rest of the teams in contention during the 90’s (as in who would have made the playoff if it were around). That’s 11 total teams with NC claims.
Meanwhile only 11 different teams have filled the 24 available playoff slots in 6 years, and four of those 11 never had a chance.
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I’m chill. Wasn’t my intent to rattle your cage.
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I’m perfectly calm dude. Calmer than you are.
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Scholarships used to be much higher back in the day. Bryant would recruit a kid simply to keep him off another team. Not sure when the limit went to 85 but I seem to remember the discussion to lower it TO 85.
I still think it’s a perception problem exacerbated by the playoff system.
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Yep.
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Saw this after my comment, but ties in
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SEC is more equitable than ACC, PAC 12 B10 and B12. Those each have sent 2 schools (If you count Washington and MSU) SEC has sent 3 different schools with 3 different Champs last 3 years
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This is usually the reason for playoffs…to quote my BIL 20 years ago “it’s the only way there team will get in” . And it’s worse now.
Theres too many teams. The best hoard and the rest pick the bones. It’s like a pirate island prison. And paying $1M to schools merely to “keep their programs alive” doesnt help. A few hundred of 1000s make the NFL. Top players arent going to Idaho falls state when their future, generational money, family is on the line.
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If the goal is to limit the accumulation of talent in a relatively small number of programs, how about limiting the number of “stars’ at each school instead of limiting scholarships?
You could either limit the number of each category (X number of 5-stars; Y number of 4-stars) or limit the total number of stars each program could have. Then, if a school loaded up too much on a few 5-stars, they would be forced to round out the rest of the team with 1- and 2-stars to stay under the limit.
This approach forces teams to choose a more evenly spread out range of “stars” rather than just filling up on 4- and 5-stars and pushing out the 3-stars to other schools.
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“You could limit.” Who could? How do you determine which ratings to use?
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NCAA currently limits the number of scholarships; this is an “enhancement” of that current authority.
An average of the major rating schemes out there could be agreed upon; as long as all programs used the same criteria it could be seen as equitable.
This is a bit of “Devil’s Advocacy”. As a Dawg fan, I’m in favor of the current system since we are one of the accumulators of talents. This was just ‘spit-ballin'” a different approach if the goal was truly to spread out the talent. If the goal was truly to expand the CFP, then in my best Rosanne Rosannadanna voice: “Never mind”
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I still think there was nothing wrong with having bowl games and endless speculation/talk about which conference was “better” – Would it not be better for the “regional balance” if every conference could claim their champion was #1 in the country?
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I don’t know if it was the bowl system or the fact that back then conferences were far more regional than now (to me this is the biggie), but
if Georgia wasn’t one of the few teams dominating recruiting and contending for titles right now, this would be a pretty damn boring sport.
Imagine being a Tennessee fan right now; you used to kick ass, but now you suck with no end in sight, and you get your ass kicked by all your rivals, including the ones you never used to lose to. Aside from Bama you barely even play your old conference foes from the West, but you do have to play an utterly meaningless game against Missouri every year. What’s the point?
It’s the same story for dozens of schools who used to be able to at least reach up at possible greatness every five years or so. Now? You’re either delusional or you’re content with being a fan of a perpetually mediocre football team.
Basically almost everyone outside of about ten teams is now living the life of a Kentucky football fan.
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Scholarship limit is the no brainer. I might be preaching to the choir but I believe expanding playoffs would only exacerbate the problem.
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Ooh! I know! Let’s pay the players!
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