Quote:
Originally Posted by Cecil Terwilliger
College football is funny like that. It probably has the highest number of lopsided games of any major sport, which is a natural byproduct of how they schedule and rank the teams.
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It sure seems to me that the first 2 or so games of the college football season for most of the "top 25" teams are essentially pre-season or practice rounds, and for many of such teams, 3 or 4 of the games are intentional cupcake matchups.
It is shameful, really, but that is what the big-dollar donors demand so that their precious teams can keep up high win/loss records, and ESPN isn't going to press the issue either.
For example, look at Alabama's schedule this year. They play Louisville, Arkansas State, Louisiana Lafayette, and The Citadel. All strong programs, for sure.
Or look at other schools.
Oklahoma State plays Missouri State (who?) and South Alabama.
Kansas State (who, although not a top-25 team, is notorious for weighting their schedule to be virtually assured of a 6-win season) plays South Dakota and UT-San Antonio.
Georgia plays Middle Tennessee, Austin Peay, and UMass.
Wisconsin plays Western Kentucky and New Mexico.
These schools don't really want to play other talented, deep-bench, athletic schools. They don't want to take the chance that they might lose early or be exposed for the fraud that they really are.
It is shameful, really.
And yet the fans, donors, playoff ranking committee, and the like just don't seem to care and, perversely, reward the schools for such laziness and deck-stacking.
What should happen, in my view, is complete relegation, taking the top 48 teams and splitting them into 4 divisions, with 12 teams in each division.
Each team plays each other, starting from the first game of the season and going through to the end. Division champions play each other in playoff format, and the winner of each goes to the college football championship.
Teams that are sub 500 in each division gets dropped and replaced with teams outside of that year's top 48 that had at least a 7 or 8 win seasons.
That would make for exciting and competitive football, for every game and in every season.