The HK3 Proposal

A comprehensive proposal for college football.

Hate it or love it, college football postseason change is afoot.

The underlying, inescapable reality is that the four-team playoff system, as currently constructed, has not worked. Put simply, the seven-years running double-header of largely the same schools has not enhanced excitement for the sport, nor has it yielded competitive games. To boot, it has eroded much of what makes college football unique and exceptional.

Of the 14 semifinal games, there have been far more decided by 20+ points (7) than by single digits (3). Whether or not the playoff has hollowed out college football, or if other schools simply have not met the moment, the perceived divide between the so-called haves and have-nots has unmistakably swelled into an unsavory foregone conclusion in which ¾ of the playoff can be confidently forecast in the preseason.

And it is now commonplace for players to skip the Rose Bowl, or Sugar Bowl, formerly blasphemous to the heretofore pinnacle of the sport.

Moreover, the playoff has isolated entire geographic regions and tiers. The stature of the Pac-12 has been greatly subverted; Group of Five (G5), irrespective of feat, need not apply. Why should anyone on the west coast, or from the G5, care about the playoff if its teams are not seriously considered?

Reflected and confirmed by its ratings, the College Football Playoff (CFP) is stale. Alabama’s lopsided victory over Ohio State, two of the strongest brands in the sport, in January’s national championship averaged just 18.7 million viewers across ESPN channels, the lowest linear television audience in the 23 years since college football has decided a champion via a year-end game.

Thus it would be difficult to suggest that the state of college football is greater now than it was before. As a result, college football postseason change is not merely necessary, but inevitable. And as change begets change, it’s reasonable to surmise that conference realignment would follow suit.

So, the powers that be will soon seize on these trends as pretext to restructure the playoff anew, in a larger (and conveniently, more profitable) format, ostensibly without careful consideration for what makes college football great in the first place, yet with the proclaimed assurances that forced-upon changes will be in the best interest of the sport. In so doing, it will fundamentally alter everything directly or tangentially related to college football; needless to say, we should tread lightly.

At current, the proposition of a 12-team playoff appears to be percolating. It will be proposed with justifications and promises of enhanced opportunities to more teams, greater national excitement, and an enhanced regular season…but these seismic changes are justly met with great skepticism from those who love college football the most.

Why does change necessarily have to mean bigger? In short, it doesn’t, and it shouldn’t, yet barring a groundswell of an alternative, it will.

What if the plummeting ratings, the erosion of traditions, and the overall stale nature of the playoff are not problems with the size of the playoff, but rather with the existence, implementation and construct of the playoff, done without consideration for the impacts on the regular season and bowl games? Without such reflection, the immediate inclination is to grow our way out of the perceived problem, because after all, like the size of government, structural sport change is a one-way street.

The CFP was implemented as part of the 2014 season. It was perhaps naïve to presume that its institution would not inherently contain the seeds of destruction to some of the traditional, history-rich bowl games that are not the two semi-final bowl games.

In retrospect, that it would foment a playoff-or-bust mentality for many should have been entirely predictable. Because of course the accomplishment and prestige of playing in a Rose Bowl Game is diluted when there are three playoff games of far greater consequence.

So before I make my postseason proposal, I find it both prudent and purposeful to ponder, what is college football?

What is College Football?

The unique and defining characteristic of college football is, and has always been, the importance of the regular season, that every Saturday matters. College football is about the rivalries, the on-campus tailgating and traditions, and about achieving and sustaining greatness throughout the fall. This is the true heartbeat of college football, and where the center of gravity, in terms of the determination of a champion, ought to be.

For example — the 2018 Ohio State Buckeyes, — objectively one of the most talented teams in the nation, three-touchdown winners of the Big Ten Championship. But one game in mid-October in West Lafayette, Indiana, the Buckeyes lost 20–49 to the Purdue Boilermakers. That game alone curtailed Ohio State’s chances of a national championship.

To date, no team has sustained a lopsided loss or suffered two losses and made the CFP. Whereas, that same year, the 9–7 Philadelphia Eagles made the NFL’s 12-team postseason.

A similar 12-team college football playoff would similarly and undoubtedly drift towards mediocrity. There just simply aren’t 12 great teams in a given year. Looking at the final college football playoff rankings this past season, teams 10–12 were the (3-loss) Iowa State Cyclones, Indiana Hoosiers and Coastal Carolina Chanticleers. With all due respect to these programs, they simply were not CFP-great, as evidenced by their combined 1–2 bowl game record.

This underscores the mutual exclusivity of an all-important regular season and the existence of a robust playoff system. The two cannot be compatible. By expanding the playoff, the center of gravity is merely pushed later in the season, away from the fall Saturdays that truly embody college football.

This recognition is what therefore necessitates skepticism regarding a proposed 12-team playoff. A joint statement from the sub-group of the CFP management committee exploring playoff expansion stated, “we believe this proposal is the best option to increase participation, enhance the regular season and grow national excitement of college football.”

However, pertaining to the enhancement of the regular season, this flawed rationale of an expanded postseason as a remedy to preserve is itself perverse, and is antithetical to what makes college football great.

The argument revolves around the idea that the more playoff spots available, the more total number of games that matter, which is admittedly true in the sense of more teams staying alive for the postseason, but what’s sacrificed therein is the relevance of the colossal matchups (the College GameDay games) which currently shape which four teams currently make the playoff.

It’s these games which make college football great. So by trying to create an “enhanced regular season” with more meaningful games, the expanded playoff would instead erode the games that actually should matter the most.

With a 12-team playoff, Alabama could suffer multiple defeats, and still make the playoff, because in what year is Alabama not subjectively one of the top 12 teams? Gone is the Kick Six; gone are the big upsets, such as the aforementioned Purdue-Ohio State game, which rock college football.

They’re all relegated to nice-yet-not-definitively-consequential; Alabama and Ohio State easily qualify for the 11-game tournament in January. The importance of these memorable moments is replaced by extra playoff (and probable lopsided) games against over-matched opponents.

Gone is the regular season; gone is college football. When Alabama/Ohio State travel to Baton Rouge/State College to play LSU/PSU at night, they would do so knowing they have a larger cushion to suffer defeat. The rivalries simply cannot sustain their levels of anticipation or gravity after college football’s center of gravity is shifted from these on-campus fall games to a four-round January tournament in lifeless NFL stadiums.

So perhaps college football is in a ratings/interest recession because we instituted something seven years ago that, in a non-zero capacity, chipped away at the essence of college football. And it is with great fear, which becomes the impetus for authoring this proposal, that I believe a fundamental misdiagnosis of the problem will see us further double-down on an unnatural solution, at a far greater scale.

Needless to say, to answer the question, college football is, and has always been, the regular season.

The Proposal

HK3 is a comprehensive proposal for college football consisting of three components (in sequential order):

• HK3: Conference Realignment Structure (1/3)
• HK3: Scheduling Protocol (2/3)
• HK3: Revised Postseason Format (3/3)

The advantages of making these changes in concert with each other is the realization of synergy — that we can simultaneously propose changes to conference alignment, scheduling and the bowl season with concurrent considerations to the impact that each would have on each other.

This runs counter to the installation of a playoff system, irrespective of the impact on the other components of college football. Or the unilateral conference realignment shift, apathetic to the traditions and rivalries left behind. Failing to recognize these past mistakes, the college football world is imminently willing and keen to repeat them.

I’m not deluded into believing this utopian structure of college football would be easy to achieve. It surely would require an overwhelming, sweeping severance of contracts, and widespread, swift consensus amongst some conflicting interests.

However, I don’t believe this proposal is in anyway radical. Rather than deviate, it realigns college football conferences into uniform sizes (largely on historic bases), maintains the sanctity of the regular season, incorporates (and renews some dormant) historic rivalries, and re-institutes value and importance into the bowl system. To underscore these restorative properties, it deliberately utilizes much of the sport’s same, and former, verbiage (Power Six, Group of Six, FBS, CFP, BCS…).

The opposite of restoration is invention and experimentation. It is the tripling of the playoff into January Madness, with the accompanying hope that such wouldn’t further undermine the regular season, or further dismantle interest and high-profile participation in the bowl system.

Neither am I timid, much less intimidated, to challenge the cacophonous consensus of the crowd, that change is inevitable, pompously suggesting that those of us who care enough to push back simply don’t grasp commercial realities.

Assuming one is unenthused by the recent drift, as I see it, two options exist: unimaginatively embrace looming changes in a bizarre, lazy quest to be on the right side of course change, thus likely to realize victory, or to exercise the (unlikely) capacity to influence course reversal.

Admittedly, the lack of opposition to radical change, both to the postseason and conference construct, has been disheartening. That the (naked greed) allure of a 12–5 playoff matchup, or the concept of Oklahoma ahistorically playing Alabama or USC in the regular season as opposed to Oklahoma State , being somehow deserving of eschewing eminent rivalries in a sport where traditions reign supreme, is preposterous.

I submit that it’s non-hyperbolic to suggest this is indeed an existential inflection point in college football. That it’s entirely conceivable that the sport will be entirely unrecognizable in just a few years, for which I am I left with the oxymoronic sense of live nostalgia.

So why do this? Why author this time-consuming, likely-to-flutter proposal? It’s for, and because of, those of us who are vehemently not on board.

Those who cherish college football the most, cherish the regular season. So, to expand college football on the back-end, shifting the center of gravity from the on-campus games which should matter the most into January, risks alienating its most fervent fanbase.

So, instead of resigning to the fact that we need a 12-team playoff, and embracing growth as the only solution, let’s consider adopting this exciting 12-game regular season, synchronously with the advent of the BCS-CFP College Football postseason era.

Most importantly, this is a framework that if adopted, can remain unchanged for decades, enabling traditions to flourish.

Conclusion

As I sit here watching golf, pondering the future of college football, I’m struck by a peculiar similarity between the two sports: less is more.

Obviously in golf, a lower score is a better score, but there too exists an oft-realized, under-appreciated indirect correlation between swing speed and driving distance/ball striking. That by committing to less, more is achieved.

For college football, we need to dismiss the temptation of growth. It has not worked. Much like cancer, an unnatural growth which threatens its host, the introduction of a playoff system is unnatural to the sport and has weakened its heartbeat.

Instead, I propose college football concentrate on its time-tested core competencies, the regular season and the bowl system, by reinforcing that which makes it unique and beloved by so many, as opposed to doubling down on something which undermines said competencies, and which has foundered.

Recognizing, that the pursuit of contraction is not a worthwhile endeavor, I’m content with engaging the four-team playoff if we can indefinitely forestall its elongation. Such acquiescence is realized by the adoption of this proposal solely because it enhances the integration of the playoff with the pulse of the sport, by enhancing the regular season and by restoring great value to the bowl game system, all while stabilizing the playoff as-is.

Thus far, the college football playoff has been utterly subpar. Without evident consideration for its predictable impact on the sport as a whole, the playoff was thrust upon it, creating a detrimental disequilibrium as the vast emphasis unseemly narrowed into a myopia surrounding the playoff, an unhealthy condition for a sport whose true character flourishes in the fall.

To further the golf analogy, in order to make it sub-par, I propose an optimal conference realignment structure, which would enable a symmetrical and efficient scheduling protocol and revitalization of the bowl games. What emerges is a synergetic framework for college football, capable of imminent implementation and enduring longevity.

So, as the college football world continues to deliberate over the proper form of the postseason, I offer this sincere suggestion, let’s commit to less and achieve more.

Happy Birthday America

HKIII