CFA All-American Team

For the past twelve months the college football world has been rocked by scandal left and right in the form of illegal player benefits. These benefits have been as large as paid trips and parties for players, and as small as players getting free tattoos in college town parlors. No matter how big or small, the NCAA is clear on the illegality of these benefits and because of this we have lost some of the most talented players in the country to suspension and loss of eligibility. In response to this, many people are questioning if players who are making their universities millions annually should be better compensated. No matter where your opinion falls in answering that question, it’s something that has gone from a small collection of fans calling for players benefits to be re-examined, to having both SEC Commissioner Mike Silve and Big Ten Commissioner Jim Delaney publicly say that it’s possible we need to raise the athletic scholarships to “include the full cost of attendance.”

The issue is real and it’s going to change the college football landscape as we know it.

The question becomes, how? As we all know, a great disparity currently exists in this game we love between the privileged and those that are disadvantaged. What happens if suddenly the cost of doing business goes up? CBS’s Tony Barnhart addressed that question and in his opinion: the increased cost of scholarships would cause a divide to emerge in college football.

Essentially, Barnhart sees the BCS conference schools breaking off and forming their own new conference ,which Barnhart calls the College Football Association (CFA). The rest of the FBS conferences would converge with some of the top level FCS conferences to form a new Division I conference.

Keeping Barnhart’s idea in mind, we at SaturdayBlitz.com wanted to play the “what if” game. Nobody knows what’s going to happen to the college football landscape over the course of the next two to three years, but one thing we can all agree upon is that it’s going to change and will likely change drastically. With this in mind, what if the CFA existed today? With pre-season being the time that every media outlet releases their All-American teams, we wanted to be different. We wanted to spark discussion, and with that in mind our first All-American list is actually an All-CFA list.

Over the course of the next few weeks we are going to release two more All-American lists utilizing the divisional breakdowns about which Barnhart writes. So make sure you check back next week to see who would be the best of the best if the bottom half of the FBS and the top half of the FCS converged into one division.

Until then, enjoy the first All-CFA Preseason All-America.