What if college football looked more like soccer leagues around the globe? This week, SMQ sets out to determine how relegation might work on the gridiron.
Since 2014, the College Football Playoff selection committee has been tasked with the unenviable job of choosing the four teams most worthy of a spot in their championship bracket. Given the imbalance in conference and individual schedules, it is a task that has no definitive answer in any year.
In the end, there will always be someone unhappy with the decision arrived at by the committee. We’ve seen teams like Baylor, TCU, and Penn State shut out of a chance at the title despite winning their leagues. Subjectivity is a given under such conditions, and any attempt at empirically assessing team quality always depends on the variables one chooses to favor.
Does one choose to emphasize strength of schedule, or nebulous constructs like “game control” that have no set definition? The committee has taken various avenues for justifying its picks in the past. There is no recipe for picking playoff teams, and even were there a set formula it would require a subjective decision about what to privilege in the selection process.
What if college football was more like fútbol, though?
With the subjective nature of the process laid out bare, let’s try a little thought experiment this morning. Imagine, for a moment, that college football was like soccer. Around the globe, domestic soccer leagues feature teams competing on various levels for various prizes all within the same season.
It really isn’t that different from the collegiate gridiron game. At the FBS level, some teams are fighting to win championships. Others are battling to reach bowl eligibility. Some are just trying to prevent the ignominy of a winless season. The only difference is that the worst teams in the country do not get relegated to an FCS conference.
The gulf in prestige and money at the FBS level, between the Power Five conferences on one hand and the Group of Five conferences, almost creates a third subdivision right within the system. Imagine if the worst teams in the Pac-12 was relegated to the Mountain West at the end of the season. Then, in turn, imagine that the worst teams in the Mountain West were relegated to the Big Sky.
No such system is ever going to fly in college football. Too many blueblood programs are afraid of anything that might interfere with personal profits. But on a Sunday morning after a full day of college football, it is sometimes fun to conceptualize what we’ve seen into different contexts.
How would such a system work? In soccer leagues, teams play a double-round-robin system where every team plays every other team home and away. Collegiate players can’t be expected to spend an even longer season playing game after game, and thus any college system of promotion and relegation would require the sort of subjectivity that and unbalanced schedules that mark the present system.
What would the system look like in a world of relegation?
Imagine even just a three-tiered relegation system between the Power Five, Group of Five, and FCS. This would require some geographic differentiation and designation, aligning leagues with one another at multiple levels.
Without diving into the quagmire of geographically diffuse conferences in the FCS, let’s look just at the FBS today. Here’s how conferences might potentially be affiliated with one another across the country:
| REGION 1 | REGION 2 | REGION 3 | REGION 4 | REGION 5 | |
| P5 | Pac-12 | Big 12 | Big Ten | Southeastern | Atlantic Coast |
| G5 | Mountain West | Conference USA | Mid-American | Sun Belt | American Athletic |
Working from this system, let’s play around. What five Power Five teams would be in danger of relegation after the first five weeks of the season? In turn, which Group of Five schools would be in the best position to gain promotion, and which would be in danger of falling to the FCS? Keep reading more about each of these regions and how a relegation system might play out in this week’s edition of Sunday Morning Quarterback.