What if College Football had Promotion/Relegation?
Kevin Wallace
Football, at its roots, is a hard game played in the mud by strong working-class men who are supported and cheered on by fervent local supporters. It is an incredibly regional sport with rivalries that usually pit neighbor against neighbor and have decades, if not a century or more, of history.
Of course this describes American College Football and English Football. And yet, they are both organized in radically different ways today. That difference all comes down to history. American college football was originally organized in regional conferences that slowly over time began to cover more and more ground as more and more money poured into the sport. In England, the sport was originally established with the idea of promotion and relegation, and despite the tons and tons of money that has been pumped into the sport, has managed to still maintain that structure.
So what if American College Football reorganized itself to look more like the English footballing pyramid?
Just to get it out of the way, here’s the full pyramid if it had to be organized for next season:
Promotion and Relegation
Go ahead and skip to the next bit if you’re already familiar with the concept. You’re reading a soccer website, so I’m going to assume you do.
If you’re not familiar with the concept, you’re in for a treat. In England, every single professional and amateur football (soccer) team is organized into leagues. These leagues consist of 18-24 teams, you play everyone on in your league twice, once at your home and once at their home, and there are no playoffs. With 3 points for a win, 1 point for a draw, and 0 points for a loss, the team with the most points at the end of the season is the champion. The 2-3 teams at the bottom of the league are then relegated to the league below them, and the 2-3 teams at the top of the league underneath are promoted.
As an American sports fan, the easiest way to imagine is this is using baseball. With MLB at the top then AAA, AA, and A leagues underneath, imagine if the three worst teams in MLB were relegated to AAA and the three best teams in AAA were promoted to the majors, and you got the idea.
The thing is, college football is actually the perfect sport the implement this in the United States. Here’s how.
The Structure
For our new college footballing pyramid, we’re breaking up all of college football into 24 leagues. You can call these conferences if you want, but we’re going full English and calling them leagues (we’ll hold off on the baked beans, for now).
At the top, we have 4 leagues divided into 8 teams each. The top league of the 4 is “League One”. These are the 8 best college football programs. The winner of this league is the College Football national champion and the bottom two teams will be relegated into League 2. The top two winners in league Two will be promoted into League One, and will compete for the national title in the next season.
This structure is the same for the top four leagues. Two up, two down.
Underneath League 4 we have our first regional split.
Given how large the United States is, we can’t reasonably expect every college team to travel the entire country for games. Under League 4 we have an East and West League 5, divided by the Mississippi River to start. The top two teams in the East and the top two teams in the West will play in a one-off playoff at the top team’s home stadium to determine who is promoted to League 4.
The teams being relegated out of League 4 will then force League 5 to reorganize geographically to account for the new teams, with the 8 East-most teams being in the East and the 8 West-most teams being in the West. The bottom teams in League 4 are relegated to their respective East or West League 6.
And then we get real regional.
Taking our East-West divide, we split into 4 geographical leagues base entirely on proximity. As teams are promoted into and out of these leagues, they will reorganize based on the teams that have been added and removed. Since these will likely be the smaller football teams and schools that aren’t used to traveling far for their games, it makes sense that they’d be grouped into smaller and small conferences.
The top team of each of the four regions of League 7 would play in a one-off playoff to determine who is promoted to their respective League 6. The top champion hosting the worst champion, the second best champion hosting the third best.
Yes there are only 7 teams in the West Region B, because it turns out there aren’t that many west coast teams
The Schedule
This is the easy part. Each team plays every team in their league in a home-and-home series. Three points for a win, 2 points for an overtime win, 1 point for an overtime loss, and 0 points for a loss. That means each team will plays 14 games in a season. Every team will also have a dedicated rivalry game, which they will play with an opponent no matter what league they are in. The Keg of Nails, Little Brown Jug, The Game, etc are all protected here. Teams can have one single rival or making a small rotation of rivals. This gives us a 15 game schedule with some teams playing an additional playoff game for promotion for a maximum of 16 games, the same that will be true in the new College Football Playoff system.
The Bowls
What about the bowls!? Well, if Bush’s Baked Beans wants to have an exhibition bowl game after the season, why not? With no conference affiliations and no requirements to take anyone, or the ability to take anyone, bowls are restored back to their former glory. Rose Bowl hosting the best East and West team? Sure! The Orange Bowl always hosting Miami? Why not! Let these exhibition games come back to life and let them find new life as being fun. And you didn’t think I’d get back to baked beans.
Is this viable?
Probably not. But I don’t think it’s impossible. Right now TV money and NIL money is at an all-time high in college football and teams are starting to be left behind. At the same time, conferences are bogged down by teams that don’t perform as well and are forced to poach each other for better and better brand-name schools. By reorganizing this way, the best of the best can play each other and fight for titles while the geographic charm of the sport is maintained and rivalries are preserved throughout. Combining all of college football into one massive pyramid, prize money based on league position, doled out from the media rights windfall this would surely bring, could actually increase the amount of money made by most schools. Not all, surely there would be losers here, but I think most.
One nice thing is, it would be very easy to expend. Adding more and more teams into bottom leagues underneath these would be simple and in fact you could reasonably add two more entire leagues in the east alone.
What it would look like
Here is what it would look like if all of College Football got together and decided to go forward with this next season. The rankings are based on USA Today’s Jeff Sargarin’s rankings since it’s the one method that has been largely consistent year-to-year, ranks more than the top 25-30 teams, and has historical data readily available going back years. Averaging his yearly rankings from 2012 to 2022 (minus 2020), I was able to rank 250 college football teams into a neat, fairly objective list. Then it was as easy as determining who is in the East and who is in the West. Here’s where your team (probably) would play next year: