…of course, if he was honest, he would advocate that college football should be separate from colleges. What he is talking about is a pro football league, optimized for hype, that is an end in itself, rather than sports being an adjunct to higher education.
You can have a 64 team conference that’s in the Power Five, and you can have a 64 team conference in the group of five and we separate it and we play each other.
I don’t understand how he gets from 64 teams to a group of 5. Maybe that works for athletes that never did any math course work in school, because they played football?
You play a seven game schedule you can play four against another conference opponent, another division opponent, you can always play against one Mountain West team every year so that we can still keep those rivalries going.
Coach Harbaugh has said publicly that those rivalries are “manufactured” to feed the hype, so certain interests can make more money.
The Power Five is composed of the top five football conferences. He’s saying you combine the Power Five teams into one conference and combine the non-Power Five teams into another conference.
He has said this multiple times. His main argument is it is easy for football to travel cross country for one game. Fly in Friday, fly back either Saturday nigh or Sunday morning, no issues. Basketball, softball, etc., where you play 2-4 games a week, not so easy. Plus, harder for family to watch them play games. Eventually his idea will happen, just a matter of how soon.
As far as separating sports from universities, not so easy an issue. Why? $$$$$. Universities will not give it up easily. You can argue sports are a losing proposition, and for many they are if you just count revenues generated vs. cost. What is often NOT added to the revenue side, donations made because the alumni are happy the team did well this year. It has been shown multiple times that a good performing football team increases applications which lead to increased enrollment which increases income related to that and on down the line. Heck, the local Big U is about to build an associated hotel and shopping/entertainment district next to the football stadium like you are seeing many pro sports stadiums do. Again, another avenue of revenue.
When does college administration jump the shark from asking “what is good for education?”, to “what is good for football?”. I use U of M a lot, because data is available, and it is one of the very few universities that is known for excellence in education, (ranked third among public universities, after UCLA and UC Berkeley), as well as competitive in athletics. U of M athletics covers it’s costs, so it doesn’t hurt the university financially, the way most university athletics programs do. Recall the thread about UConn? Academically, UConn ranks 58th, but they are ranked 5th in basketball, while subsidizing athletics to the tune of tens of millions of dollars per year. I submit that UConn’s priorities are messed up, because they appear to give athletics a higher priority than education.
Soccer actual football does this better. Different tables for different leagues. Switch out the bottom and top three teams from each table every year. The tables are from 1,2,3 etc in order of ability down to every town like table 300 or whatever.
The best three teams go up a table. The worst three teams go down a table.
This is the premier league. The bottom three teams at the end of the season will drop to the Champions league.
College football has a multitude of “conferences” now. Whatsa Matta U is in a second rate “conference”. But the big teams need to fill out their schedule. The top five can’t just play each-other all the time. So, as the example the coach used in his screed says, play one group of colleges one year, play a different group of opponents the next year…and keep the “manufactured” rivalries alive to feed the hype machine.