College football is broken. Here's how it can be fixed.

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It is all about recruiting.

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bullshite. It's all about scheduling. For Alabama, Ohio State, and Clemson, year in and year out they waltz in playing weak in-conference schedules and out-of -conference rent a wins. Notre Dame seems willing to occasionally take on the tougher opponents and should get credit for that, but they rarely have a good enough record to make the playoffs.
LSU's 2019 season was spectacular by virtue of playing every school of significance and beating them soundly. For the few years that Clemson has been significant their schedule is the weakest in the power 5. OSU has been a habitual offender with a one game opponent of respectability and lately that one opponent doesn't even show up. Bama has a 2 game schedule (LSU and Auburn) and an SEC EAST schedule built on avoiding Florida, complements of the office in Birmingham.
This can't be a mystery to the selection committee it is obvious to reveryone interested in college sports that NCAA football has become non competitive. In- conference schedules should be round robin in every 4 year span. Rent a wins against the usual cast of directional schools in Ala.,Tenn, Ky., Tx, La., and Oh. Should count as losses at playoff time.
I remember some bullshite from Skip over the last 25 or so years about keeping the money circulating in the state In the old days, LSU scheduled out of conference games against the better teams of the PAC10, the Big10 (rip), ACC, Big 8 (old SWC) and the occasional respectable independents. Most of those programs now believe that it is better financially to avoid scheduling competitive games. As the rash of fake bowls shut down over the next few years college football will pay the price and more programs will also fail. We were fortunate the last couple years in scheduling a couple of more respectable (but weaker than usual) programs in Miami and Texas, and in the prior couple years, Wisconin and Oregon. Still our schedule had the usual patsies, and we should have been penalized for them, as should every major program guilty of similar scheduling. How long will people continue to pay premium prices to see
rent a wins because they are a mandatory part of the season ticket package? Some programs are now having difficulty selling season tickets and even student tickets.

tl;dr: learn to read.

It can be fixed by having universal admission standards and getting rid of all the special perks that benefit athletes from real students.

It has really gone down the last 5–10 years. You can’t have this much Bama Clemson Ohio State repetition. That’s essentially 3 guaranteed spots each with a pocket loss. Pocket loss meaning they can lose to anyone on their schedules where it’s nearly impossible for them to lose two games. Bama plays a schedule where two losses is possible but that happens once in a decade if you are lucky.

Look at how many big time programs are dying. You have essentially about 93 percent of the country disinterested before we ever play a game.

You have the decline in interest of the bowl games. The playoff has helped cause that which brings the bowl game quitting. We are at a point where we need to add a spot or two to the playoff just to help keep it interesting.

We have key rivalry games where big time programs have no chance to get within 4 TDs of their rival.

Examples:
Clemson - FSU
Ohio State - Michigan

Look at the programs that have declined massively over the years. It’s not as fun as it used to be. You had some different challengers and surprise teams at seasons end. The parity just isn’t there anymore.

Bama is stacking rosters and they are 3-5 deep at every position. The kids go there then transfer out of conference. It’s killing the league. Georgia has managed to do well but everyone else has suffered with the small exception being LSU but the gap is still pretty wide between Alabama and LSU.

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The reason the game is broken is that the NCAA is no longer enforcing rules preventing the payment of recruits to sign and players to stay in school instead of entering the draft. So what we have is 8 or 10 schools that have monitized the game while the other 120+ schools still believe it's an amateur sport with rules against paying players. The results are obvious.

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Correct, this plus the different standards for playoff participation for the media darlings, and you have it.

I LOLed when Herby cried about the sport. He's part of the problem.

Two days later, his alma mater gets in the playoff while playing 6 games. LOLOLOLOLOL

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College football

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has been broken since they stopped making the NCAA Football video game. Kids don't get to know all the different programs anymore.

Really though, the only way CFB would be fixed is if the NFL ever starts a minor league. These high-end prospects only have a halfass commitment to their college programs and it gets worse every year. They understandably just want to get paid. And once they put together 5-6 good games in college, continuing to play more college games isn't worth the risk (purely from a financial perspective).

If those players are allowed to begin making money right out of HS, then CFB will get back to 4-year players who play simply for the experience that CFB is. The players would be more committed to the school, and the fans would be more committed to the program.

The problem with this is a mNFL is likely not financially viable. CFB could become a de facto mNFL by allowing full payment of players by schools. But that could open up unforeseen problems and result in a more broken system than we have now.

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For Alabama, Ohio State, and Clemson, year in and year out they waltz in playing weak in-conference schedules

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LSU's 2019 season was spectacular by virtue of playing every school of significance

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How is Alabama waltzing in with weak conference schedules but LSU didn’t?


Those three programs are clearly head and shoulders above the rest of the pack and that’s why it looks like their schedules are “weak”.


The CFP broke CFB.

The BCS was great for the sport. You had a championship game but the other BCS Bowls were highly coveted spots and didn’t even really seem to trivialize the non BCS bowls the way they seem to be now.


ESPN and their money hungry grab for a “playoff” was always going to create a monopoly for the top few programs because they can lose a game and still be almost certain to get in. Losses mattered until 2011, and they broke CFB when the fix was put in for Alabama.

The stakes were actually lowered and that not only took away the drama and intensity of the regular season, but the postseason as well.

Maybe the “one and done” racket, like in college basketball, will be the answer? Top HS and JUCO talent don’t have time to sit on Alabama’s and Clemson’s bench to play. Those kids will then go to other schools to make them more competitive.

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It will never happen, but I’d like to see them eliminate any pre-season rankings. It just becomes self fulfilling prophecy. Wait a few weeks, get into conference play, then evaluate the body of work.

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That's what they already do with the CFP, which is the only ranking that matters.

Pay the players.

There, I fixed college football.