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

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.

Just lower the scholarship cap and force the top talent to be spread around more schools. It’s that simple. You can’t allow Alabama, Clemson, OSU, etc to continue to stockpile 5 stars to the detriment of everyone else if you truly want a semblance of parity.

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.

Either continue watching the decline of college football or grasp reality and go to an NFL-type of selection and retention process with a hard salary cap. Retain the rule against players going to the NFL before three years since high school graduation. Yes, it will be an NFL-light sport but we will have parity.

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College football is broken

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maybe from your perspective and that writer's naive perspective. College football is a business. It's a highly successful business. Parity doesn't make more money. dynasties make money.

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.

Pay the players.

There, I fixed college football.

"The answer to all your questions is: Money" [quote from late TV sports producer Don Ohlmeyer]

Crazy thought...probably a real dumb thought...but here goes nothing.

Allow schools to pay players, but have a hard cap. If they can sign 25 players per class, allow each school $10 million (or some amount that is the same for every single D1 FBS school) that they can use to pay those players in whatever way them deem fit. The catch...take away scholarships. Now that they're getting paid, players must pay their own way with tuition, room and board, etc like any regular student. Most schools wouldn't lose a ton of money because basically scholarship expenses become the salary cap. Salary of each player would be public and if boosters are ever caught adding a single dollar or a single "benefit" to a player or their family, drop the hammer on the program instantly. If that player wants more money, the program can give them more...at the expense of paying other guys less.

If the amount was $10 million and it was divided evenly, that would be $400,000 per player. $100,000 per year with a signed contract. That's more than enough to attend most D1 schools. If a player leaves after 3 years or "opts out", they must pay back that $100,000 or whatever the portion of the contract for that year was (should not be a problem at all if they are actually good enough to leave early and get drafted the top rounds. For players who redshirt along the way, give them the option to sign an additional 1 year/$100,000 contract.

This might make the NCAA more even across the board. Yes all these 5*s could go to Alabama or Clemson or Ohio State, but what if Georgia Tech offers one of the 5*s a million instead of $400,000? Yes that puts the rest of the players at a smaller amount, but Georgia Tech isn't going to pull a ton of big recruits anyways. Small schools could lure kids away with bigger offers. If better players want more money that's fine, they're just going to have to avoid going the same school as 10 other top players all wanting big money because there wouldn't be enough to go around.

This would stop so many kids from opting out or leaving early when they probably shouldn't, because they might actually have something to lose, especially if they were to leave early on bad advice and go undrafted.

Like I said at the beginning...this may be a completely awful idea. Schools would obviously try to abuse the system and come up with more booster money to pay kids with...NCAA would have to make serious examples out of the big names as soon as they're caught. It would probably end up being a broken system eventually, but hell...so is the current system.

Much of this thread is a grotesque overreaction, as is the article that prompted it. CFB is not "broken." Every era of CFB has featured its own set of powerhouse programs that dominated championship opportunities. Florida State, Nebraska, and Florida in the 1990s. Miami, Penn State, Notre Dame, Oklahoma in the 1980s. Before that, Notre Dame. Alabama, Oklahoma, USC. Going all the way back to Minnesota in the late 30s and early 40s, and further back still to Yale in the 1880s. Nothing has changed, except for the fact that certain fans and commentators today want to portray the situation as a function of some broader structural or social inequity - the oh-so-fashionable view of the hour.

I tend to think allowing players to have their own image rights and endorsements could go a long way towards national parity.

5 star guys can spread out more around the country searching for the best endorsement deals in those markets. Do you go to Bama as the 6th 5* and get somewhat lost in the mix (to go with the rest of the stocked roster) or do you go to UW because Seattle is a larger market and wants success? I really think the math there would change a LOT of things.