Ways to Improve NCAA College Football

College Football is arguably the 2^nd most popular sport in the United States to the NFL. That being said, there are plenty of things to make the sport better. These are student athletes, which is the most important thing about college sports. Colleges receive valuable revenue from college football and improving the sport will only improve the college facilities and opportunities for 17-22-year olds.

The newspapers and associations need to hold off on rankings and polls. Preseason polls are an evil in college football because they are not based on on-the-field performance. It is purely speculation by writers and analysts. Teams ranked low to start the season have a very difficult time to leap-frog teams along the way. There needs to be 4 or even 6 games played before the first poll is released. That is enough time for the contenders to be separated from the pretenders. A preseason roster or even a team's first game or two doesn't always give the most accurate impression of a football team.

There needs to be a playoff system in Division-I football. There is a playoff in high school, Division I-AA, II and III as well as the NFL. Why not Division-I college football? An eight-team playoff tree is the equivalent to three games for the two teams in the championship. Make the regular season only 11 games or even 10 and start the playoff the week before Christmas to finish around the beginning of January. There will be no controversy about who the champion is on a yearly basis. The argument now about the #1 and #2 teams is a lot more valid than the #8-#10 teams in an 8-team playoff bracket. One stipulation needs to be an undefeated team gets into the playoff system no matter what. If Yale, Duke or Rutgers finishes 11-0 and is ranked outside of #8, they get an automatic berth as the #8 seed. That way they have a chance for the national championship and a game against a true power school.

Out-of-conference schedules need to be monitored more closely. Many big college programs don't play smaller schools on the road. This is unfair to the mid-majors of college football. They have to play games on the road in order to match-up against the big boys. It should be a rotational basis and every school should rotate and play other conferences on a semi-regular basis. Obviously, this isn't the NFL were you can schedule every team to play every other one in a four year span. The schedules can vary more than the current ones for most schools in the country.

Change the bowl eligibility requirement to seven wins instead of six. A team going 6-5 is hardly deserving of a bowl game, even the Holiday or Texas State Plumber's Bowl. 7-4 needs to be the minimum record to go to a post-season game in college football. That would eliminate some "fringe" teams each season and maybe there wouldn't be 500 bowl games that people cannot even keep track of. The idea of schools having their own "Super Bowl" at the end of the year is valid, but so is the idea that a team right around .500 shouldn't be rewarded for their pedestrian efforts.