FBS needs fewer teams not more championships

This past week ESPN floated an idea of a segregated FBS Division that called for two play-offs. One play off that would feature teams from leagues with television contracts that produce a higher revenue stream and one for leagues with contracts that provide fewer dollars.

There is little doubt in my mind that this is just an attempt by ESPN to acquire more cheap programming for their family of networks as revenues continue to plunge with subscriber losses mounting.

ESPN has lost approximately 20 million subscribers over the past few years according to Nielsen media estimates.

Changing consumer habits will force ESPN to make some major decisions over the next few years. Some of those decision could include dropping some or all of the 13 collegiate bowl games owned and/or operated by ESPN Events.

These ESPN bowls include Birmingham Bowl, Hawaii Bowl, The Heart of Dallas Bowl and St. Petersburg Bowl, all of which Southern Miss has taken part in at one time or another.

ESPN needs cheap programming and the elimination of a handful of these bowls and the creation of a four team, three game play-off would do just that.

Brett McMurphy of ESPN found two athletic administrators in lower revenue leagues for his story that voiced support for a potential self-segregated play-off. Only Northern Illinois athletic director Sean Frazier would speak publicly.

Fraizer argued in the argument that members of the lower revenue leagues didn’t have a chance to compete for a “National Championship”.

With that argument Fraizer is essentially saying it’s hard to be the best so lets give up and hand out participation trophies.

American Conference commissioner Mike Aresco wisely has no interest. An unnamed official from a lower revenue league accurately referred to the idea as a “junior varsity championship”, when he scoffed at the proposal.

Outgoing Southern Miss Director of Athletics Bill McGillis was not available for comment for this article.

In his defense, McMurphy is just doing his job, I suspect he’s floating an idea his bosses at ESPN have to see if there is any traction and to see if there is more positive than negative feedback.

With all that being said I do not fault ESPN in this instance. They are a business trying to make a business deal. They’re smart, they’re competitive and in many ways they have their backs against the wall.

The blame for the debacle that the FBS has turned into can be laid squarely at the feet of the NCAA and their rules committee.

There are flat out too many teams in FBS. There are too many teams that are asking for a slice of the pie who have never contributed to the making of the pie.

Beginning in the mid-1990’s and continuing to this day we have seen a flood of programs starting from scratch or moving up into FBS.

In 1995 there were 108 I-A programs this included North Texas who made their transition that year. The year also marked the final season for Pacific who dropped football following the season.

Today there are 128 FBS (formerly I-A) football programs. UAB returns in 2017, while Idaho has realized they can not sustain at FBS and will drop to FCS.

Some of the teams who are not pulling their weight are newcomers to FBS like Umass and South Alabama. Others are long term dregs (Eastern Michigan, ULM and others) who contribute nothing more than being cannon fodder for other FBS programs.

Many of these schools who don’t pull their weight have fan bases who either don’t care or are not large enough to justify playing college football at the highest level.

Over the past four years an average of 29 FBS programs have posted seasonal average attendance numbers below 20,000.

The lowest of the low include Ball State and Eastern Michigan who routinely average less than 10,000 fans per game and sometimes drop below a 5,000 average for entire seasons.

Programs like the ones mentioned above competing in the highest division of college football is what gave rise to the BCS back in 1998.

Programs who routinely put 40,000, 50,000, 100,000 in their stadiums saw no reason to keep subsidizing programs with apathetic and/or non-existent fan-bases. They began seeking a way to marginalize these programs.

One consequence (possibly intended but likely unintended) that arose from this were the programs who were in the middle also got caught. These programs had been historically competitive, had legitimate, organically built fan bases but were not necessarily the flagship programs in their states.

Programs like Colorado State, East Carolina, Southern Miss and others have suffered because of the unwillingness of the NCAA to control healthy numbers at the FBS level.

HOUSTON WE HAVE A PROBLEM

The first step in solving the FBS problem is for the NCAA to acknowledge that there is a problem, the problem is that there are too many programs fighting for a slice of a pie that didn’t buy any of the ingredients to make.

There are currently no NCAA mandated attendance requirements to remain FBS, it’s all tied to scholarship funding.

For a program that transitions from FCS to FBS there are requirements, those programs wishing to make the move must average 15,000 over the first two years of their transition period. Sounds reasonable.

Some programs make the transaction rather seamlessly, Old Dominion has averaged above 20,000 for years both in FCS and now in FBS.

Other programs have struggled.

Lets look back to the transition period for UMass and South Alabama, both failed to meet the 15,000 average attendance during their two year transition period. NCAA rules mandated that they meet those numbers during their first year of FBS. Both managed to meet those numbers their first year by the skin of their collective teeth.

But, what would have happened had they not? Well they would have been put on a 10 year probationary period and likely never been looked at again.

Since that time both have hovered around between 12,000 and 16,000 in annual average attendance.

Idaho, as mentioned above, is voluntarily moving to FCS from FBS after averaging 11,910 fans per game over the past three years.

REDUCE THE NUMBER OF FBS PROGRAMS

If the NCAA is truly concerned about the overall health of FBS football and not just those teams at the very top (from a budge perspective) they should place a 10 year moratorium on the addition of any new FBS teams.

The second step would be to install attendance standards at the FBS level. A good starting point would be 20,000 paid or actual per game with a minimum of six home games.

If this would have been enforced over the previous three years roughly 25 teams would be relegated to FCS level and Coast Carolina would not meet the 15,000 transition period average to move up.

In all likelihood the number of FBS team would stabilize around 96-100. This would allowed reorganization into seven conferences and a truly equitable 12-team play-off system could be installed. Each league champion receiving an automatic bid with five at-large bids to follow.

This would also allow a reduction in the overall number of bowls and while maintaining a healthy meaningful bowl system.

A third step would be to limit FBS programs from having more than 34 home games in a rolling 5 year period of time to force some programs who routinely have 7 and 8 home games a year to go on the road and win.

These steps are simple but they would not be easy to implement.

THE REALITY IS…..

FBS doesn't need to be segregated into yet another sub-division, potentially based on wealth. FBS needs to be streamlined into a smaller, healthier, more competitive sub-division with programs who give more to the game than they take.

Lanny Mixon can be reached at BigGoldNation@yahoo.com and he can be heard each Mon-Thurs on the Pine Belt Sports Drive at 5:00 PM CST on NewsRadio98.1 WMXI-FM in Laurel/Hattiesburg.

- All attendance numbers were obtained from www.stats.ncaa.org