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Promotion/relegation in college football? Game-changing idea could help save Pac-12
(sports.yahoo.com)
this post was submitted on 20 Sep 2023
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One of my pet peeves is the idea that Premier-League style "X up, X down" annual promotion could ever work in CFB. Even with the portal, that's just not how rosters full of 18-23 year olds (plus Stetson Bennett) work. The kind of lower division team that makes a splash probably has a lot of seniors, and often see a dropoff the next year. On the other side of the coin, many down years come from rebuilding teams that perform better the next year. So congratulations; you've responded to concerns about competitive balance by making it worse.
Give me rolling performance Pro-Rel that takes broader health of the program into account (the way it's SUPPOSED to work in Mexican pro soccer, but... yeah), and we can at least start to talk. Of course, in college you have the unique issue of, y'know, EVERY OTHER SPORT. I suppose that just means that administratively it will still be one conference, just with annual(?) realignment of divisions and payouts.
It would be an interesting hook for a broadcaster, and maybe a way for Wazzu and the Beavs to sell their new friends on unequal revenue sharing, but I don't see this one happening, at least not yet. Now, if it DOES, and if it works, you might suddenly see Michigan, Georgia, et al raising their eyebrows at a potential way to financially drop their dead weight without completely killing those intercollegiate relationships.
The problem with this is that you'd end up killing interest at schools that went down to G5 status. Plus you'd have to realign the conferences every few years. I just don't think this could ever work in any fashion. Plus Title IX would murder any attempt at this (frankly, I think the statute is due for a massive overhaul anyway; schools that have football teams basically can't field any other sports for men, and I think there need to be penalties in place for schools that attempt to cut sports as a way to comply)
Oh, there's a million problems with it, though of course there are problems in the current CFB system too.
One of the dirty little secrets in soccer is that Pro/Rel only REALLY works well in England and maybe Germany. Germany requires significant ownership stakes (nominally a majority) from fans, and England's supporter culture is so localized and balkanized that it's pretty slow for fan support to be wicked away to the big clubs, and the Premier League's TV money is so massive (sound familiar?) that getting in even for a year is a massive boon to the Championship teams that come up (cue Ted Lasso...), so it's a prize that stimulates interest.
As for Title IX, I'd say the PAC-MWC thought experiments (since that's really all they are for now) would probably not have major implications. They probably will have to be legally and administratively one conference, and the other sports could either not do it at all, or have their own schemes, and (critically) the amounts of money are not so ridiculous that the difference is likely to kill off sports. Hypothetically, it could be considered nothing more than a tweak on performance-based payouts, plus a different approach to scheduling. Now, if you start having the SEC and B1G looking at it, and there are department-changing amounts of money in play, then yeah, it's going to be an issue.
More generally, yeah, Title IX is just not built for a world where colleges are running the number 4 and 7 (or whatever... you get the idea) spectator sports leagues in the country. It's another case of the NCAA and Congress burying their heads in the sand. If they would stop pretending that FBS football players are exactly the same as the Tennis team, then they could properly offer a balanced and equitable extracurricular athletic program to their students with scholarship opportunities matching their student body. MBB too, but that's cheaper to run and only 13 scholarships, so while still an exercise in cognitive dissonance, it unbalances things much less.
I think you bring up a good point here with the potential structure of a PAC/MWC merger of sorts. But with respect to the Bundesliga, I don't think pro/rel works that well. And I say that as a Bayern fan. Even in the most competitive years, it's usually one of Dortmund, Bayern, and rarely Leipzig and Leverkusen that challenge for the title. But you're spot on with the fan ownership requirements. The only exceptions are for Wolfsburg (majority owned by Volkswagen, I believe) and Leverkusen.
I don't follow the Bundesliga that closely, but it seems more like fan ownership probably helps avoid some of the worst repercussions that kill off broad interest in any club in Italy or Spain or several other smaller leagues. In Germany, if you go down, it's still your team, the people in your town literally own it, and I imagine it keeps a core fanbase that's ready to flare back up and bring out the casual fans again if they get promoted. I'll defer to you about whether relegation fights and 2 Bundesliga promotion are of much general interest.
In a lot of countries, the top 2-6 clubs are just so desperately far ahead of everyone, and the revenue streams so dependent on the single club itself, that promotion and relegation just doesn't mean very much. No one (relatively speaking) cares about the bottom half of the table anyway, so why should we care which teams spend the next season in the Eerstedivisie or the Segunda?
You know, it's an interesting thing you bring up Belgium, because the Belgian Pro League is basically Europe's version of the Mountain West (strongest league below the top tier). But agreed with respect to fan ownership and interest. Shame this model can't take off. I suppose colleges are kind of like that, but it's still a struggle.