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So. On one of the many American Football groups I’m apart of, someone asked what on paper looks like a simple question:

What changes would you make to College Football ?

It looks innocent, but there’s already been plenty of comments, which mainly focus on forced conference realignment, a larger playoffs, and the role of the CFP Committee. I disagree with most of them, mainly because conference identity is a huge part of the sport alongside teams. At this time of the year for example, I’m an Indiana University fan first,  Big Ten fan second, then ANYONE BUT THE SEC!!!.

I do however agree with some of the points, especially the role of the committee, which was never supposed to dictate, but adjudicate. The playoff conversation has to be set within the context of the sport overall, so you can’t look at that in isolation. It would be like removing conferences altogether and somehow putting together 130+ individual schedules that make sense.

With all that in mind, these are 10 things I would change within the beautiful landscape of college football if I had a magic wand. I’ve tried to make them all tie up, rather than just 10 separate ideas, otherwise I’d be a hypocrite to the points I made above.

Ready? Here we go!

1. Cap NIL. It’s becoming a bit stupid that players are starting to earn more than coaching staff. We can’t reverse what has happened, but we can adapt and enforce a limit.
2. Limit out of conference games. I would suggest two. One against a rival, or from a rival conference, and one for teams to decide. I don’t know how the FCS fits into this, but maybe having a hard split between FBS and FCS will encourage more of the latter to move up. (I do love the FCS, FYI but I feel it deserves more of its own platform).
3. The committee should be arbitrators, less decision makers. We’ve tried the AP / Coaches poll, the BCS and thousand data points, and neither worked. The AP and Coaches polls are biased, so using them alongside a databank, then having the committee work through anomalies rather than trying to get airtime for the sake of would be a better approach. This was what they were supposed to be in the first place.
4. 8 Conferences, 16 team playoff. Each conference gets to choose how they will choose their champion (Most will do a conference championship), and you could do a mini 4 team championship in each conference. If there are more than 8 conferences for some reason, conferences have to combine the above between 2, say the MW and Pac-?
5. ND Either joins a conference, or GTFO. The most rational with their TV deal is the B1G, despite the long history of them being rejected. They could work in the ACC, but I think that conference is close to implosion anyway.
6. No coaching hires, no transfer portal, no this that the other until after the National Championship. There used to be a single hiring day, now there is at least two. You could make a massive spectacle with ‘Portal Day’ where players have a set amount of time to enter the portal, then it’s war-room style to choose / select new players. Like a draft on acid, just with no selection process (Unless you choose to go one team at a time who wants a player)
7. ESPN need to split out the CFP games. FOX once DID broadcast the Natty, but it was a disaster as they had no real college inventory. Now they have a ton, have matured, and I’d like to see ABC / ESPN, FOX, NBC, and CBS each have a selection of games. Perhaps rotate the natty across each of those 4.
8. Make more tickets affordable to students. This is a small one, but it’s harder to get students / young fans into the building. That makes me sad. I’ve always advocated the belief that a Gameday experience can be that spark that drives someone into attempting to achieve their dreams. College Football can be a perfect vessel for that[i].
9. Take the ACC style remote replay, make it national. Every conference has the same setup, at each of their HQs. Having a fully national one location setup will be ridiculous, but for in conference play, it’s easy to track up to 10 games a day. If it’s inter-conference, you generally have a third party ref team, so you use their setup.
10. And one just for fun. Tell Alabama to get their heads out of their ass and adopt digital down markers. Word was that because it was developed by people associated to Auburn University, they refuse to use them.

That’s my list. It took a cup of tea and 7 biscuits to do so. Feel free to roast me by writing a comment below. Do you agree? Disagree? Have a better idea? I want to know! CFB is my favourite sport on the planet[ii], so I love to hear differing opinions.

Peace, Rage & Love xx

Image Credit: LA Times

[i] I will be writing a piece about how important it can be for young people to see their ‘idols’, either on TV / in person. America does a good job at this compared to the UK, but there’s more to be done overall.

[ii] The Indy 500 is my favourite single event, but the series have a lot of work to do to make a decent long term series to keep me entertained.

Last Updated on 13th December 2025 by Wil Vincent