The Quatro Solution
UHND.com - Ronny P. Kaye

     I'm sure I'm not the only fan who's noticed that the NCAA football landscape is beginning to look repulsively familiar--as in, it's starting to look just like the landscape of NCAA basketball. Each year, it seems, the same sports factories keep ending up in major bowl contention as a consequence of favorable scheduling and favorable polling, the same way the Dukes and Kansases and North Carolinas are made top seeds in the NCAA basketball tourney every March by the pollsters, wins and losses notwithstanding.
     Once upon a time in football, Florida State roamed the country with abandon, playing Notre Dame and Michigan and anyone else in addition to its home state rivals. Nowadays, FSU basks in the luxury of its ACC penthouse, strutting forth for its two-game season against Florida and Miami. The Hurricanes, for all their former mettle and 'tude, satisfy their faux appetite for destruction by pretending that Syracuse and Boston College--which have a total of one consensus national title between them--are fierce adversaries. Mercy.
     And what about the suddenly canonized Huskers of the Heartland? For decades they appeased the sea of red in Lincoln by pasting the Iowa States of the football universe for an easy nine wins, took their annual lumps from Oklahoma, and ambled off to a major or semi-major bowl which they more often than not lost. Not until Colorado emerged in the late 80s as a legitimate counterweight to the Oklahoma-Nebraska axis did Nebraska get mean and begin hoarding the truckloads of reprobates that won them a couple of misbegotten titles.
     As an aside, isn't it odd how former Husker coach Tom Osborne became a beacon of dignity only after he'd forfeited any semblance of principle and won a few "big" games? Heck, for the past seven years the sportswriters have penciled Nebraska into the NCAA championship game before spring drills have even started.
     And shall we even bother to mention Roy Kramer's role in this fiasco?  Kramer is the SEC honcho charged with making the final call on BCS selections. Having Roy Kramer anointed an impartial arbiter of bowl receipts is like saying Trent Lott has never heard of the Klan. Gee, only seven of the twelve SEC teams went to bowls this past season. Probably a coincidence. Call me a conspiracist.
     Well, rather than reading my rant, we should all be applauding the good work Murray Sperber is doing exposing the putrescence of the NCAA. But we could at least petition the cartel for a total restructuring, a reconfiguration that would bring back the verve and vivacity that college football--well, has never had, really. Here's how it could be done for the first time.
     First, the presidents and boards of trustees of all the ball-playing schools would have to agree on a complete reconstitution of the current system. They won't do that, so my plan is stillborn.
     Nevertheless, suppose those collegiate CEOs and the capos of the NCAA were stricken by a plague of common sense and decency, and in an
unprecedented display of honorable intentions declared the current system corrupt and unsustainable and destined to be replaced by a much saner and more entertaining format, The Quatro Solution:
     They decide to divide collegiate football into four tiers, euphemistically labeled The Major Factories (A Group), The Minor Factories (B Group), The True Universities (C Group), and The Smalls (D Group). The controlling boards of every institution have the option of switching into any tier at any time, pending agreement from their alumni and student bodies.
     The four tiers might comprise 70 to 80 members each. Members of these divisions could schedule anyone they liked. Harvard, for example, could play an entire Pac-10 schedule on the road. Veritas, fer sher. Or members could form conferences within their own divisions. Regardless how the regular season formats were arranged, a 10-game season would separate eight of the highest-rated teams from the rest (and division members could choose to participate or not participate in post-season play), based on any ranking system the divisions chose to employ. The elite eight would then square off in a four-round playoff. The winners of those playoffs would advance to a Super Series held always in an outdoor stadium before Christmas over consecutive weekends, and the national championship would thus be decided on the field.
     This proposal is merely a modification of a system tremendously popular in places like the UK, where the FA Cup tournament pits teams from all of England's soccer divisions against each other in home-and-home matches with the winners going through on aggregate goals. It's a chance for the Scunthorpes to take on the Liverpools and put on a show for the ages. Of course, the Brits always love the plucky underdog kind of thing--they love it when the Davids go down gallantly against the Goliaths. But what fun. Love! Valour! Compassion!
     And the same thing, more or less, happens in many states here at the end of every high school basketball season. In states like Connecticut and Massachusetts, you can't get into the state tournament without a winning record, and sometimes even that isn't enough. But in Indiana and Kentucky, everyone goes to the tourney, even the winless. And the folks love it.
     So why not give the little guys a chance in college football? Who knows what legendary mayhem might ensue? If you're still not convinced, ask
yourself why the NCAA hoop tourney, as crooked as it is, is so exciting in its first four days. Because that's when the Ball States and Valparaisos and Gonzagas rise to the occasion as they have never had the chance to do on the gridiron.
     And who exactly would these new tiers be composed of, you sneer. That's not a tough call. The first tier, as stated, would be the Factories--the Floridas and Michigans and Miamis and Nebraskas and USCs--the usual suspects.  The Minor Factories would be the Major Factory wannabes--the SMUs and TCUs and all the other initialisms. Tier C, the True Universities, would harbor the Stanfords, Dukes, Vanderbilts, Northwesterns, maybe UCLA, and--who else?--Notre Dame. Tier C would be real schools with actual students playing ball--what a concept. Last, Tier D would consist of the service academies and the Ivies and the MAC squads and the Patriot Leaguers--you know, John Feinstein's kind of crowd.
     Consider the limitless possibilities: A rotating Super Series in which one year our Tier A winner faces the Tier D winner while Tiers B and C go at it.   The following year Tiers A and B have at it first, then Tiers C and D wage war. And so forth. Contemplate a Super Series some year wherein Washington deals with Princeton in the first semifinal while Notre Dame tackles Central Florida.
     And if all goes according to my plan, Notre Dame will be in the postseason every year and in the Super Series every other year, minimum. And
some year, yes, some glorious year, our beloved Irish will avenge themselves on Yale for that 28-0 whupping the Elis laid on ol' Jesse Harper's boys back in '14.  Boolah, boolah, babe.
     Play like a champion today.

RPK
kayesell@aol.com
    
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