College Football: Time Travel, the Fountain of Youth and FBS/FCS Relegation

Science fiction has forever harbored ideas that are desirable, fantastic, alluringly conceivable, complicated, but ultimately impossible. 

Machines that alter time allowing journeys either backward or forward, magical potions or natural substances providing youth eternal, devices that instantaneously allow people or objects to be transported across the globe; the list could go on forever.

FBS Relegation is just this type of idea. 

It is wrapped delicately in a package that is irresistible, provocative and filled with wondrous possibilities if it ever actually came to fruition. But ultimately it will never happen because it cannot; nature (which in this instance is controlled by people with lots of money) will not allow it to.

What is FBS relegation?

The idea of FBS relegation is born from the concept of “relegation and promotion” practiced in English football and across the ranks of professional sports worldwide. 

The system facilitates the automatic yearly swap of the lowliest teams in the upper divisions with the mightiest teams in the lower divisions.  The process occurs regularly at the close of each season.

Furthermore, the scheme can reach out beyond two divisions and work in harmony between several or numerous divisions.

Translating this concept into American college football terms; relegation and promotion, or more specifically FBS relegation and FCS promotion, is the concept of the bottom FBS teams rotating with the top FCS teams on a yearly basis.

The 11 FBS conferences (and independents) would be married with the 14 FCS conferences (and independents) and subsequently the bottom team in each FBS conference would move down to the FCS and be replaced in the FBS by the top FCS team.

Programs swapping with one another would play each other’s schedule and both would have the opportunity (entirely based on play) to either move back to their original conference or stay “up” or “down” respectively. 

The system could reach downwards with Divisions II and III being involved and ultimately having the opportunity for upward mobility (to the higher division and the FCS), again, yearly.

Yet another adaptation of this approach could involve relegation/promotion between teams in BCS (AQ – Automatic Qualifying) conferences and teams in non-BCS (non-AQ) conferences.  Perhaps this is how teams such as Boise State and TCU finally make it to the BCS national championship.

It would be prudent to note that the logistical challenges presented in this hypothesis are overwhelming and cannot be (in this very limited forum) addressed with any measure of the detail necessary. 

Two Examples

Appalachian State

The Appalachian State Mountaineers have done far more than just knock off Michigan in the Big House in September of 2007.  The Mountaineers have won three of the last five FCS championships capturing crowns in 2005, 2006 and 2007.

Appalachian State plays in the Southern Conference which consists of nine member schools located in the southeast corridor of the country.

In terms of our FBS/FCS relegation/promotion experiment, let’s say that the Southern Conference was paired with the ACC. 

In 2009, Maryland finished dead last in the ACC with a 1-7 record in conference and a 2-10 record overall.

Conversely, Appalachian State finished first in the Southern Conference going 8-0 in conference and 11-3 overall.

If the relegation/promotion scheme would have been in place in 2009 the two teams (Maryland and Appalachian State) would have swapped places for the 2010 season.

Now, the Mountaineers would face a schedule that includes games vs. Navy, West Virginia, Clemson, Boston College, Miami, Florida State, etc.

On the other hand Maryland would face such foes as Chattanooga, at Samford, at Western Carolina, at Georgia Southern, but their season would end with a big game at Florida.

A sound argument could be made that Maryland would only spend one season in the FCS, but an equally viable point could be asserted that Appalachian State could possibly survive a season in the ACC and not finish last (therefore retaining its ACC membership card).

Regardless, how interesting would it be to find out?

Montana

The Montana Grizzlies are another top FCS football program and have participated in three of the past six FCS championship games.

The Grizzlies hail from the Big Sky conference which is largely based in the northwestern corridor of the country.

Really it would be interesting to pair the Big Sky with either the Pac-10 or the Mountain West conference, but in this case let’s say they matched up with the Pac-10.

Montana won the Big Sky conference in 2009 with an 8-0 record in conference and went 14-1 overall.

In the Pac-10, Washington State finished dead last in 2009 going 0-9 in conference and 1-11 overall.

Applying the concept of relegation and promotion to this case we have Washington State taking a step down to the Big Sky in 2010 and Montana taking its game up to the Pac-10.

How well would struggling Washington State do against a schedule that includes Northern Colorado, Eastern Washington, Cal-Poly and Montana State?

Alternatively, how would Montana, so successful as of late in the FCS, do against the likes of Oklahoma State, at UCLA, USC, Oregon, Arizona, at Stanford and Washington?

In this case you could see Montana moving back down (but throwing punches all the way back to the Big Sky) and Washington State maybe taking another year down as well therefore catapulting Eastern Washington or Montana State upwards for a year.

Again it would seem absolutely tantalizing to watch this scenario play out.

The Impact

So far reaching would be the aftershocks of this sort of monumental change to college football that gauging it properly is almost impossible.

A few of the many areas where the reality of FBS relegation would be felt:

Recruiting:  What kind of leg up does this give to recruiting for the top FCS programs who now have a chance to advertise that they might well be playing a level up (at least temporarily) and how badly does this hurt the lower-tier FBS schools that might be, devastatingly, moving down?

Facilities:  In the second example above, how does Montana play host to USC, Oregon, Cal and Washington in a stadium that holds only 25,000 fans?  And can this generate the funds necessary to successfully compete in the Pac-10?

TV:  How does this affect the all-important big BCS conference TV contract?  Who covers these games?  And, more alluringly, how exciting are these games now...we might not have cared about Maryland at West Virginia, but how excited are we going to be to tune into Appalachian State (who just moved up to the FBS) battling West Virginia in Morgantown?

Bowls:  Due to the fact that we are dealing with the lower-tier of the FBS conferences this ideally wouldn’t affect the post season bowls.  However, what if one of these upstart FCS teams that have always claimed to be good enough to play in the FBS makes a run and becomes bowl-eligible?

The BCS:  Strength of schedule is now even more interesting, the “body of work” equation and “style points” (that already make it sound like we are ribbon dancing rather than playing football) are now even more debatable than ever before.

The FCS/DII and DIII Playoff Systems:  Effects to the current playoff system could be approached in two ways: 1) With the “top” FCS programs gone yearly now there is more opportunity for other schools to compete for a title, but 2) Wouldn’t the mighty, but relegated FBS schools win the FCS championship, every time?  Wouldn’t they?  Hmmm...

Financial Viability of Programs:  This is a huge consideration.  Would the FBS football programs (already presumably struggling with a losing team) be able to survive a trip down to the FCS?  And though the FCS teams that move up would experience a financial windfall, could they afford the long-term expenses of a major conference?

In both cases how do you budget given such huge unknowns?

Travel Expenses:  Can Montana afford to play a Pac-10 road schedule; can Appalachian State afford to go on the road in the ACC? 

The End of the Season:  One of the truest upsides is now every game truly does count, not just if you are in the hunt, but if you don’t want to be fatally shot rendering you completely out of the hunt. Who wouldn’t watch Minnesota play to stay in the Big Ten?

Non Conference Scheduling:  Another hairy point, how you schedule now affects whether you move up or down. Calling all cupcakes—we want to play you!

Scheduling:  Scheduling woes wouldn’t be limited to whom to schedule to win non-conference games.  These difficulties would extend to how to schedule when you don’t know who you are scheduling (they could be gone next year) and any long range planning of any kind.

This would admittedly be messy at best.      

The Bottom Line

At first glance, the entire hypothesis of relegation/promotion in college football seems entirely ludicrous. 

FCS teams can’t survive in the FBS! 

FBS teams don’t belong in the FCS!

Right?

It would be fair to assert that an overwhelming majority of the FBS doesn’t want to find out the answer to that question.  Why risk everything (including an embarrassing, devastating year-long sentence to the depths of the FCS) for the sake of what is good (purportedly) for football?

On the other hand, do FCS schools really want to find out if they belong or not?  Are they willing to take the gamble that they really can’t compete successfully over an entire season (not just a couple of isolated games) with the big dogs and that all the FCS talk is just a bunch of bunk?

The implications, the complications, the ramifications and the feasibility of FBS/FCS relegation and promotion make the notion seem like science fiction.

Let’s try living in a parallel universe, establish a city underwater or throw each other through wormholes instead.

Those options seem far more practical, they make more sense and they’re probably easier to bring to fruition than deciphering and implementing FBS/FCS relegation and promotion.

It is science fiction.

It’s a chilling topic invoking a wide range of emotion; some hope against hope it will happen while others (like me, the ultimate Texas Tech homer) fervently dread even its mention.

At this juncture, the parties of the second part (the ones who don’t want to touch it, but not me personally) have the money and the stroke.

This may not be right, but it is what it is.