Bowling for Dollars

I thought I’d tackle something truly controversial today. In the past week I have wrestled with race, war and reproductive rights. Today it is the NCAA’s turn. I want to change college football.

So I was watching one of the thirty-two hundred games of March Madness the other night when it struck me: we could do this in football real easily and make it huge. Make it bigger than the stupid bowls.

I mean first, let’s look at the NCAA football bowl series. We’ve got the Fried Alligator Gizzard Bowl that matches the third runner up of some unheard of Mid-American conference with the last placed Big Ten team, so long as none of their players killed anyone during the course of committing a felony for the preceding year. And so on and so forth.

But since our model is March Madness, it is “win and you’re in and loose and you can snooze”, it makes for great theater. And great theater makes for good TV, which has huge audiences and so on and so forth.  You get the point – BIG MONEY.

And reports this year suggested that the six two trillion teams invited to a bowl game, well, few people cared.  Even if you attended the University of Somewhere, you really didn’t care to watch another bowl game, when they were playing No-Name State.  Both teams were 5-8, just a little better than say, the Dallas Cowboys. TV viewership was down. Way down.  Down so low that it has the NCAA brass worried.  ABOUT MONEY.

So here’s my plan. This is so easy it just reeks with problems.

You play a ten game conference series.  The top sixteen teams go to a national playoff starting just after thanksgiving. If you do the math right – and I have –that gives you a four week playoff that culminates on January 1 for a national championship game.

Some will say, too hard on the student athlete. What?  These are the same kids who just a couple of years before were playing in state high school playoffs and loving it. No, that excuse won’t do.  And get this. We’ll pay the players on the teams who make it into the playoffs a thousand dollars each per game. Just to cover their time, expenses and to share a bit of their sweat in the big money pool.  NCAA outcry at this will prove once and for all that the schools are doing all of this for money. THEIR MONEY.

16-8-4-2. Four weeks. Four games for the two finalists.  Winner take all. Losers go home. It could be bigger than the Superbowl, especially if you keep Madonna off the screen at half time.

The top college teams in the land, playing for the big trophy and no one can sway the votes over an entire season. (Well, they can, but if you do it right, each team’s win-loss record along with an index based on their opponents’ won-loss record will even things out.)

So what am I forgetting?  Oh yeah, the advertisers who sponsor the Fried Alligator Gizzard Bowl.  The Alligator Foundation of South Florida or wherever. Pick a game and sponsor it. Plenty of real TV time for advertisers who will have real sets of eyes actually interested in the series.

It can be done.  And NCAA, you can make a lot of MONEY out of it.

BIG MONEY.  After all, that’s what college sports are all about.