NCAA Football Promotion & Relegation

A proposal to make college football amazing...

If you are a sports fan and you live in the USA, you may not be aware of the concept of promotion & relegation in sports.

But you should get familiar—especially college football fans. Because college football is set up perfectly for an update using Promotion/Relegation.

What is Promotion/Relegation

In short: If your team is bad, it gets dropped (relegated) from the league it’s in to a lower league. Meanwhile, the best team from a lower league gets “promoted” to replace your team.

A team moves down while another moves up to take its place.

Let’s use Major League Baseball as a hypothetical.

Here is the National League final standings for 2022. Look at the Washington Senators. Clearly the worst team.

2022 National League Standings

Now imagine that following the 2022 season, the Washington Senators got relegated down to the International League (AAA) and the Nashville Sounds got promoted to the National League (MLB).

International League 2022 Standings. The International League is one of two leagues that makes up the old AAA-Baseball level.

WHOA! NO WAY. YOU CAN’T DO THAT!

Well, yes you can.

Soccer (aka Football, Footie, or Fútbol) operates this way throughout the world. Here are the 2023 standings for the top league in English Football:

The bottom three teams—Leicester, Leeds United, & Southampton—will all be relegated to the league below (Championship), seen here:

Similarly, the top teams in the Championship will be promoted to the Premier League. Those teams are Burnley, Sheffield and Luton.

Every year this process plays out: the bottom teams are replaced in each league all the way down. Meanwhile teams that earn promotion from the lower leagues move up.

This process creates tremendous opportunity (and reward) for teams in lower leagues. It’s a merit-based system. Play well and you stay up. Play poorly and you drop down.

In fact, most of the teams in the Championship have played in the Premier League at one point or another over the last 20 years. With constant promotion/relegation, teams always have a chance to move up or down.

(note that the bottom three teams in Championship, too, will be relegated to a lower league. The English system has something like 10 tiers. I don’t even know if the English know how many tiers there are…)

But Soccer is Boring and Those Systems Won’t Catch On With Americans

I understand. But bear with me, Yankee!

Why College Football is Perfect for Promotion/Relegation

Promotion/Relegation likely wouldn’t work in pro sports in the USA. There’s too much history. Plus there are too many infrastructure (stadiums/arenas) constraints to deal with being relegated. The Detroit Lions would probably just go bankrupt if they couldn’t play (terribly) in the NFL.

And while NHL and MLB are set up better in terms of tiers, you would probably get a lot of push back from pro sports fans if suddenly the New Jersey Devils were playing in an obscure league against smaller-arena teams.

But college football is perfectly set up.

College football has a loyal fan base, a great stadium infrastructure, and an under-utilized bowl system that could be used for key promotion/relegation match-ups.

College football fans are similar in loyalty to English soccer fans. College sports fans usually have a long-term relationship that is woven into the fabric of their lives—generally from attending school there. When a college football team is suddenly “great”—like Texas Christian University was in 2022—the fans emerge from everywhere. Local fans join alumni and current students to fill stadiums.

I mean, when was the last time the Minnesota Golden Gophers were any good? 1960? Yet their fan base is solid. They are just waiting for an opportunity to represent a “great” football team.

And like most college campuses, the Golden Gophers play in a proper stadium. Huntington (formerly TCF) Bank Stadium is one of the nicest facilities in the country.

And this is not uncommon. Most college teams play in sizable stadiums in front of loyal fans who support them in even their worst seasons. Well, maybe not the University of Hawaii, but you get the idea.

Meanwhile, promotion/relegation could easily exploit the existing bowl game system in college football. There are over 40 bowl games in Division I alone—many you likely have never heard of (Cure Bowl?).

This bowl system could be turned on its head and used for key matchups that result from the dynamic promotion/relegation process.

Imagine a scenario where the loser of Rutgers vs Indiana determines who gets relegated. THAT becomes the Holiday Bowl. If college fans are anything like international soccer fans, relegation games would be akin to playoff games. It’s do or die. Win or get sent down.

Or maybe it’s North Dakota State matched up on a bowl game with South Dakota State because the winner determines who gets promoted to the FBS. Voilá! That’s the Music City Bowl matchup.

Once-meaningless bowls get leveraged for key promotion or relegation games all throughout the system and suddenly the entire month of December is a riot of incredibly important college football matchups.

How Could it Work?

While Promotion/Relegation could certainly work under the current (FBS, FCS, etc.) structure, some tweaks would make it truly awesome.

My suggestion is to slim things down to 5 or 6 major NCAA divisions:

• Big Ten

• SEC

• PAC 12

• ACC

• Big 12

Then tier those so that there is a Big Ten A, Big Ten B, Big Ten C and so on.

Big Ten with 4 tiers using merit-based Promotion/Relegation system.

Ultimately it doesn’t matter how many divisions, tiers or even teams per tier that there are. It doesn’t even matter how many teams you choose to promote or relegate. It just matters that you have a structure that you stick to. Because once you get promotion & relegation going, teams will be moving up and down year over year.

And the fans will love it.

Imagine a future where USC gets relegated to the PAC 12 B. Its not like the fans will abandon them. In fact, that next season they will probably be the best PAC 12 B team and they will likely play in the B Championship game against Boise State and/or a cool promotion bowl game against Wyoming.

And when they win that game, they win promotion to the top tier.

And all across the system they are joined by other promoted teams as the league shuffles based on merit.

College football would be in a league system of its own.