How to fix college football

12 Ways to fix the world in 2012: Part 1
How to fix college football

Hopefully you enjoyed watching the tide roll over LSU. If you're a Tigers fan don't fret, you can't be blamed for losing, college football is fundamentally flawed. But it's going to be ok, we're going to go ahead and take care of everything now.

The need for a playoff in college football has been addressed time and time again so I won't say much on that subject except to agree. The top four teams, one extra game after finals before Christmas, the winners play for the national championship.
A much more pervasive problem is coaches' salaries in the NCAA. For example Nick Saban, head coach at the University of Alabama make $5.9 million a year. 

The highest paid university president, on the other hand, makes $2.8 million. While that's still nothing to sneeze at it is less than half of what coach Saban is making. Don't get me wrong, I have no problem with coaches being well paid. A successful program brings in a lot of revenue and the coach should be well rewarded. But what message is being sent when a coach is making twice what the president of the university? Why then would we be surprised when they place a higher value on athletics than on education?

The solution is very simple though, do not allow coaches to make any more in total salary than the president of their university makes. Coaches will still be able to earn plenty of money through book sales, endorsement deals, and speaking engagements, but the school simply cannot pay them any more than they pay the head of the university. "But the best coaches will leave for the NFL" you say. Sure Nick Saban and Bob Stoops may go running to the bigger paychecks of professional sports, but let me enlighten you with a little math. There are currently 32 teams in the NFL and 119 in NCCA 1-A football. So even if EVERY team in the NFL fired their coach and hired a college coach 75% of college coaches would still be in place.

So what about the players themselves? For a long time I was a proponent of paying the players, after all why shouldn't they get a piece of the pie they helped bake. And please don't give me the "they are paid, they get a free education." The average total cost for the 2009-2010 school year at a 4-year college was $21,189, that's tuition and room and board. Even if you add up all the players on a 65 man roster that's still less than a third of what Nick Saban is making. Then add in lucrative TV deals earning billions of dollars for the conferences (and no that's not a typo that's billions with a 'B'). Then you add in bowl game payouts and merchandising and suddenly $22,000 for the guys hitting each other on the field does seem a bit unjust.

But I don't think paying them is the answer after all, I think what is needed is an alternative to college. For about 2 ½% of college players college is just an extended tryout for the NFL. For the other 8800 or so it's a chance to get an education that they may not have been able to otherwise afford. For the 200 or so who will go to the NFL, why have them take that scholarship slot that someone else may need to change their station in life. Instead the NFL needs to introduce a developmental league. A league run by the NFL which allows players to enter beginning at 18. They are paid, perhaps it's only $20-$30000 but it is at least cash in hand. The league would be completely run by NFL managers who's primary goal is to prepare these young men for the NFL. During their time NFL coaches and teams have complete access to the players unlike in the NCAA. And after their second year they can declare eligible for the draft, if they don't get drafted that's fine they can always try again next year since there would be no eligibility issues with the developmental league. Yes, that means some top recruits would go into the developmental league instead of the NCAA, but again we're talking about around 2 players per team. This may seem a bit extreme, but apparently I'm not the only one thinking along these lines.

So I've stolen your college's coach and top players what do you get in return? Extended eligibility. One of the burdens of college programs is that just as a player begins to really develop their four years of eligibility runs out. So what if you had a star player who wasn't quite NFL material (if they were they'd probably be in the developmental league) but they're one of the best in the college game. Instead of losing them after their 4th year what if you could keep them 6 or even 8 years? Yes they'd have to continue taking classes and working towards a degree but you could build a generation of a program around 1 or 2 recruiting classes. And those players could be graduating with advanced degrees. Think if instead of entering the draft Akili Smith would have stayed at Oregon for another 4 years; instead of being one of the biggest busts in NFL history Dr. Smith could've lead Oregon to a national title.

So let's go over this one last time:
NCAA playoffs
Cap coaches' salaries
Create developmental league
Lengthen college eligibitliy
That's a lot to get taken care of so you better get started, and I'll see you next week with the second way to make the world a better place in 2012.

12 Ways to make the world better.

Happy New Year everyone!

It's the first Thursday of the year and I've decided to start this year off by making the world better for everyone. As some of you may know I'm pretty knowledgeable about pretty much everything. Until now I've mostly kept my vast amounts of wisdom to myself, working only to make my own life the shining beacon of success it now is. But it is a new year and I've decided that it is time to share my talents with the rest of the world. Why now you ask? Certainly 2012 stands to be an important year in the direction our society will take, of course the world may not makes it to 2013 so why keep this to myself, and my wife no longer even humors me by pretending to listen to my ideas. Mostly she just throws a shoe at me and tells me to "Stoppit". I may have officially traded places with the cat.

So over the next 12 weeks I will be giving you my top 12 ideas to fix the world in 2012. I was going to do one a month but I wanted to be sure you had plenty of time to get these done before December 21st comes and Unicron devours us all.