The College Football Solution

Recently I wrote about the travesty of college football and the awful deal that players get when they commit to a big-time college football school. In the end, I posed a challenge - to find a way to fix the system.

The answer is simple, yet complicated. College football should be removed from the university's control and privatized.

Now, most schools won't want to do this. They will fight like hell. The revenue streams that some schools must receive from football operations are too great for them to just allow this to happen. But it has to - because there is too much money here to be made and eventually someone with money is going to realize this and jump on the opportunity.

For example.

Say I purchased some land just outside of Austin, TX. It's pretty cheap out there. Then I painted some lines on it and put up some bleachers. Then I called up Colt McCoy and said, "Hey Colt, I have a business opportunity for you and 39 of your teammates. I hear you're enrolled at Texas. Well, here's the deal:

I want you and 39 of your teammates to ditch your scholarships. You're enrolled at the school - you can go there as long as you keep up your grades. We'll help you with your class work if you need it. I want you guys to quit the football team and meet me at my lawn just outside of town for practice. We'll schedule practice around your classes, just like it is now. I will pay your tuition, room and board for however long it takes to get your degree. If you want to go to grad school afterwards, it's on me. You can play for as long as you're good enough to make the team or until you are drafted, but your schooling is guaranteed.

No, that's not all.

In addition, I will give you each an additional $25,000 in cash. How does that sound?

Our team will play a 16 game schedule against 9 other "schools" where we are building franchises in a similar manner. At the end of the season, we will devise a playoff format and crown an indisputable champion.

Our head coaches have signed binding agreements and cannot leave you without forfeiting a sh*tload of money. Our assistant coaches have signed binding agreements that they cannot leave unless it is for a head coaching job. So even if a head coach leaves, he cannot take his staff with him.

If you have any friends that are great football players and upstanding gentlemen, but were unable to keep up academically to play college football, please tell them they have an opportunity to play here.

As soon as the NFL deems that you are eligible for the draft, feel free to enter it. If you are not drafted or you wish to return to the league, that's fine too.

If you can somehow get endorsement contracts for yourself, I want you to feel free to go ahead and sign those. And if the nice guy that owns the car dealership down the road wants to give you a set of wheels, please feel free to drive them. And if he wants to throw in a house for your mother, then she's welcome to live in it.

On game days, tell your friends to come down and fill the bleachers. There is unlimited tailgating and the stadium serves beer (as long as they are of age). See you at practice."

How many of you are thinking, "Wow... That sounds awesome"???

It makes so much sense, doesn't it?

Too much sense.

Imagine a league where all the bogus crap that you don't care to hear anyway would disappear?

Imagine if you got to watch the best possible players like Joe McKnight, Mike Williams, Dez Bryant, and Jeremy Bloom and not have to worry that they might get kicked off the team for stupid reasons.

Imagine the opportunity it would afford kids who may not be as smart as their collegiate-bound brethren, but are still athletically gifted enough to possibly earn an NFL career with the right opportunity. Instead of going back to their hometowns with no education and no hope, they would have an opportunity to make something of themselves.

Wouldn't it be great if you didn't have to worry that the guy who promised that he would mentor your son might leave with his entire staff if he got paid more cash somewhere else? And there would be no way that a coach might leave the team just before a playoff game.

You wouldn't have to worry about your star running back getting caught driving a car paid for by boosters or his mom owning a house in San Diego paid for by boosters. All those silly NCAA rules that everyone suspects are secretly broken anyway would no longer exist.

You could enjoy yourself at the game without having to sneak beer cans in the waistband of your jeans and hoping the security guard doesn't frisk you.

And at the end of the year, I promise there will not be more than 1 undefeated team with a claim on the National Championship.

It sounds wonderful.

But it probably won't happen.

It won't happen because there are too many people with money at the upper ranks of college football. Yes, college football is rooted in tradition and it would take some time for fans to migrate over to a new league. But once the product was established, either the NCAA would have to make drastic changes to keep up or they would no longer get the best players and become a second-tier product.

What high school recruit wouldn’t take the opportunity to earn $25,000, get a free education and not have to deal with all the eligibility nuances and coach-flipping in the NCAA? Take a so-so pro prospect like Sean Canfield or Zac Robinson – they may not ever make a mint in the NFL, so why not get some cash in the bank today instead of crossing your fingers that you get drafted?

Perhaps the key is in schools like Boise State, TCU, or BYU – maybe those schools can take their teams private and see if it works. They don’t get the respect that the big-conference schools get, they don’t get the recruits that the big-conference schools get, yet they always put up solid records.

And don’t even get me started on the positive ramifications this would have on Title IX.

As fans you should demand the best product possible and we cannot get it under the current circumstances. The system is corrupt and broken and cannot be fixed without changing some of the major tenets within. When $75 million disappears and the people who did most of the hard work to earn it barely get a fraction, something is wrong. We might expect to see this type of arrangement on Southern plantations in the 1800's, in Communist Russia, or in the diamond mines of Africa. We do not expect to see it in our Saturday sports entertainment, unless we were living in ancient Rome.

As fans, we should want the focus of the game to return to the players. Any Cincinnati fan can tell you about the stupidity of the current rules. Any parent of a sophomore at Tennessee, who just last year had Coach Kiffin and Coach Orgeron in their living room talking about how they were going to develop their son into an NFL talent knows exactly what I'm talking about. It's time to make some drastic changes.

We just need to find a few rich people to take the plunge.