The product on the field in College Football took away from the stories off the field. However, once the College Football Committee announced the College Football Semifinalists, that became the story, not how great the season was.
It all started with Conference Realignment in the summer and the destruction of the Pac-12. The Pac-12 had its best season in league history. But after this season, the Pac-12 is no more. And it is tough to swallow for many people—especially UCLA Bruins Head Coach Chip Kelly.
“It’s sad,” Chip Kelly said Friday before his team’s win the LA Bowl on Saturday. “The fact that there’s not going to be a Pac-12 next year, the fact that Washington State is not going to be [in] a conference next year, the fact that Oregon State is not going to be in a conference next year, we failed.”
However, it was not those quotes that got the most attention. Oh no. It was the fact that Kelly called for an entire revamping of the college football system when he was asked what he saw as the biggest problem facing college football today, whether that be NIL, Conference Realignment, or the Transfer Portal, and what his solution would be to solve it.
Chip Kelly cuts a promo on what the future of College Football should look like
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And as he said, “It’s not like I have been thinking about this for a while.”
I think they’re all a problem and I think we need to have a Conference Commissioner. I think football should be separate from the other sports. Just the fact that our school is leaving to go to the Big 10 in football, our our softball team should be playing Arizona in softball. Our basketball team should be playing Arizona in basketball, but because football left and they say well, how do you do that?
Well, Notre Dame is Independent in football, and they’re in a conference and everything else. I think we should all be Independent in football. You can have a 64 team conference that’s in the Power Five, and you can have a 64 team conference in the group of five and we separate it and we play each other. You’re gonna have the West Coast teams. And then every year we play seven games against the West Coast teams and then we play the East. We play Syracuse, Boston College, Pitt, West Virginia, Virginia. Then the next year you play against the South while you still play your seven teams.
You play a seven game schedule you can play four against another conference opponent, another division opponent, you can always play against one Mountain West team every year so that we can still keep those rivalries going. Not that I’ve really thought about this, not that I’ve allowed to spend the time on this.
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But Kelly is right. The biggest controversy with the College Football Playoff, in the four-team version of it, is not who the best teams are, but who the best conferences are. That goes out the window with this format. And College Football is heading to a two-conference system down the road with the Big 10 and SEC. Similar to the NFL with AFC and NFC.
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But in Kelly’s world, the rest of the sports can keep their conference affiliations. That way, the Student-athletes will not suffer, especially in the other sports. As it stands now, softball, field hockey, soccer, and so on have to travel cross country. Here, they would remain within their conferences, similar to what we see in college hockey.
These are the round table discussions we are not privy too, but when coaches like Chip Kelly speak, we need to listen, especially when it came to TV contracts and how to split that money especially if there are two conferences.
I think if you went together collectively as a group, and said there’s 132 teams and we all share in the same time, we all share the same TV contract. So if the Mountain West doesn’t have one in the Sunbelt doesn’t have another and SEC has one and they have another that we all go together. That’s a lot of games and there’s a lot of people in the TV world that will go through it. You can sponsor each one instead of calling a group of five and Power Five you can call it Amazon, Nike, bid that out to things. You do a lot of different things.
Full Press Coverage Transcription
Of course, what stands out the most, besides the new TV contract and conferences, was Kelly’s call for revenue sharing.
I think if we still do the same thing and take all that money, and I would do this and I think this needs to be done. That money now needs to be shared with the student athletes and there needs to be revenue sharing. The player should get paid and you can get rid NLI (NIL) and the school should be paying the players because the players are what the product is. And the fact that they don’t get paid is really the biggest travesty. Not that I’ve thought about it.
Again, Chip Kelly has a point. He makes a valid argument because now, with two conferences, we can finally see who the best teams are on the field. But not only that, it helps other athletic programs in the school survive.