Why I Believe College Football Can Protect Its Traditions and Still Change

I grew up in Columbus, spent four years at Ohio State, and have been an Ohio State Buckeye fan for as long as I can remember. College football has never felt like an abstract entertainment product to me. It is a place, a calendar, a community, and a set of memories shared across generations.

That is why I do not want reform that simply makes college football look more like a professional league. The sport’s value comes from what the professional model cannot reproduce: campuses filling up on Saturdays, rivalry games with decades of history, students and alumni caring about the same places, and a season whose rhythm becomes part of the year.

The traditions are not the problem

The problem is that the rules increasingly reward choices that weaken those traditions. Difficult schedules can create more downside than upside. A conference championship can expose a team to additional risk. Finishing several positions higher may not materially improve a playoff path. Roster movement, recruiting, signing, and coaching decisions can intrude on the championship itself.

When the incentives point away from the product people love, the answer is not to lecture schools for responding rationally. The answer is to change the incentives.

Every better finish should matter

The 18-team structure begins with a simple promise: improving your finish should improve your path. The top two teams receive the largest advantage. The next eight still avoid the opening round. Four teams earn a campus opener. Four enter on the road. There is no single cliff where every position above it is treated almost the same.

Conference championships should follow the same principle. Teams should want to play for them. Champions should receive meaningful access and reward, and a team should not lose an earned position solely because its conference required one more game.

Campus should remain the center

The most important games should be played where the sport is strongest whenever students and campus communities are present. Bowls still have value, but they need clear roles rather than an ever-expanding job description. Rivalries should remain protected even when schedules become more comparable and transparent.

Access and meaning are different questions

The CFP should remain the path to the FBS national championship for every eligible institution. At the same time, many programs need a realistic national objective below the CFP. A distinct National Tournament for eligible institutions outside the Power Four can create that objective without declaring a new subdivision or moving eliminated CFP teams into a consolation bracket.

The proposal should be challenged

I do not believe a proposal becomes credible because it is long or polished. It becomes credible when its assumptions are visible, its failures are labeled, and informed criticism can change it. Historical simulation, athlete-welfare review, legal analysis, financial modeling, and real stakeholder representation are not footnotes. They are launch conditions.

This site therefore publishes the unfinished work alongside the recommendations. The model displays failed gates when evidence is missing. Reader disagreement can be published. Material corrections will be dated. Artificial intelligence assistance is disclosed because authorship should include responsibility, not only credit.

What I am asking for

I am not asking anyone to adopt every rule tomorrow. I am asking the people who govern, play, cover, and care about college football to test an integrated idea: preserve the features that make the sport distinctive, and make the incentives support them.

If a better rule emerges, the proposal should change. If a test fails, the failure should be public. But college football should not accept a system that works against its own traditions simply because each problem is considered separately.

The sport can be more coherent without becoming generic, more inclusive without flattening excellence, and more modern without forgetting why people care. That is the future I believe is worth building.