A new football scheduling format that would scrap divisions and give teams an opportunity to play each other more frequently is moving closer to being adopted by the Atlantic Coast Conference.
The commissioner and athletic directors discussed a model in which league teams would play three permanent opponents, then play five permanent opponents over a two-year period.
The NCAA Football Oversight Committee recommended this week that conferences don't need to have divisions to hold a conference championship game. The Division I Council is expected to vote on it later this month.
Conferences should have the right to determine their conference champion, andPhillips had been in favor of passing the required legislation to make it happen. The new scheduling format was discussed with ADs and coaches during leaguewide meetings.
The opportunity for our student athletes to play every school in the Atlantic Coast Conference over a four-year period is one of the drivers. I have always believed that the local decision about how you handle your conference is the other piece of it. They want to dictate what their championship structure looks like, and which will lead into an expanded football playoff.
You want your two best teams to have a chance to play at the end of the year for a lot of reasons. You may think it is a little bit longer, but it really is. We are very much on track. I want to make sure we have talked to everyone to see if we are missing something.
The scheduling format was one of the things that the commissioner wanted to reexamine when he became the commissioner.
The league is closer to the end than the beginning, according to the Miami athletic director.
We need to talk to our TV partners and see what they think, and then we can go ahead and do it. We want to make sure we are doing it the right way.
One area that remains under discussion is tradeoffs that programs have to make when it comes to the permanent opponents each team is assigned.
The coaches are not all in favor of removing divisions. Pitt coach Pat Narduzzi likes the chance to play for a division championship. The ADs will vote on what happens, despite the fact that coaches had the chance to give feedback.
Wake Forest has played NC State 105 years in a row, and coach Dave Clawson said that model is never going to work.
Maximizing more appealing games across the league is one area where the conference sees room for growth without divisions, so there have been extensive discussions with the network about what that could mean for television and, in particular, prime-time games.
In addition to changing its own scheduling model,Phillips said the time was now to take a look at alternative models for the governance of all of college football. The sport that is the largest revenue driver on every campus has been affected by the recent changes to college athletics.
Last week, Ohio State athletic director Gene Smith proposed that the 10 FBS conferences and Notre Dame operate under the College Football Playoff model, while all other sports stay under the NCAA model.
In addition to exploring others,Phillips was open to hearing more about that idea.
This is the time to do something if we ever do something. Does it need to be managed differently? Do you need a structure for governing? Those are questions we should be asking ourselves.
Either you continue down the road that you have been on, or you try to do something different. What is the most sustainable? What can football do to help? The second-most watched sporting event in the United States has its own championship and all the necessary things to run it.
If the NCAA is going to redo it, is there an opportunity to look at what that may be? Maybe there is a parallel that can have some interaction, but also has a separate ability to it.
There was an openness to discussing the idea of paying football players directly as school employees.
A group of football players, led by quarterback Kain Colter, tried to unionize in the summer of 2014). The effort was defeated when the National Labor Relations Board determined athletes were not employees.
On Wednesday,Phillips sounded less certain about that designation.
There was some sentiment that current compensation already crosses a line into pay for play, so we all have a responsibility to move in the direction college football is going.
The experience is tied to education and degree completion. What the benefits are is what we are struggling with, to find some common ground about what we feel would be appropriate and what would put us in a different category than collegiate sports.
All Rights Reserved © 2024
