We should implement a new structure for college football classification and scheduling to ensure that teams play against others of similar quality. A tiered system in which teams move up or down over time based on performance would lead to more consistent and entertaining season schedules, and is very feasible.

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Alabama vs. Florida Atlantic? Ohio State vs. Toledo? Who wants to watch these games? Do they offer anything of value for either team? The strong teams get empty wins and the occasional disastrous loss while the weak teams get crushed—routed on the scoreboard and potentially badly injured on the field by the quasi-professional athletes of their elite opponents. These games make no sense for anyone interested in high-quality college football. There has to be a better way—and there is. College football should adopt a tiered classification structure for scheduling and playoffs.

The system is based on tiers of teams based on quality. The tiers are large enough to have several sub-groups of teams who play against each other to identify the winners of each tier. This provides lots of games among teams that are relatively equally matched, and a championship every year for each tier, as well as a clear national champion. At the end of each season teams move to a different tier if they have demonstrated based on their performance that they deserve to be either promoted or demoted. Here’s how it works:

Structure, scheduling, and playoff

Teams in NCAA Division I are arranged in four leagues of 32 teams each. If there are not enough teams for this, then there are three leagues; if there are more teams, then an additional league is added. Leagues are hierarchically-based on the quality of the teams—league A has the best teams, B the next best, etc. In the first year teams are classified based on the traditional final ranking for the previous season to get the process started.

There are four divisions per league, eight teams each. The teams in a league are distributed by geography in order to cultivate regional rivalries and to reduce travel cost and time). The teams in each division are then ranked by quality.

During the season each team plays the other seven teams in its division and also has a game against one team from each of the other divisions. These latter games are against the teams of comparable quality in each division. For example, the 6th ranked team in a division plays the other three 6th-ranked teams in the other divisions in its level.

At the end of the season the top two teams from each division make the playoff for that league. These eight teams compete to determine the champion of the league. The champion of league A is the national champion.

Re-classification

At the end of the season, high-performing and low-performing teams are reclassified into different leagues based on their ranking. The top eight teams in the lower leagues (the top two teams in each division, the ones who qualified for the playoff) move up to the next level and become the bottom teams in the divisions of the higher league for the following season. The bottom eight teams in the top leagues (the bottom two teams in each division) move down to the lower league. These are the rankings for the next season, and the cycle begins again.

This classification and scheduling system helps ensure that teams play against other teams of relatively comparable strength, or at least not against teams of clearly unequal strength as happens today. It provides incentives for teams to continuously improve, and offers playoffs at multiple levels that enable high-performing programs that are not “traditional powerhouses” to rise over time to the upper echelons based on their outcomes. Every team has ten regular season games against comparable opposition and a chance to win its league championship. By offering high-quality games and a clear system to monitor and manage quality over time, this approach offers college football fans better and more meaningful games all season long.