College football is a sport that has experienced a peak in its popularity in the last few seasons that it has not experienced since perhaps the 1940s, when pro football was a shadow of itself now. Hundreds of sports talk stations are based on talk of the sport. You have daily shows that only keep track of the sport. Attendance is at an all-time high.
It is the clear #2 sport to the NFL in most of the country (except the Northeast), and in the South it is #1. But there is one thing that college football does not have has which most other sports do: scrimmages.
High school football has them every year before the season starts, several of them. Baseball has spring training. Hockey, professional basketball and the NFL have preseason games. College basketball has exhibition games before the season. Just about every sport has it but college football.
Scrimmages would be a great way to make extra money for the sport. But I would put a twist on them. Most plans I've seen show scrimmages only being between Division I teams that don't play that often on the gridiron (i.e. Clemson and Georgia). My plan, though, would allow every division in the NCAA to play these.
Each team would be allowed to play one division up and one down. Division I (FBS teams) could play FBS and FCS teams. FCS teams could play teams in their division, FBS and Division II, and so on and so forth.
I would encourage these teams to play on the road. They would be moneymakers for these schools, many of which that have trouble just trying to make money.
College basketball has many of these events each season. A BCS conference team visits a team from a smaller conference, and the smaller conference teams always play these games like they are in the NCAA while some of the big school players take it lightly. Upsets happen because of that.
I would allow teams to have choces: play less spring practice each year in order to play a couple scrimmages, keep the spring practice that they have, or play scrimmages right before the regular season.
In part 2, I will talk more about how this plan will work.
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