How does college football work?

Thanks Alex!!

How does ArmchairGM.com work?

I'm not asking that. Quit changing the subject!!

Fair enough, the way the article is now, it is a legitiment question, and I would be more than happy to answer it and explain the breakdown of college football. However, that means those that are listening have to be willing to listen and accept it and not freak out and minus everything that is said simply cause they do not agree.

Yeah it's just that the system that college football uses seems very complicated. What I want is for someone to explain "College football for dumbies".

College football is complicated, even to Americans, and people like me who cover it all the time. It starts off with the conference system. Which is how they divide the teams up. Usually this is based on regions, as well as competitive ability. There are six major conferences that represent each corner of the USA, and tradtionally they should have the best teams in land. ACC, Big 10, Big East, Big 12, SEC, Pac 10. These conferences vary is size with 8 or 9 being the smallest and i beleive 12 as the biggest.

There are plenty of other conferences, that also have good teams, and are competitive. In all there are 120 NCAA division 1 teams, that are all eligable to win the national title at the end of the season.

The schedule is made up by the Athletic directors of each school. Every NCAA team plays 12 regular season games. Out of those 12 they have to at least 8 in conference games. Those games are either set games that are played each season, or based on a rolling basis. Every conference except the Big East Pac 10 and Big 12 have a conference championship game that puts the 2 top teams from the conference against each other. Teams are allowed to play out of confrence games. There are some inner conference rivalries that are always played.

All college athletics are divided up into Div 1 2 and 3, that is more based on school size and number of available scholarships. Normally those teams do not cross over to play each other as D 2 and 3 teams are much smaller and not as talented as D1 players.

So basically, it's just random matches and random divisions, with Championship games at the end? Is there no attempt to organise a proper college system?

The complicated part of college football is deciding a national champion. There is no playoff systemd (I know NO ONE LIKES THIS). So in the past the title winner was decided by the two national polls the USA Today Poll, and the Coaches Poll. As a result there were times when we had 2 or co-national title holders.

No its organized in a sense that we keep a top 25 poll (as we do here at the chair) and you want to be at the top of that poll at the end of the year. Every team wants to win a national title, and at the very least win their conference title.

Yes, for confrences that have a conference championship game the conference is usually divided into 2 divisions with the winner of each division meeting in a conference championship game at a neutral site.

The Goal of every team is to reach 6 victories, this means they are eligable to playis a post season Bowl game. THe bowl games are for school pride, titles, and bigtime money for the school.

So 4 out of the 6 Division I conferences have championship games?

yeah, its really annoying, i think its only 3 out of 6. The Big East, Pac 10 and Big 10 dont play championships, they give the conference title to the team with the best record at the end of the season.

Can the NCAA not make a system that works? E.g. make up another two random Leagues to go with the six, then you have the winner of each going into the Playoffs. The last place in each League would go down into Division 2, and the next lowest would go into a playoff against a team that could come up. That way, you have Championship playoffs, and Promotion/Relegation Playoffs to add end of season excitement.

Does college football have teams that can get promoted or redelegated from divisions like they do in English soccer or is the divisions just for geographic purposes?

No you cannot do that, because of how you have to sign players based on scholarships. Smaller D2 schools cannot afford to compete with the money of the big time programs. Also some school chose not to put as much money into football as they rather be an academic instituion or focus on other sports.

Schools can leave a conference, or a conference can choose to drop a team if they see them as unable to compete. Temple was dropped from the Big East, and now no league will pick them up because they have been so bad.

Can someone explain this... http://www.a...2nd_attempt)

YOu dont want the big schools and the little ones to play.. They do that a lot, as it now, and its called Homecoming when you want to chalk up an easy victory.

Does college football currently have a playoff system?

Yeah, it doesnt work out that well, there is such a disparity between the haves and have nots in NC2A football. What teams do is, they will pay a really bad team a lot of money to come in and play them for homecoming.

No playoff system for Division 1. Division 2 and 3 have it.

So is this http://www.a...2nd_attempt) a playoff system for Division 1?

Alright, this is enough. The are 120 division 1A teams, which make up for the most part the largest schools in the country. To be 1A you need to meet certain requirements, average home attendance, large stadia, etc. Then, there are D1AA teams, which is a tier below. This comprises scholarship and non-scholarship athletes. The teams that are non-scholarship are either the Ivy League or teams that are forced to have a D1AA football team so its basketball team can compete at D1. The scholarship teams, including many smaller than D1A schools but still large, the historically black universities of the south, many western and plains schools that can't meet attendance requirements, etc. They are scholarship, have a playoff system, etc. Division 2 is much smaller, and following is Division 3, the smallest of small schools, that also has a ranking and playoff system. For most of the College football fans in America, D1A gets all the attention, and rightfully so. Lets get one thing straight, america's universities do not want to be farm systems to the professional leagues, athletic departments only make up one facet of the university, but usually its the most visible one. They are not a minor league system, relegating division changes based on performance would simply not work. You have players for 4 years, you can't just remove their scholarships for a year if their team does poorly, thats absurd. There are 6 major (BCS) conferences. The Atlantic Coast Conference, the Big East, the Big 10 conference, the Big 12 conference, the Pac 10 Conference, and the SEC. These conferences do not just exist for football purposes, all the sports each university plays occur under these different conferences, as do the championships. Each conference has its own way of determining the champion, some with a championship game, others with best conference record with various tie-breaking. Every week a poll comes out, which ranks the best 25 teams in D1A based on various factors, but mainly how good each voter thinks the team really is. The AP poll, which has no say in the BCS, and the USA Today/Coaches poll, which when combinded with the Harris poll, are major factors in the BCS scoring. A team needs to win 50%, finish .500, have 6 wins, however you want to look at it Pnatt to become bowl eligible, although not necessarily guaranteeing a bowl game. The bowl system is one of the most unique and misunderstood systems in all of sports. Roughly a 1/3 of D1A teams make the bowls, with each occuring around the turn of the year in various portions of the country. The BCS bowls makeup now the top 5 bowl games, and the highest prizes. The top two teams, as ranked by the BCS system go to the national championship game in Glendale, AZ. The other 4 BCS bowls rotate based on who gets 1st choice. Historical factors, possible matchups, crowd draws, etc all influence who these bowls choose to have play, however they mostly makeup the conference champions from the 6 major conferences, with some big name second place finishers as well as some possible undefeated smaller schools. Making a bowl guarantees a big paycheck for the school, which goes to fund the athletic department's other programs that do not make money. Yes, college football does not have a playoff system, the creation of one is very difficult with so many teams vying for positions. However, each week serves as a playoff game, if you lose one, you are most likely out of the running to play in the national championship game, unless everyone loses one game. I suggest you invest in a historical manual of college football, if you're curious. However, a message board is not the ideal location for extensive explanations, there are much better resources available. If you have any more questions, I'm fairly knowledgeable on the topic, just message them to my page.

Thats what I was trying to avoid having to type out, gotta spend some time actually doing work today.

Isn't there 12 conferences in the top division, not 6?

12 conferenes, but 6 are considered the major conferences with the big time schools who most of the attention

What happened to the comment I left this morning?? If this kid can ask all kinds of questions I should be able to express my feelings about it. Is Armchair endorsing censorship now? We should all have the power to delete any comments we don't like whenever we want if that's the case.

No worries Manny, I have full faith you can come up with more than 1 good line in a day.

bd