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I much rather preferred it when it was only eight teams.

Years ago when all this expansion stuff began, I envisioned four or five conferences with 16 teams each, split into two divisions, with conference championships. The winners of the conference championships would go to a playoff for the national championship. It’s really easy to do with four conferences. I don’t like the media or any group of people determining which team goes to a playoff. Winning, and only winning, sends a team forward. The remaining teams that don’t fit into the 16-team conferences get to form a league between FBS and FCS. Perhaps there is some method of teams moving between leagues based on winning and losing, but that doesn’t work with some conferences as they are formed today. For instance, the Big Ten is just as much about academic (research) relationships between schools as it is sports.

That entire take comes from my bias from being a former NCAA swimmer, where winning moves an individual further in a multi-team meet with prelims and finals. It doesn’t work that way for nationals though. It’s individuals that move a team to nationals and it is possible for only one swimmer on a team to qualify for nationals. There’s no chance of his team winning a national title though.

Backing up a bit with the academic research aspects of conferences. That’s just as much about money as the conference TV contracts for sports. Strangely, or maybe not so, I am dead set against the current source of funding for research grants - taxpayers. That’s forced. Taxpayers have no say in grant funding. It’s not that I am against research or even government funding of research. I am simply against the vast majority of research projects that are funded because it’s for absolute junk science or some Marxist identity bull crap.

All this money leads to excess and lost perspective. That includes the money in college sports. So basically, I don’t give a damn about college football anymore. College football is just a minor league for the NFL, which I absolutely cannot stand because it has been ruined by politics. I want sports and politics completely separated. I want perspective between academics and sports in college. Most college football players have no business being in college from an academic perspective.

So all of that leads me to be dismayed about college football and I don’t see any movement towards correcting this, including Clemson and FSU moving to the Big Ten or SEC.