[jacket3ree]

I still think Stanford football's last, best hope is that one of the eventual "Power 2" conferences wants some teams in the Pacific and Mountain time zone and we could be one....and one of the "Power 2" already has four of them....

This I've given a lot of thought. To the point of spending several lunch breaks with another college football fanatic at the white board. We even found an address to send photos of said white board and maybe we should just be glad we didn't get a cease and desist letter and leave at that.

A Power 2 doesn't work. Let's say, for reasons which become obvious soon, that 80 schools are all in on pro college ball. So the Big Whatever is going to have 40 and the SEC is going to have 40? No, of course not. The ACC is at 16 right now and with only two weeks left in the conference schedule there are five one-loss teams and two two-loss teams, all with some theoretical way to run the gauntlet of tie-breakers, and a handful have some less theoretical than others as in just win. The team currently on top will have played exactly two of the six opponents they are vying with for that title game spot. How is that going to work in two mega conferences?  

The more likely outcome is that the SEC stays below the Mason Dixon and maybe adds a couple of teams to keep the Big 10 north of the Mason Dixon. But the Big 10 will invade the south and there are plenty of AAU universities down there that mesh. So unless USC and UCLA beg for the inclusion of Stanford and Cal because somehow they learned some travel lesson they could of thought of before bringing UW and Oregon on board,..... yeah right. The So Cal schools don't give two craps about us and I don't see Ohio State and Michigan pining to get out to the Bay Area every few years. I don't see Stanford in any P2 world.

What needs to happen if college football is going to be professional is to be professional and use a franchise model like the NFL. No asinine committees (pipe down ESPN) and everything is settled on the field. This can be done with round-robin conference play, so no need for conference championship games and all with a maximum of 15 games in a season absolute tops, leaving three non-conference games to schedule cupcakes or interesting intersectional matchups. Eight ten-team conferences that are geographically based for the benefit of, I don't know, the athletes, fans and students. We took road trips to Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, Florida, Alabama, and New Orleans. Always within a bleary overnight stuffed in DC's bug or someone's Datsun or Tut had that magnificent oil-belching Oldsmobile we sailed down to the Big Easy to watch us beat Tulane and hit the Quarter after. I think we spent about $5,000 on gas and zero on lodging. Good times. We weren't getting on a freaking plane.

Stanford should get behind that when all is said and done. I beat even the Ohio States and Texases would be down with it. It won't save money, but it would be glorious.

[jacket3ree]

I still think Stanford football's last, best hope is that one of the eventual "Power 2" conferences wants some teams in the Pacific and Mountain time zone and we could be one....and one of the "Power 2" already has four of them....

This I've given a lot of thought. To the point of spending several lunch breaks with another college football fanatic at the white board. We even found an address to send photos of said white board and maybe we should just be glad we didn't get a cease and desist letter and leave at that.

A Power 2 doesn't work. Let's say, for reasons which become obvious soon, that 80 schools are all in on pro college ball. So the Big Whatever is going to have 40 and the SEC is going to have 40? No, of course not. The ACC is at 16 right now and with only two weeks left in the conference schedule there are five one-loss teams and two two-loss teams, all with some theoretical way to run the gauntlet of tie-breakers, and a handful have some less theoretical than others as in just win. The team currently on top will have played exactly two of the six opponents they are vying with for that title game spot. How is that going to work in two mega conferences?  

The more likely outcome is that the SEC stays below the Mason Dixon and maybe adds a couple of teams to keep the Big 10 north of the Mason Dixon. But the Big 10 will invade the south and there are plenty of AAU universities down there that mesh. So unless USC and UCLA beg for the inclusion of Stanford and Cal because somehow they learned some travel lesson they could of thought of before bringing UW and Oregon on board,..... yeah right. The So Cal schools don't give two craps about us and I don't see Ohio State and Michigan pining to get out to the Bay Area every few years. I don't see Stanford in any P2 world.

What needs to happen if college football is going to be professional is to be professional and use a franchise model like the NFL. No asinine committees (pipe down ESPN) and everything is settled on the field. This can be done with round-robin conference play, so no need for conference championship games and all with a maximum of 15 games in a season absolute tops, leaving three non-conference games to schedule cupcakes or interesting intersectional matchups. Eight ten-team conferences that are geographically based for the benefit of, I don't know, the athletes, fans and students. We took road trips to Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, Florida, Alabama, and New Orleans. Always within a bleary overnight stuffed in DC's bug or someone's Datsun or Tut had that magnificent oil-belching Oldsmobile we sailed down to the Big Easy to watch us beat Tulane and hit the Quarter after. I think we spent about $5,000 on gas and zero on lodging. Good times. We weren't getting on a freaking plane.

Stanford should get behind that when all is said and done. I beat even the Ohio States and Texases would be down with it. It won't save money, but it would be glorious.