Why New Calendar Proposals Make Sense - Today's Take
Inside Carolina senior reporter Greg Barnes on the recent proposals by the American Football Coaches Association — removing a bye week, ending conference championship games and moving to a 24-team CFP — and the pathway to a sensible calendar for college football.
“The AFCA has a strong voice and these are good suggestions. How quickly it can be implemented remains to be seen. We were talking about five for five in October and if it would affect the January football portal window and here it is May and it’s not finalized. So whether this can get done within the next couple years, we’ll have to wait and see.
“My larger beef is with how the college system is set up. We know that it’s completely detached from how things were 10 years ago. So rather than re-envision what that should look like, we’re trying to do little patchwork aspects. There needs to be a pretty significant conversation. And it can be the AFCA for football, and a lot of different groups coming together for college sports in general. I understand when you get that many people involved, you get into a lot of bureaucracy, but there needs to be conversations about can we reimagine and reinvent the wheel? The current portal window is problematic and needs to be addressed for a variety of reasons. And these are things the AFCA is suggesting.
“So when do we want all this to end? And then can we work backwards and let the end date of the championship game determine when the season starts? Just because it’s always been on Labor Day as the first weekend doesn’t mean it has to remain that way. Just because conference championships have always been the first week in December, that doesn’t mean it has to remain that way. A lot of this is reactive, and there needs to be a proactive approach of forgetting everything that we’re doing right now and just choose the best option moving forward. Now, it may take you a few years to get to it, but I think that type of re-envisioning is what’s best for both sports, and currently, we just don’t have the leadership in place to make that happen. That’s why a lot of these ideas that the coaches have suggested do make a lot of sense.”