College Football Needs Structure, Not Another TV Deal
Too many wire pullers have messed up our senses and systems
OP-ED for fixing College Football by a Citizen, Coach and Reformer
By Mark Rauterkus, Mark@Rauterkus.com
Those around schools-and-sports long enough know the difference between hard choices and bone-headed ones.
Hard choices are unavoidable.
Bone-headed ones are optional, and increasingly common in the college football landscape among top administrators.
Let’s pause and consider reforms from and OG who isn’t a conference commissioner, television executive nor consultant. Rather, this reform outline comes a coach with decades in sport and recreation. My passion is advocating for fair play, access, and systems that actually work for the people they serve.
I love-and-hate college football. Watching and cheering at the games lately has become frustrating at many levels.
As football grows larger with money, influence and public investment, the bad structural decisions annoy fans and ripple outward. They affect athletes, universities, local economies, and the credibility of competition.
College football’s structure is racing on a highway to hell and making less sense. Thankfully, reform voices are more prevalent.
Conferences so large that teams don’t play one another.
Championship games feel arbitrary.
Matchups decided by television windows instead of geography.
Student-athletes fly across the country for what used to be a bus ride.
Rivalries got quietly erased.
Fans try to explain standings that no longer reflect what happened on the field.
This didn’t happen because people don’t care. It happened because money was allowed to outrun structure.
The expanded College Football Playoffs were sold on fairness.
In reality, the CFP introduces new inequities.
Some teams play more games than others.
Some are rewarded with byes that sound like advantages but often disrupt rhythm and momentum.
Others grind through extra contests and arrive exhausted.
In other sports, we’d call that a competitive imbalance. In college football, we call it innovation.
Fair competition requires that everyone plays by the same basic rules.
Same season length. Same path. Same stakes. Right now, that simply isn’t true.
The regular season has lost its meaning for too many teams.
Once playoff access becomes unrealistic, or guaranteed, games turn into inventory instead of competition. That’s bad for fans. It’s worse for athletes.
College football doesn’t need more games. It doesn’t need more branding exercises nor clever graphics. It needs structure.
A sensible reform starts by acknowledging reality.
Top tier programs operate at a different scale.
Pretending otherwise only hurts the schools that can’t realistically compete there. Clarifying that top tier, and organizing it regionally, restores fairness without eliminating opportunity.
Regional groupings work.
Reduce travel. Protect rivalries. Make standings, not polls, valuable again.
Regional pods give fans something to recognize and athletes something sustainable. They also make championship games meaningful, because the teams actually earned their place by playing comparable schedules.
Yes, accountability matters.
Permanent membership breeds complacency. A system where last place has consequences, and the next best program has a clear path upward, makes every game matter. That isn’t radical. It’s honest.
Some cases deserve special handling in the margins of life.
Notre Dame has built its identity on independence. That should be respected, not awkwardly shoehorned into structures it never wanted.
Army and Navy operate under missions no other institutions face. Their value isn’t measured solely in wins and losses, and any reform that ignores that isn’t serious.
Academic standards matter too.
When the sum of the student-athletes on a team can’t meet baseline eligibility, like Akron’s documented academic issues in 2025, that squad should not be promoted nor retain within the highest tier. Standards protect the integrity of the mission. They don’t undermine it.
None of this is about nostalgia. It’s about stewardship.
College football is not a private playground. It’s built on public institutions, shared economics, significant funding efforts, and public trust. When governance decisions prioritize short-term revenue over competitive sense, everyone pays the price dearly, even the winners.
We don’t fix today’s ills by arguing about media contracts, conference memberships nor court cases. The fix come when we demand structure back where it belongs. Fair play isn’t old-fashioned. It’s foundational. If college football wants to remain worth caring about, the bone-headed administrators who caused these problems need to get out of the way. Creative, clarity from a reform-minded coach needs your support and suggestions.
