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Culture War Roundup for the week of January 8, 2024

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I think this can be helped with a larger pro-rel margin.

As an example:

  • you split FBS into FBS1 (P5) and FBS2(G5), with pro-rel relationships between the matching conferences (e.g., Big 10 <-> MAC)
  • then there's FCS, which is currently a mess and can be combined with Division II. Right now there's 36 conferences, we can probably collapse them into 30, six per conference in FBS1/2
  • and something something Division III, eight per conference in FBS1/2

Then the system looks something like this:

  • each team plays two games (home and away) against every team in their conference to determine the conference champion
  • there's a big playoff cup between the top teams of each FBS1 conference. You can't play with just five teams, so three more teams are determined by random choice from the five second best teams
  • champions of each FBS2 conference are promoted to the corresponding FBS1 conference, while losers of each FBS1 conference are relegated to the FBS2 conference
  • the second best and the third best team in every FBS2 conference play pro-rel matches with the second worst and the third worst team in the corresponding FBS1 conference
  • champions of each FCS conference (six teams) play a round of knockout games against each other and the two biggest losers of their parent FBS2 conference. When four teams are left, they all play against each other to determine the two best teams that are promoted to or remain in FBS2
  • who cares about Division III?

With 14 teams in every conference, it's 26 weeks of regular championship and then a month of cups and pro-rel games. Depending on what NCAA wants, they can stretch out the cup season.