In a bulldozed college football landscape, Boise State official’s plan grabs attention
Change is the one constant in college football, especially when it comes to conference realignment. The grass — and TV contract money — is always greener on the other side.
Boise State has found itself in the middle of the chaos many times, having climbed from the junior college ranks all the way to the Football Bowl Subdivision, with stops in the Big Sky, Big West, WAC and Mountain West along the way.
Back in 2011, Boise State even announced it would join the Big East as a football-only member, but then the Broncos chose to stay put in the Mountain West.
So as the Pac-12 began to unravel over the summer, Boise State executives figured they could find a way to innovate or be one of the many schools fending for an even tinier piece of the proverbial college football pie — on the outside looking in at the four mega-conferences: the expanded ACC, SEC, Big 12 and Big Ten.
Enter Boise State Associate Athletic Director Michael Walsh, who created what is believed to be the first formal proposal on the subject of promotion and relegation — terms familiar to European soccer fans — in college football. It calls for 24 schools outside the Eastern time zone to form a mega-league, with the ability to move up or down depending on performance.
“At different times, we feel like we’re going to have to take matters into our own hands,” Walsh told the Idaho Statesman in an interview. “This idea had been kicked around for a little while, but it wasn’t really real enough at our level to become a priority, and to put a bunch of time and energy and effort into it, until Colorado left for the Big 12 at the end of July.
“… We wanted to put something on paper at the very least to start a discussion and try to figure out if the system isn’t going to work for us, we can’t stand by and wait for it to work for us.”
Walsh’s proposal has sparked conversation across the college football landscape. Mountain West Commissioner Gloria Nevarez has seen it, and Front Office Sports reported that it “has been shared with athletic directors in and outside of the conference.”
The proposal was even discussed during a joint news conference last week between the presidents and athletic directors of Oregon State and Washington State, the two Pac-12 schools left in the netherworld of college sports when that conference imploded.
“I think, as you think about the future of even media rights … a sort of relegation model either in unequal distribution, a contraction of the teams and/or peer relegation, will take place,” Oregon State Athletic Director Scott Barnes said. “I think that’s coming. In terms of the model itself, I think there’s some merit to look at some form of hybrid model that does support that. We see it working in a similar fashion in Europe, and certainly it’s worthy of our study.”
Walsh’s plan calls for a 24-school entity comprising three eight-school conferences. He suggests an alliance of Washington State and Oregon State, along with members from the Mountain West, American Athletic, C-USA and WAC. The focus would be on schools from the Pacific, Mountain and Central time zones.
Football conference affiliation would be fluid based on annual promotion and relegation outcomes, and there would be a fixed membership for all non-football sports based on geographic and ideological similarities.
Standings for football would be determined by a point system, with relegation and promotion happening at the end of each season. For example, the sixth- and seventh-place teams in Tier 1 would play at the end of the season, with the loser relegated to Tier 2 along with the last-place team. Meanwhile, the first-place team from Tier 2 is automatically promoted to Tier 1, while the second- and third-place teams from Tier 2 play for promotion to Tier 1.
Walsh’s proposal goes into extensive detail on scheduling, media partnerships and revenue distribution models. But are schools ready to take such a leap?
“The feedback has been largely positive. There’s definitely some questions and concerns over just the severity of change,” Walsh said. “It is a departure from what’s considered normal.
“And I would say that the BCS system was a departure. The playoff was a departure, expanding to 12 teams was a departure, so I don’t know if that’s necessarily a good reason to say something can’t or shouldn’t work.”
This story was originally published September 27, 2023 at 4:00 AM.
