What Chip Kelly ideas could potentially look like

Chip Kelly shocked the world a week ago when he had some changes he would like to see in college football. Kelly mentioned football as an independent conference from all other sports. The two conferences would be made up of 64 teams: from power five schools and one made from the group of five schools. He also mentioned having a college football commissioner and also applying revenue sharing to the players from the TV revenue.

How the 64 team conferences would look

Kelly mentioned 8 team divisions playing 7 games in your division then playing 4 rotating division games against the other divisions, with 1 game schedule whoever, can be used for keeping up with some rivals. Going into 2025 there will be 135 schools, 70 at the P5 level and 65 at the G5 level. So we will have to make some decisions on who will and will not be in the conference. I decided to cut the schools that just joined the P5 in the last season. So that would be SMU, UCF, BYU, Houston and Cincinnati. Then that would leave 65 schools and would have to cut a school that hasn’t done much in so long, which would be Vanderbilt to get to 64. These schools(UL Monroe, Akron, UMass, Kennesaw State, Sam Houston State, Kennesaw State, Delaware) will be dropped down to FCS so we can get to the proper number of 128 schools. Here’s what it could look like below.

Regions P5	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8
	Cal	Arizona	Arkansas	Alabama	Clemson	Boston College	Indiana	Illinois
	Oregon	Arizona State	Baylor	Auburn	Duke	Maryland	Kentucky	Iowa
	Oregon State	Colorado	Oklahoma	Florida	Georgia	Penn State	Louisville	Iowa State
	Stanford	Kansas	Oklahoma State	Florida State	Georgia Tech	Pittsburgh	Michigan	Minnesota
	UCLA	Kansas State	TCU	LSU	North Carolina	Rutgers	Michigan State	Northwestern
	USC	Missouri	Texas	Miami	N.C. State	Syracuse	Ohio State	Notre Dame
	Washington	Nebraska	Texas a&m	Mississippi State	South Carolina	Virginia	Tennessee	Purdue
	Washington State	Utah	Texas Tech	Ole Miss	Wake Forest	Virginia Tech	West Virginia	Wisconsin

Regions G5	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8
	Boise State	Air Force	Houston	Arkansas State	Georgia Southern	App State	Army	Ball State
	Fresno State	BYU	Louisiana	Jacksonville State	Georgia State	Coastal Carolina	Bowling Green	Central Michigan
	Hawaii	Colorado State	North Texas	Louisiana Tech	FAU	East Carolina	Buffalo	Cincinnati
	Nevada	New Mexico	Rice	Memphis	FIU	James Madison	Kent State	Eastern Michigan
	San Diego State	New Mexico State	SMU	South Alabama	MTSU	Liberty	Navy	Miami Ohio
	San Jose State	Tulsa	Texas State	Southern Miss	South Florida	Marshall	Temple	Northern Illinois
	UNLV	UTEP	Tulane	Troy	UCF	Ohio	Toledo	Western Kentucky
	Utah State	Wyoming	UTSA	UAB	Vanderbilt	Old Dominion	UConn	Western Michigan

What would the potential effects be on this new college football world

There will not be anymore conference championship games, instead  there will be a bigger playoff. It can be a 24 team playoff where the 8 region champs get an automatic bye week then the next best 16 teams play in the opening round, similar to how FCS does their playoffs. The first two rounds can be played at the home team stadiums. Then the Quarterfinals and Semifinals can be at  the New Year’s 6 bowl games. Here’s what the hypothetical playoffs could look like using this year’s calendar. This setup will also eliminate all other bowl games that aren’t NY6 bowl games.

An updated CFB Calendar:

First round playoffs 12/8, 12/9

Second round playoffs 12/15, 12/16

Quarterfinals 12/23 (Peach, Fiesta, Cotton & Orange Bowls)

Semifinals 1/1 (Rose & Sugar Bowls)

National Championship 1/8

Eliminate early signing day (players can still early enroll)

Transfer Portal windows for winter 12/25 – 1/12, summer 5/6 – 5/24

National Signing Day 2/7

Transfer portal, NIL regulation, revenue sharing for players

Simply put this has got to get under control. First thing first make the transfer portal one free transfer to use and eliminate waivers. So if a player wants to transfer twice they will have to sit out a year unless they are a graduate. NIL should stay but the collectives must go, because that has turned into pay for play which is not the true intent of NIL. Josh Pate had a great idea for a revenue sharing plan for the players, which he said pay all 85 scholarship players $50,000 per year which would cost every school $4.25million for the players per school. That is so small compared to the millions the school will get from a new TV contract for the 64 team conference which could be worth an estimated  3-5 billion dollar deal per year. Especially with all TV heads like Amazon, Apple, Netflix, ABC/ESPN, Fox, CBS, NBC wanting to get in on the action of 32 games every Thursday-Saturday. I would expect the average payout to the schools will be 70 million plus per school. 

Saving the other college sports 

CFB going into a NFL like model might be the best thing for the sport now and can potentially save college athletics as a whole. We do not need to have Olympic sports traveling all over the country because of the football team. We also don’t want to have to lose sports because of conference realignment. The estimated money the college football conference would make will be used to fund the other sport programs at the respective schools. This could lead us to some reverse realignment and saving the PAC12.