Perfect 10: Proposed Pac-12 Pandemic Sked Should Be Used as Future Model
Ten games?
If all holds true, the Pac-12 Conference soon will have its football teams scale down their regular-season schedules by two games each in order to get ahead of the pandemic.
The University of Washington hasn't played a 10-game schedule since 1970.
When Sonny Sixkiller was a sophomore quarterback sensation.
When conference teams played in the Rose Bowl or none at all.
With the Pac-12 expected to announce its abbreviated football scheduling any day now, all college teams might consider using this moment to regroup and introduce a leaner and meaner approach to future seasons.
Foremost, make every game count.
With the hefty ticket prices and seat-license fees at the UW, it's time to quit making fans sit through the requisite blowout against an unmatched school such as Sacramento State or North Dakota.
Provide more entertainment value to the investment.
Play a 10- or 11-game schedule against one marquee non-conference team and as many Pac-12 members as possible.
Introduce a 32-game playoff to determine a national champion.
That's right, offer something eight times greater than the postseason we have now.
This would require the use of a majority of the bowl games and make every last one of them meaningful.
There would be upsets similar to the NCAA basketball tournament.
Imagine having far more than a few fans huddled together at the Las Vegas Bowl or the Cheez It Bowl.
ESPN cameras could pan entire stadiums rather than focus only on the small pockets of occupied seats.
For the bad teams, they could go out on their own and arrange their own postseason-like games against a comparable opponent in another league to extend their seasons. For example, let the last-place SEC team meet the last-place Big Ten team.
Long-departed Sport Magazine once ran a playoff model in the 1980s similar to our aforementioned all-encompassing playoff bracket and it served up an interesting climax. It made you think.
Washington and Florida played in the mag's national championship game.
The Huskies won by a touchdown.
In the end, everybody won.
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