It’s time to separate out football from all the other sports teams in colleges.

[HailToPurple]

With the big money involved football is an entirely different sport from any of the others. TV deals are a huge part of what feeds and controls the football world. It’s all about money and the latest conference shuffling pretty much proves that fact.

But it is grossly unfair to expect other athletes, women’s softball and lacrosse players as just two of many examples, to have to spend enormous amounts of time and energy traveling all over the country for their meets. And to play teams that they have no established rivalries with or any interest in playing against. Regional college sports leagues have always been and should continue to be the basis for scheduling these meets.

At this point the best thing to do is pull college football out of the NCAA. Create a new governing body just for football and quit screwing up all the other athletes in the universities. They deserve better. Much better.

 

[Darren72]

Don't know about lacrosse, but check out the softball schedule. They play a bunch of tournaments all around the country before the Big 10 season starts. Can't play softball in Evanston in the snow. But I understand your point.

 

[villox]

Notre Dame does it. Why not?

 

[Overly_Invested_Cat]

First off, being a scholarship college athlete is a full-time job. Student athletes are under tremendous pressure to practice, train, lift weights, all while trying to be a student. Even if an athlete takes a reduced reduced schedule during their primary season, they're tremendously handicapped in their classes. Now, if you add in longer travel, etc. you are adding additional pressure on the student athletes. This undermines their ability to major in more challenging areas of study. It forces faculty to provide extreme accommodations, which adds to their teaching load. It also limits the student athlete's ability to build strong relationships with non-athletes.

This leads to student athletes with higher levels of depression and isolation. And once their sport becomes a full-time job, there is a ton of burnout, but the athletes feel compelled to continue with their sports because of the scholarship, which they're only taking partial advantage of.

At least for the revenue-generating sports, we're selling the entertainment they create and all they get is a compromised college experience.

 

[HailToPurple]

So if the football players are willing to travel all the way across the country let them. But let's not impose that burden on everyone else. Allow all the other sports to compete in just their part of the country. That's the way it has pretty much been until now and football should not be allowed to change it.

 

[HailToPurple]

Here is an article from The Athletic that says exactly what I have been promoting. Namely that it's time to separate football from the rest of college sports and keep those on a regional basis.

MSN

www.msn.com

It’s time for college football to leave conferences and let other sports make sense

I'm glad to see major news outlets like this one promoting the idea.

Here is one paragraph from the article:

"There has been speculation in recent years that the major-college football programs — let’s just say some-60 teams from the remains of the Power 5 — would be best served by breaking away from the NCAA. There was a time I considered the idea absurd. That was probably the final surviving tradition cell in my brain speaking for me. But that sucker is dead now. It has been run over so many times, it resembles what a UCLA volleyball player will look like after four connecting flights on a Rutgers road trip."