The recent struggles of Michigan and Notre Dame’s football programs prompted Wall Street Journal writer Jason Gay to recently suggest (jokingly) a merger of the two programs as an instant solution for elevating the two programs back to national prominence.
After I read Gay’s article, I remember seeing the following highlight from earlier this NFL season of Miami Dolphins teammates quarterback Chad Henne (from the University of Michigan) throwing a 50 yard touchdown pass to wide receiver Ted Ginn, Jr. (from Ohio State University)…
…and I started to think about different recommendations and guidelines that could be used to merge teams (and the reasons to merge them in the first place), specifically in college football, and THE GAME in general. Here are the notes:
1. Inter-conference matchups. Using men’s college basketball’s early season SEC/Big East Invitational and the ACC-Big Ten Challenge inter-conference matchups as a model, two or more teams from the same conference can temporarily merge to face another set of teams from another conference. These types of matchups can serve several purposes:
- since the college football season does not include preseason tune-up games like in the NFL, inter-conference matchups allow teams to play in an actual game without extending their players for an entire game.
- during the initial rollout of these types of games, wins and losses would not count towards a team’s record for a given season. However, these matchups would help determine a conference’s relative strength, which in turn could help a team’s national ranking (if said team is in a relatively stronger conference) as the season progresses.
2. “Tag-Team” football—a newly created node. If NCAA bylaws could be modified regarding the status of red- and gray-shirt athletes, college football programs could merge their red- and gray-shirt players with other colleges’ red and gray shirts players and play an entire season against similarly constructed teams in an independent “tag-team” football league (e.g. the Pioneer Football League). By merging programs, the constituent programs can essentially share the cost of running a player development program (yes, this could further thin the blurry line that already exists between the amateur student athlete from the professional athlete). Mergers of programs could either be aligned through conference affiliations or independently (an ideal arrangement could be a university from a major conference partnering with a university from a mid-major conference to go up against institutions that have similar relationships).
3. Teams will want to merge with other teams that share similar offensive and/or defensive philosophies and approaches (if they are involved in matchups as explained in 1. and 2. above). This will help maintain consistency in player development. Players who are committed to college football programs that run a certain offensive scheme (for example, a spread option attack) or defensive scheme (3-4 vs. 4-3) will be teamed with players from other programs that run the same type of offense.
4. Preserve traditional rivalries by avoid pairing teams who are bitter rivals. So one would never see the following teams merge: Michigan-Ohio State, Alabama-Auburn, USC-UCLA, West Virginia-Pitt, Texas-Texas A&M, Army-Navy, etc..
5. The rules and guidelines discussed here could be applied and modified to the NCAA’s Divisions I (Football Championship Subdivision), II and III, the NAIA and the NJCAA.
6. Coordinating a joint program from schools that are in different geographic locations would be challenging but not impossible. Incorporating a modular approach to offense and defense would likely be the best method of merging teams together that are geographically separated. Each team that makes up the bigger team would have all the positions within a module practice together to build cohesion within that module. So by having wide receivers, running backs and quarterbacks practice as one module, offensive linemen and running backs practice as another module, safeties and cornerbacks practice as another module, etc., a merged team could, with minimal practice time together in a shared physical location, establish and maintain a high degree of play while simultaneously preserving the merged team’s ability to mix up plays and packages.
Technologies such as videoconferencing joint team meetings and collaborative internet applications for coaches and players could also help merged teams bridge the geographic gap as well.
7. Composition of the coaching staff of the merged program. With the time constraints involved in coaching college football (including coaching, recruiting, alumni relations, etc.) the composite staff of merged teams would likely consist of a staff hired by the merged universities with a prearranged agreement as to how many coaches each university would supply to the endeavor. Those who are interested in pursuing coaching at the college level could eventually utilize opportunities provided by these partner universities as a way to begin their journey “up the coaching ladder”.
8. Uniforms and school colors. There could be plenty of variation here depending on the degree of integration. Some ventures may choose to have completely new composite home and away uniforms created to reflect both institutions. For the sake of tradition, other universities may choose to keep their respective helmets the same and create new uniforms to reflect the merger. And others may decide to keep their traditional uniforms intact; varying only the home or road colors with their partner university. A lot of different combinations are possible.
9. Occasionally sprinkle in some inter-regional “superpower matchups”. Texas & Alabama vs. Notre Dame & Ohio State quickly comes to mind as a North-South power matchup that features big names while avoiding the merger of traditional rivals.
What other recommendations and guidelines can you think of? We’d like to hear your ideas. You can comment here or go to THE IdeaBOARD >> to explain and discuss your ideas.
