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How to Fix College Football

This week's departure of UCLA and USC from the conference and rivalries to which they've been tied for almost a century proves that tradition no longer matters in college football. With that in mind, I've come up with a simple (actually complicated) solution that will solve six problems all at once.

What if I told you that I've fixed the playoff system, reduced excessive travel, restored competitive balance, eliminated nonsensical non-conference scheduling, injected competition into the lower levels of the sport, and revived the bowl system all at once? Would you be interested in such a system? I think you would be. Read on.

The 2015 Schedule

With no game to look forward to this Saturday, now seems like the perfect time to look at the Cardinal's 2015 schedule, released this week by the Pac-12. Far too many things will happen between now and next fall to predict outcomes of any of the games, but let's take a game-by-game trip through the schedule anyway, just for fun. Oh, and keep this in mind as we go -- the schedule sets up perfectly for a run to the playoffs.

What the New Playoff System Means for Stanford Football

The new college football playoff system approved this week by a panel of university presidents has been greeted with almost universal approval from coaches, writers, and fans. Even those who point out the flaws have usually done so while acknowledging that this new system promises to be much better than the BCS system we've had to deal with for so long. Or is it?

First of all, teams won't have to run through anything close to the six-round gauntlet necessary to win a basketball championship, but that would never make sense. (Most expanded playoff models have called for an eight-team field.) This new system, which will begin in two years with the 2014 season, will keep the bowl system intact (money talks!) and slot the four best teams into two semi-final games on December 31st or January 1st, the sites of which will rotate amongst six different bowl games which are yet to be completely determined. The championship game will be up for bid on a year-by-year basis, just as the Super Bowl is.

It isn't yet clear how these top teams will be identified, but I think it's safe to assume that the Pac-12 champion will likely be one of the four. So here's the question -- what will the Stanford Cardinal look like in 2014?