The first weekend of the college football season is upon us. It features marquee matchups such as Florida State-Samford, Penn State-Youngstown State, and Arkansas-Tennessee Tech. As I type this sentence at 2:03 CDT, there is not a single competitive football game happening. I realize that the big-name schools are always going to schedule cupcakes early in the season. There’s really no way of outlawing that. But there’s no reason that the NCAA shouldn’t adopt stricter rules against I-A teams scheduling I-AA teams. (I mean, FBS teams scheduling FCS teams. I hope I haven’t offended the NCAA’s political correctness police.) As it stands now, teams can schedule a I-AA team every year and have that more-or-less guaranteed win* count toward the six wins needed for bowl eligibility. If memory serves, a few years ago you could only count a I-AA win every other year; I believe this rule was changed when the NCAA went to a 12-game schedule every year and let 6-6 teams into bowls.
Quite simply, it’s a joke to see a Top 10 team playing a I-AA team. These games are glorified exhibitions. I can understand a weaker I-A team needing home games and scheduling I-AA teams, but a BCS conference school shouldn’t be playing a I-AA team, ever. Sure, you may have to pay a bit more to get a Sun Belt team to play you than it would cost to get someone from I-AA, but last time I checked your average college football powerhouse was doing okay from a money standpoint.
What I’d like to see is a ban on games against I-AA teams, or at least a rule that wins can never count toward the bowl eligibility total. Perhaps in conjunction with this we might also need a rule capping teams to seven home games, forcing a team that plays eight games within its conference to play at least one non-conference road game every season.
* Yes, I know I-A teams sometime lose these games. But a top team (and no, Michigan doesn’t count) isn’t going to lose to a I-AA team except in an absolute freak occurrence.