"Untitled" - Forde: New world order

(the genius himself, ESPN.com's Pat Forde)










I have to name this post "Untitled" because it left me speechless when I read the article. It is quite possibly one of the most brilliant ideas I've ever heard of in my life! ESPN's Pat Forde and whoever else helped with the process have absolutely made my day. I will be starting a petition to get this proclamation in effect as soon as possible. Anyone and everyone is welcomed to sign, babies, kids, dogs, felons, immigrants, inanimate objects etc. Let it be known that anyone who stands in the way will be destroyed by the wrath of whatever high being that you choose to believe in, and if no higher being is believed in then, Big Worm from Friday will deal with you promptly.

Let me get out of the way. Read up on this article via ESPN.com's Pat Forde.

Forde: New world order

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Get ready for a new world order

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By Pat Forde
ESPN.com
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To Baylor, Godspeed. To Indiana, fare thee well. To Duke, may the road rise to meet you. And to the entirety of the Sun Belt and Mid-American Conferences, safe travels.

Now get out.

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Jeff Gross/Getty Images
Pete Carroll shouldn't have to worry about USC being selected in Tuesday's mock draft.

What we are doing here is performing a hangeronectomy -- a ruthless downsizing of the cumbersomely named and gruesomely bloated Football Bowl Subdivision. Just as in corporate America, 2009 is the time to get lean in college football. It's time to separate the wheat from the chaff, the men from the boys, the Trojans of USC from the Trojans of Troy.

Let's end the charade. The most powerful and least powerful of the 120 teams in the current FBS have very little in common. Sure, you all put on your football pants one leg at a time -- but they're faster legs and bigger pants on one side of this great divide.

Despite the occasional peasant uprising (2008 featured Toledo over Michigan, Arkansas State over Texas A&M, UNLV over Arizona State) the outcomes of Have vs. Have Not are predictable and persuasive. These two groups do not belong together. So what the NCAA has brought together, ESPN.com will now tear asunder.

We're going to remake big-time football. From now on, clueless Top 25 voters and arcane computer formulas are out; on-field competition is in. And membership in an elite conference is subject to annual renewal as opposed to being a birthright.

It starts with a live draft Tuesday at 1 p.m. ET. When colleagues Ivan Maisel, Mark Schlabach and I are finished with our cut list, we'll be down to a fast and furious 40 power programs in the newly renamed Gordon Gekko Subdivision. (Motto: "Greed is good.")

We'll be drafting the most successful programs in the nation, based on whatever criteria each of us chooses to bring to the situation room. There is no set formula for this. Wins and losses matter most -- and what you've done in the 21st century is more important than what happened in the 1930s -- but fan following and overall prestige count, too.

You elites will be formed into four 10-team conferences of our choosing. You will play all nine league opponents every season, with the full round-robin scheduling alleviating the need for an annoying conference championship game. Of your three nonconference games, two must be played against fellow Gordon Gekko Subdivision opponents. Only one game can be played against an opponent from outside the top 40.

When the regular season is over, the four conference champions will enter a playoff -- yes, a playoff! -- to determine the national champion. (We expect approval from the First Playoff Advocate in the Oval Office at any time.)

After our 40-program draft, there will be a post-draft champagne-and-caviar reception on the penthouse level. From there you elites can look down and wave goodbye to the Little People we're in the process of evicting.

Those of you on the 80 teams that didn't make the cut can take your small stadiums and tight budgets and step-slow players to the Greyhound buses parked outside. They're waiting to relocate you to a middle-class home of your own. You're headed to the Tom Joad Subdivision (motto: "They fix 'em so you can't win nothing"), where you huddled masses can battle each other in relative obscurity while the upper class counts its money.

Research Guide

Need some help selecting the 40 teams you think belong in our new Division I-A? Check out the numbers from ESPN Research's Prestige Rankings. They should help you make your selections.

But wait. Before you rich and powerful teams get too comfortable, understand this: You can be kicked out of the club. Think Premier League soccer relegation, and apply it to the gridiron.

Every season, the bottom five teams in the Gordon Gekko Subdivision will be booted out and replaced by the top five teams in the Tom Joad Subdivision, which will feature eight 10-team conferences. The four teams that finish last in the Gekko conferences are automatically relegated, plus one underachiever will be chosen at large for demotion. They will be replaced by the four semifinalists from the playoff of Joad conference winners, plus a fifth team that must win an at-large game against another Joad conference winner.

Consider it a play-in game. And have it in Dayton, naturally.

So those are the rules of engagement. To the rich: Congratulations on getting richer. To the poor: Let them eat cake.

If you're a Joad team, it doesn't mean your brand of football is without value -- entertainment value and intrinsic value. It just means you should be playing your actual peers instead of having your brains beaten in by monolithic programs where the strength coach makes more than your head coach.

But not all the so-called little programs really are little, and not all the so-called big programs really are big. That's where we step in to redistrict the place.

We're not just sweeping out the lowest tier of the current BCS; we're also looking to whack the bottom feeders from the power conferences and most of the midlevel league members as well. We'll take down some academically oriented schools and a few basketball schools. And with the possible exception of fast learner South Florida, just about every school that jumped into what was formerly called Division I-A over the past 10 to 15 years now is on its way back out under our format.

Sorry about that, strivers. But in case you haven't heard, life is unfair.

Look, I'm ESPN.com's resident college populist and antiestablishment crank. There are few things I love more than seeing Boise State shock Oklahoma in football, or George Mason beat North Carolina, Michigan State and Connecticut in basketball.

But I'm also a realist. And no matter what the current NCAA divisional alignment tells us, it's unrealistic to believe that Louisiana-Monroe, with 2007-08 athletic revenues of less than $8 million, according to the Orlando Sentinel, is on equal terms with Texas, with more than $120 million in revenue.

The gulf is greater in football than it is in basketball. And it's now wider than Alabama's Terrence Cody.

Which is why it's time for a mass eviction. Don't let the marching band hit you on the way out, Have-Nots.

Pat Forde is a senior writer for ESPN.com. He can be reached at ESPN4D@aol.com.

Spats and shoe freedom

The NFL uniforms compared to the college uniforms are ugly. Plain and simple, they just don't compare to how those college kids rock their jerseys. You would think that professional players would be granted a little more leeway in terms of dress code, but they aren't.

If your shirt tail hangs out, you're fined. Socks down around your ankles, fined. If you're not wearing the ugly socks, fined and the list goes on and on.

You know what NFL, you win. We understand that if you bend the rules on the NFL dress code, you'll have players sending messages through uniform modifications that may not reflect or convey the NFL properly. Cool, you don't want a player to write "Obama" on his wrist band, because that could turn off Republican or non-Obama supporters off the NFL. The players aren't the league, they are representatives of the league and they should be privileged to play in the NFL yadda yadda yadda, we know. I said you win didn't I?

I do make this request let us have the socks and shoes please. That's all we want is the socks and shoes! The godfather of 6Magazine, Deion Sanders, once said, "If you look good you feel good, If you feel good you play good, If you play good they pay good."

To the NFL player, their occupation is a great career, a very lucrative and enjoyable career, but still a career. There are tons of people who have careers that love/like/enjoy them. They enjoy them better when they have a cool CEO that allows the employees to be themselves a little bit and not be so buttoned up. Companies that allow casual work environments are great and often very successful. Employees are chipper, having fun, and this makes them want to work ten times harder for their CEO because they are giving them some room to be who they are.

Too often in the business world, an employee's main focus is blend in and represent the company. The NFL capitalizes of players all the time, I mean you know the real reason why although Chad Johnson's name was legally changed to Ocho Cinco, he still had to wear the Chad "Johnson" jersey last season right? Well if you don't, in short, the NFL did not have any printed "Ocho Cinco" jerseys and they would have lost money by not selling the "Chad Johnson" jerseys and by making new Ocho Cinco jerseys. Pure business move.

An even better business move, give the players more leeway with their socks and shoes. You could keep it uniformed and only allow players to wear socks and shoes of their team colors or designated shoe color. Let the players wear colored shoes, of their team colors of course. Allow the players to tape their shoes with tape of the same color. This would elimnate the ugliness that plagues NFL jerseys, those damn ugly ass socks. I admire players who find a way to make it look good, but the rule is stupid, there is no need for a white sock.

Why is this a better business move? The players will look good, they will feel good, they will play good, and if they play good, the NFL will get paid good. Fans will be into new look and feel of the NFL. High school and college kids will be more entranced by the game. Imagine a fresh tape job on a New Orleans Saints uniform or even the Miami Dolphins. Of course, the players will be playing at an all time high, feeling free to be who they truly are and look fresh at the same time. NFL records will be broken by the droves and the NFL will be caked up with more money that it ever imagined. Heck, the NFL could even brand the socks and the tape, much like the NBA does with their socks.

Mr. Goodell, you're a fine owner, leader, and a great business man. Make a fashion statment. Give the players their sock and shoe freedom back!

That's all I got,


Ricky Writer