Stepping It Up

One of the main reasons that I will never like college football as much as the NFL is the wide variation in the quality of teams.  During the conference schedule, you'll regularly see the likes of Ohio State beat up on an Indiana by three-plus touchdowns; the more I follow the Pac-12, the more I notice the talent discrepancies between the haves (USC, Stanford and Oregon) and the have-nots (Washington State and Colorado).  And if you think the conference schedule includes too many duds, then you undoubtedly feel that the non-conference games are almost always a total joke.  At least a team like Duke has a chance (however slim) of upsetting a Florida State - for the majority of non-conference matchups, a 30-plus point victory for the favorite (always the home team) is a virtual lock.

The worst of these non-conference games, of course, are the ones against FCS opposition.  Earlier today, however, University of Wisconsin Athletic Director (and 2013 Rose Bowl interim head coach) Barry Alvarez announced that Big Ten teams would stop scheduling games against FCS schools starting in 2016.  Wisconsin in particular has filled its schedule with cupcakes in recent years - in 2012, the Badgers' non-conference games included a trip to Oregon State and home games against FCS Northern Iowa and FBS "mid-majors" Utah State and UTEP - and will again play a FCS school (Tennessee Tech) in 2013.  As a whole, the Big Ten conference is no stranger to FCS opponents; its schools have already scheduled a number of such games for 2013, 2014 and 2015.

So while Alvarez's announcement is surprising, it's undoubtedly also a great thing for college football.  Americans are hungry for as much high-quality football action as they can get, and gone are the days when NCAA gridiron fans only cared about the conference schedule.  Arguably the NCAA's biggest advantage over the NFL is its start date - college teams get a two week jump on their NFL counterparts, so there are two weekends where college teams compete only with baseball for viewers.  Instead of scheduling games against Hofstra during that period, Big Ten programs will now play smaller FBS programs (at worst) or big time BCS conference teams (at best).  Either way, it'll be better than the Northern Iowa game that the Badgers scheduled last season.

Big Ten schools like Wisconsin will run past the likes of Northern Iowa no longer.

It's hard to tell if the Big Ten's announcement was in any way caused by the NCAA's move to a college football playoff system, but it couldn't have hurt.  Now that teams no longer need to go undefeated in order to compete for a national championship, schools like Wisconsin, Ohio State, Penn State and Michigan can challenge themselves a bit more with higher quality opponents without worrying about having their seasons ruined in September.  This is exciting news for college football fans, and hopefully other conferences will soon follow the Big Ten's lead.  The more solid college football we can get in early September, the better.