The NCAA is trying to improve the total football atmosphere for players, coaches and maybe the fans. Let’s start with the good, which is expanding the playoffs from 4 to 12 teams. This actually solves some of the ugly where players sit out or enter the portal before their bowl game. With the expansion to 12 those players and coaches that make the playoffs will probably opt in to try and win the national championship. I’m not sure why 12 instead of 16. Why does a college team need (deserve) a by week? In truth to pursue fairness 16 is the number and the NCAA can make that happen. This playoff format transition year was Ugly; between players opting out and selecting the best 4 teams, but most of that should be resolved for next year.
The bad is still the Portal, but a simple change to no one can enter the portal until after their current season ends including bowl games might help. Is the portal to give players opportunities or coaches to build teams. Most schools don’t resume classes until mid-late Jan certainly the schools can accommodate Portal transfers students until mid-Feb.
The real Ugly is the pursuit of dollars and the have/have not environment that is being created by the conference consolidations. Conferences were built on geography which created traditional rivalries. The new conferences clearly aren’t based on anything more than TV dollars. PAC10, Big10, ACC, SEC, etc all had great natural rivalries. Fans could travel reasonably to almost any conference game. Players could play and still attend classes. Think Ohio State playing Washington, then Penn State, then USC, then Maryland…..great for TV$ but not for the fans. Plus the conferences have ripped apart the natural rivalries that allowed a team to play 3 or 4 rivalry games per year so now those games may be every one to two years. I can’t imagine a world where OSU and Michigan don’t play every year.