Briggs: Could Toledo and Bowling Green get promoted to ‘big leagues’ (or relegated) in new football world?

It is one of those great barstool thought experiments: What if college football had a system of promotion and relegation?

You know, like the kind they have in European soccer.

What if conference membership was based not on which schools you played during the Coolidge administration but actual merit?

What if Toledo and Bowling Green had a path to the big leagues while, say, Indiana or Vanderbilt, could be optioned to the farm for more seasoning?

It’s a concept as fun to bat around as it is unlikely, but I bring it up now because UT athletic director Bryan Blair piqued our imagination the other day.

In response to a social media post from the Wrexham soccer club celebrating its move up in the English Football League, he wrote on X: “This promotion/relegation thing seems pretty cool … [thinking-face emoji].”

Hmm.

Either Blair was a big soccer guy, or — amid the tremors of greed that continue to upend college football — he was up to something.

He laughed.

Oh, that ?

Blair explained he was just suggesting that programs ought to be rewarded for their success on the field, not just ancient happenstance and TV value.

And, sure, that includes Toledo, which won the Mid-American Conference in 2021, cracked the national polls last season, and just had a player (Quinyon Mitchell) go in the first round of the NFL draft.

Why shouldn’t the Rockets have moonshot dreams in the sport’s tenuous but who-the-hell-knows future landscape?

“If we got our shot at some of what you would call the lower-level Power Five schools, I feel really good about our chances to compete with equal resources,” Blair said, noting that UT leads the nation in combined conference wins in football and men’s and women’s basketball the past two seasons. “Our [success] shows when we're in a similar geographic footprint with similar resources, we do better than others with what we've been given. …

“I don't want to single out any institutions, but there are certain institutions that are grandfathered into Power Five conferences. I’d love the opportunity with the same level of resources to go head to head [against those schools] and see how we come out.”

Now, is that a little pie in the sky? Sure.

The Big Ten and SEC are locked into long-term, gazillion-dollar media deals, and — cue Mr. Burns’ diabolical laughter — a kind of busy with their zero-sum race for world domination, or the football equivalent of it. These are not the kind of people who will take a lunch meeting to discuss a new structure that would broadly benefit the sport.

Still, it makes for a timely conversation as the Group of Five conferences — not to mention the ACC and Big 12 — try to reimagine their path forward.

How to remain relevant?

You may have seen a few of the ideas in the headlines lately, including the prospect of a G5 tournament that would feed into the College Football Playoff.

As it is, the top G5 team is guaranteed a spot in the new 12-team playoff, and that’s notable on its own. This is the first time that leagues like the MAC, AAC, and Mountain West are assured an honest-to-God seat at the head table.

But what if you could give even more teams hope and make a little more money along the way?

That’s the vision of former Tennessee coach Derek Dooley, who — as first reported by CBS last week — is pitching schools on a Group of Five playoff that would be backed by private equity.

The concept is a little … out there.

In one reported iteration, we’d say goodbye to the MAC as we know it. The 64 teams in the G5 conferences would realign geographically into eight divisions, and the winner of each division would meet in a tournament, with the winner advancing to the playoff. The new model would be worth “significant dollars,” a source told CBS.

Now, I have as many questions as you.

There would be a ton of hurdles, both logistical — the G5 leagues have existing TV deals, too — and practical.

“A separate playoff … creates a heavier burden as you enter into a larger playoff, which doesn't make sense,” Bowling Green AD Derek van der Merwe said. “It's not like it's basketball. This is football. … You can't just arbitrarily increase the number of games and not have significant consequences.”

Still, count me open to fresh ideas, as long as the G5 schools preserve their spot in the playoff.

There may come a day when the Big Ten and SEC — or a super league of the biggest brands — break away entirely, and everyone else is on their own. Until then, that tether to the highest level of college football — no matter how wide the gulf between the haves and have-nots continues to grow — is crucial. (Also important: G5 teams will receive about $1.8 million per year from the CFP’s new $1.3 billion TV deal.)

What’s more fun for a Toledo or Bowling Green fan to think about: Beating Central Michigan on a Wednesday night? Or playing Boise State in a G5 championship game with a playoff berth at stake?

“Anything that gives us hope to compete at the highest level and that possibility is exciting,” Blair said. “For every fan we have that is excited about us winning a MAC championship, there's another fan that still talks to me about when we beat Michigan or when we beat Pitt at home when they were in the top 10. Those opportunities to match up against the best in the country matter. You can't ignore that hope.”

It’s that same hope that brings us back to the pies in the sky at the top of this column, and the latest grand plan to restore a measure of sanity to the sport.

This one's a little more quixotic.

As reported by The Athletic, a working group of 20 university presidents — including from the ACC and Big 12 — and industry executives hatched a plan that would bring the highest level of college football under a single tent, with one league — and set of rules — governing the enterprise.

The so-called “Super League” would feature seven permanent 10-team divisions — made up of the schools from the five former power leagues, along with Notre Dame — and an eighth division that would vary by the season. The final division would be the top 10 teams from a second tier comprised of the 64 G5 schools, creating a soccer-style model of promotion and relegation. (Presumably, the small schools would get big TV money during the years they were in the “Super League.”)

The winners of each division would advance to a 16-team playoff, along with eight wildcards determined by records, not a committee.

It’s an interesting idea.

It would also require the Big Ten and SEC to put the health of the sport at large ahead of their own gluttonous interests.

So, yeah …

Back to the drawing board.

“i'm all about sensible options that make sense for the long term and maybe a new model pops up,” Blair said. “I just hope we never lose sight of that big picture and the power of hope and ... dreams. The whole NCAA basketball tournament is built off that model. It's not about Goliath vs. Goliath It's that one opportunity, the off chance that David topples Goliath, and how that captivates an entire country. That’s special, and to ignore that and say, ‘Well, we'll just do Goliath vs. Goliath because TV wants it that way?’ That’s a travesty if we continue going down that path.”

Dream on?

Beats not dreaming at all.