I want to start this by saying that I hope with everything that I am that we have college football this year. Until I am told that we are not having a season I am holding out hope that our Saturdays will be filled with football. That being said, what happens if we don't have football. Conventional wisdom would say that the year would stay vacant and there would be no wins or losses, no records, no champions, blah blah blah. However, we could also think outside the box and still crown a 2020 national champion. The catch is, since in this even the 2020 season has been cancelled, the champion would have to be crowned in a socially distant way. All of the options presented below could be done in a manner that keeps everyone six feet apart. Naturally, football is not a socially distanced game, so how would we go about this? Lucky for us there's some really good options.
COACHES' RACE
One way to crown a champion is to have the coaches race against one another. We would start by having coaches race against other coaches in their division (Big 12 just do your normal round robin then we have to play again stuff). Then the two division winners would face off in a conference championship race. That would be followed by all the conference champions competing for the national championship. (IMPORTANT NOTE: for the purposes of this format Notre Dame would compete in the ACC, Army in the AAC, BYU in the Mountain West, Liberty in the Sun Belt, New Mexico State in the Mountain West, UMass in the MAC, and UConn back to the AAC). For the first time ever, the mid majors have the advantage as they mostly have the younger coaches, but they better look out cause Coach O and Kirby Smart have been TRAINING.
Don't you think North Carolina still wishes they had Larry Fedora? They'd actually have a shot in this thing.
COACHES' TIK TOK BATTLE
My next proposal for crowning a 2020 socially distanced champion is a coaches Tik Tok battle. It's all the rage in the college football coaching community, so it's time to see how well they Tik Tok when something is actually on the line. If the current Tik Tok scene is any indication it's going to be a battle for the least bad, which would be AWESOME. Give me guys like Mike Leach and Herm Edwards out their shaking their hips like a teenage girl and I might not even miss football season (that's a lie). Make the College Football Playoff Selection Committee judge the videos. Hell, if they wanted they could make the coaches submit one video per week and have a weekly rankings show. We'd get Jeff Long on ESPN trying to explain why Lane Kiffin's "Toosie Slide" was slightly better than Brian Kelly's "Flip The Switch," and using that to justify why Ole Miss is ranked one spot ahead of Notre Dame. If this is how the season's decided, the only thing we know for sure is that Dabo Swinney thinks he's ready.
BOWL GAME STYLE LINEMEN EATING CONTEST
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One of the best parts of bowl season is the different contests that the bowls put on in the days leading up to the game. A few of the bowls include team eating contests. The Rose Bowl has the annual Beef Bowl, the Music City Bowl has the hot chicken eating contest, and the Citrus Bowl had the wing eating contest back when Buffalo Wild Wings was the sponsor. In this format, teams would still compete head to head against their schedule, but instead of playing football the linemen would be putting down food. The teams could compete over zoom with NCAA officials on site to make sure no one cheats. ESPN could televise all the games like they do with the hot dog contest every July 4th. The food could be different each week. Maybe nationwide week 1 is hot dogs, week 2 is scrambled eggs, week 3 is chicken wings, and so on until the schedule is filled. The exact 2020 college football schedule could be kept as is including conference championships, bowl games, and the college football playoff. For the first time ever, SB Nation's Piesman Trophy would actually go to the best player and would be more valuable than the Heisman. I haven't looked it up but I'm pretty sure Joey Chesnut has college football eligibility. Damnit, Nick Saban already signed him. Also congrats, Wisconsin fans, you're the odds on favorite to win your first national title.
APR SCORES
If you're excited to see this idea for determining a college football champion that means you're a Northwestern fan. We get it, you went to Northwestern.
COACHES' GOLF MATCH
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Which program will be the one to replace their terrible golfer of a coach with Steve Spurrier before the season starts? Most coaches are at least decent golfers, but Spurrier would land somewhere. This format could run similar to the running race with coaches having to win their division, then conference, then the whole thing. It would be very easily to televise, and we could have Chris Fowler Kirk Herbstreit doing the commentary. All the coaches would have to wear microphones so we hear every single time they curse at themselves for hitting another bunker. No players to yell at, Brian Kelly, it's all on you buddy. Another interesting aspect of this is who the coaches would choose as their caddie. Per rules of this format it would have to be someone on staff or a member of the team. Plenty of coaches would try to hire caddies, but with the PGA Tour back to playing it would be hard to lure those guys away from their real jobs. Would coaches put their OC or DC on the bag? Maybe they'd trust their starting quarterback? Would they make the team and staff play a tournament and choose whoever wins? I don't know what they do, but the entire thing would be fascinating to watch.
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