Josh Pate outlines needed changes in college football

Josh Pate has long campaigned to one day be the commissioner of college football. He did so again this morning, with three key aspects on his agenda.

Pate discussed some of the changes he’d like to see made to college football while appearing live on ‘Get Up’ on Thursday morning. He began with a topic that comes up often, and has come up a lot just in the last week or so, in the calendar for the sport. Pate argued it needs to be moved up a week or so earlier to better time the regular season, the postseason, and the issues that need to be addressed in the offseason with the schedule.

“I would really love to fix the calendar, which is like an hour-long show. But really what I’d love to do is not have it such that we have to worry about coaching searches during the middle of the season, which is really precipitated by where the signing day is. Signing Day was yesterday, by the way, for those of you unfamiliar,” Pate said. “So, I would love to – I can’t change the academic calendar. I’d love to be able to do that. It’s out of my powers as commissioner. I would love to then push our start of our season up to what week zero is right now, which is the third week in August, therefore I can finish the regular season right before Thanksgiving…and start your playoffs in early December, so I can be playing the national championship game on New Year’s Day. And then I can have my signing day and portal window after that. But it really, really alleviates a lot of the problems.”

Next up, Pate got to the opening rounds of the College Football Playoff. Regardless of how many teams are in the field, he wants as many of the bracket’s games as possible to be on teams’ home fields, even at the cost of some profit or revenue, to present what college football is at its finest when on campus.

“Neutral-site games are great on Sundays. Those NFL venues are wonderful. College football has little to no business playing games in those venues that they don’t have to,” Pate said. “So, if the playoff is at twelve, or if it goes to sixteen or whatever, you’ve got to give me another round of home playoff games. The spectacle of those home playoff games in round one last year was awesome. We’re getting ready to see someone travel to Eugene, Oregon, or Norman, Oklahoma. Why don’t I have two rounds? And the answer – we know what the answer is. There’s plenty of (money) already, and I think there’s a lot more to be made by presenting the spectacle of college football in the grand scheme of things that you don’t have to be so pennywise, pound-foolish in just selling games off to sterile environments.”

Finally, as an advocate for a separation of ratings, like the JP Poll, and rankings, like the Commissioner’s Poll, Pate argued for power ratings to be utilized, namely in determining strength of schedule or record, with the help of those in Vegas. Those statistics could better determine how some teams and their resumés measure against others, which he finds necessary considering the parity still within the different leagues around the sport.

“People have long talked about Vegas. Right now, I’ve already seen five times in my social feed this morning – ‘Man, Notre Dame would be favored against Miami if they played’. And everyone thinks that should carry the day on how you should rank teams. That’s not where you incorporate the Vegas mentality,” Pate said. “The Vegas odds-making, power-rating mentality should be incorporated in how we define strength of schedule. Because right now, I’m looking at some strength of schedule metrics, and it comes down to nothing more than cumulative win-loss record. That’s great in pro sports when everyone plays pro teams every Sunday. In college football, there’s vast disparities in that. And, if I really wanted to properly define strength of schedule, if I wanted to know just how bad that Miami versus SMU, or Miami versus Louisville loss is? That’s where I would love oddsmakers to define how bad, or not bad maybe, just terrible, just kind of terrible, those losses were.”

As we go further into the future of college football, it’s clear that changes need to continue to be made for the betterment of the sport. To the powers that be, they could be a good start in the right direction, as provided by those at Pate State.