Mack Brown calls for college football to split divisions, G5 schools to have a separate national championship

Former coach Mack Brown called for split divisions among the top of college football, separating the powers from the groups. Okay, Power Four from the Group of Five, like the FBS and FCS.

Fellow former national title winning coach Urban Meyer might be in agreement. At the very least, the former Ohio State and Florida coach thinks today’s college football problems stem from years ago.

Meyer prefaced the question to Brown about Power Four and Group of Five with background from when he and Brown coached at the same time. It was an inside look to the separation of powers, so to speak, well before the current landscape.

“Mack and I would go to the NCAA convention every year, and we’d always sit next to each other, and we’d be on some committees sometimes, and you’d sit and you’d look up there, and there’d be an assistant commissioner from the Sun Belt Conference, there’d be an assistant athletic director from Old Dominion or, you know, and I’m not picking on those schools,” Meyer said on The Triple Option. “But you have the top 50 programs, maybe top 25 programs, are operating at a whole different level. Why in the world do we have someone from the Sun Belt Conference giving their opinion about how this should go on? And this went on for 20 years. Where we are at today, in my mind, is because of mismanagement and some leadership issues. 

“I think everybody’s heart was in a good place. They wanted to do the right thing, but yet, people pulling the strings that should not have been doing that, it should have been like-minded. Like-minded universities have like-minded issues. And that’s not the same as, you know, the MAC conference versus the SEC, it’s a completely different animal.”

That’s where Brown gave his take on separating the current Power Four institutions, maybe Power Five if the Pac-12 is considered among that grouping again, from the Group of Five schools. Basically, instead of FBS and FCS, you’d have the Power Four FBS and the Group of Five FBS, then the FCS level.

“They’ve got to separate divisions and have a ruling body for each division,” Brown said. “I even think that the Group of Five should have their own national championship, have a playoff, just like FCS. Their teams are not going to win the national championship. They’re not going to be able to pay $20 million to these kids. 

“Let them have a chance, every one of them, to win a national championship. Have their own Heisman, have their own Lombardi award, Butkus award. And I just think we separate the divisions and let them play, and it’d be fun. I would watch a great championship game between (two) Group of Five teams. But watching a Group of Five play Alabama in the first round is a waste in many cases.”