College football can be improved

I enjoy college football. I prefer it to pro football and believe it might be the best sport going, even better than NASCAR, MMA and curling.

Still, there are a lot of ways college football could be improved besides the obvious idea of eliminating the whole BCS mess, which may not happen in our lifetimes, unfortunately.

 Play all non-conference games in the first month of the season.

I know this may not be entirely possible because of the various sizes of conferences, but it would be nice to have all the non-league games early and play the league games in October and November, similar to college basketball, which plays most league games after December. Why have key conference games, such as Miami-Florida State and Georgia-South Carolina, right out of the chutes? By the same token, let's eliminate late-season non-conference matchups. I see where Illinois is playing non-league games against Cincinnati and Fresno State on Nov. 27 and Dec. 5, long after their final Big Ten game on Nov. 14. What's up with that?

 Allow just one game against a lower-division school every two years.

I realize that some years Utah has to play Weber State or BYU must play Northern Iowa. But there's no reason a school like Florida should be playing The Citadel and Charleston Southern in back-to-back years. The only disadvantage to this idea is that it would keep lower-division schools from getting as many of those large paychecks that help their athletic programs.

 Teams must win seven games to be bowl eligible.

Enough of these 6-6 teams going to bowl games every year. I know some leagues have a rule about 6-6 teams not going at the expense of 7-5 teams, but still, no one should be able to finish with a losing record and say they went to a bowl game. Oh, but we won't be able to fill up all of the available bowls, you say? Read on.

 Reduce number of bowls to about 25.

Right now there are 34 bowl games, but do we really need a bowl for the eighth-place team from the ACC or even the fifth-place from the MWC? The bowls in Boise and Albuquerque would probably be eliminated, but they shouldn't have bowls in the first place. Let's go back to the old days of holding bowl games only in warm-weather places. Let's make a rule that if it never gets above 70 degrees in the winter, you can't have a bowl game in that city.

 Cut major-college football scholarships to 75.