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All conferences, including autonomy conferences, should actively discourage the use of P5 and G5 labels. The autonomy conferences do not refer to themselves as P5 conferences internally, although their memberships use P5 in the public forum. The media actually coined the term to replace the former Bowl Championship Series (BCS) description, and it often made little or no sense even during the last decade. The harmful divide that has developed can trace its roots to the advent of the BCS in 1998, which designated selected conferences as annual participants in BCS bowl games. The divide accelerated with the advent of the College Football Playoff, wherein the BCS label morphed into the media-invented P5. This divide did not exist in any meaningful way back in the College Football Association days of the 1980’s and 1990’s. No divisive nomenclature and arbitrary classification existed back then. Whenever a so-called non-P5 school wins the national championship in men’s basketball, as the American did in 2014, three national championships in women’s basketball, as the American did in 2014, 2015 and 2016, or makes the College Football Playoff, as the American did in 2021, or in addition makes (seven times) and wins (four times) a New Year’s Day Bowl game against a top ten team or makes the men’s Final Four and the Elite Eight and the Sweet Sixteen, how are those teams “non-power”? It is absurd, and proof that the power moniker makes no sense competitively. The fact that so-called P5 teams that have not achieved at that level are still deemed “power” teams is an absurdity on its face. Another absurdity involves realignment, where Group of Five teams instantly become Power Five teams simply by signing a piece of paper. It is time to retire the P5 moniker and shift the focus and nomenclature to the ten FBS conferences. We at the American strongly support that concept and urge the media to focus on the ten FBS conferences. Each FBS conference should be judged and characterized on whether it has achieved elite status, on whether it is powerful in its own right, and not as the beneficiary of an arbitrary label. We have no illusions about the difficulty of achieving change in this area, but this is a battle worth fighting. Read more: https://theamerican.org/news/2023/5/9/football-an-open-letter-on-power-5-group-of-5-branding.aspx

Today I heard debates about prominent NFL prospects sitting out their final Bowl Games and I got me to thinking. There is a lot of interconnected greed hurting college football as a whole and the bowl games and playoffs are symptomatic of it. There has always been an easy win vs win for all FBS level programs when it comes to the post season. And I wish I knew the real reason (or rather the power player would admit what I suspect) why this simple solution has not been implemented. First let me identify my 3 biggest gripes with college football. 1. Non Power 5 programs have virtually no shot at ever proving themselves worthy to even compete for a national title. 2. Throughout the entire history of College Football Bowl games are mostly irrelevant. (At best maybe 4 mattered before the implementation of the BCS) 3. P5 power teams almost never play G5 teams on the road My simple solution (many have thought of it before) is a 4 team playoff after the bowl games. There are some minor tweaks that would need to be implemented to make sure an undefeated G5 team like Western Michigan would get a shot in getting into the final 4 after winning their bowl game. [That tweak is that an undefeated G5 team or maybe one ranked 12 or better with only 1 loss gets a top 6 ranked team in their bowl game]. First of all with all apologies to Ohio State fans who might run across this, but I believe it is utter bullshit that they are the 3rd rank team in the playoff and the other teams in the playoff won their conference. Best case OSU should have been 4th if you they were determined to put them in over Penn State. Conference champions deserve better bowl games than their conference mates that they beat head to head. In post bowl playoff this would not be an issue because they would have to win their bowl game to get into the post-bowl game playoff. The post bowl game 4 team playoff would ensure that almost any bowl featuring a top 10 team would be highly contested. Also this post bowl playoff would make winning your conference critical so give your team the power to select the best bowl possible to give you a shot at the playoff. The semi-finals of the playoff would be played at the home stadiums of the 1 and 2 seeded teams and that national championship game would rotate between the New Year's 6 bowl game sites. My question to the my fellow GMG members is what are the road blocks to this? And is this plan the best plan to balance the considerations for the bowl game committees, playoffs, and fair competition?

In another discussion we are debating out of conference opponents. Everyone whats to get a good P5 team to come to Apogee. However it got me to thinking; What teams that we have never played before would you want UNT to play regardless of location? My top 5 are below. What are yours? 1. Michigan 2. USC 3. Notre Dame 4. Oregon 5. Ohio State