CenterlineRight: December 2025

Our college football playoffs are upon us once again and parity rules supreme across the pigskin landscape. No team…with the possible exception of Ohio State…has demonstrated a clear competitive separation from its rivals. This is a good thing for the sport, but a terrific challenge for its administrators. The swirling combination of conference expansions, NIL, transfer portal free agency, the coaching carousel, and the continuing foolish influence of subjective injections into the playoff selection process has brought this season to a tumultuous conclusion … and it shows no sign of abatement.

I do not…and doubt that anyone else does…have a failsafe solution to this runaway train that is college football. It is a whirling dervish of moving parts that is constantly morphing from one crisis to another. The effort required to keep the lid on it at the moment makes it nigh on impossible to prudently plan for the future. But…that must be done. Somebody has to make a call. Clearly, given the parity we are seeing and the lack of consistent dominance by any small group of teams, the future playoff invitations need to be reconsidered. How that is accomplished is the million dollar question.

I want to throw out rules and reason and think outside the box about a new college football configuration. Our conferences have become far too scattered and we need to return to a fundamental, regional conference setup composed of six major conferences. The foolishness of seeing BIG 10 schools flying coast-to-coast…crossing multiple time zones…for weekly games is simply stupid. The mere fact that the ACC faces the possibility of not having its league champion in the playoffs is a clear result of having diluted talent and a too-complex tie-breaking formula. I say let’s go back to the PAC 10 to represent the West Coast; the Big 12 to represent the Southwest; the BIG 10 to represent the Midwest; the SEC to represent the Southeast; the ACC to represent the East Coast; and a conference to be named later that can represent the Northeast. That’s six conferences that are easily defined by region and cover the nation. Ideally, all the conferences would have the same number of teams…at least, close to the same number.

I will go one step further and advocate for a new FBS Division I championship that includes only these major conferences. Any current Group of Five team or FCS team that wants to up its game and competitive challenge could also be included by joining one of the six FBS conferences. These teams would have 85 scholarships each; the current number allowed. A starting point for the championship could be a 12-game season with 9 conference games and 3 out-of-conference games with other DI schools. That would provide some valid conference-to-conference comparisons. There would be no conference championship game with the top two teams from each conference qualifying for the playoffs, and playoff game matchups and bracketing would be decided by national rankings and committee seeding. All twelve teams get a plate at the table, but their performance will determine where they sit.

Then we would have an FCS Division II domain that would encompass the remaining Group of Five teams, along with any existing current FCS teams that did not move up to one of those six FBS conferences. The conference structure would evolve to cope with the teams leaving and the teams remaining in DII. These teams would have 50 scholarships; that is 14 above the current level of 36. The current FCS playoff system can serve as the foundation for this division’s playoff factoring in the conference realignments. If this idea were to play out, there is an excellent chance that the talent and competitive level in DII will be raised dramatically and its playoffs could rival the DI folks for excitement.

The final Division III grouping would include the current DIII, academic-centric schools along with any of the current FCS schools that did not want to step up to the newly-formed DII level. This division would offer no scholarships. This would include those schools that are simply looking for a way to continue a football program without breaking the bank. The current NAIA and NJCAA divisions would be unaffected by this new restructuring.

In my humble opinion, this would reinvigorate schools by reestablishing the regional concept, preserving regional rivalries, and by making college football administration far more affordable and manageable. It would also make the DI championship tournament more meaningful and easier to administer in an equitable fashion. Current middle-tier schools (Group of Five and FCS) could decide whether to increase their investment in their football program to join DI or pull back a bit and go with DII or DIII. The exploding increase in the expense to fund a current college football program will make this a welcome option for many schools, with a few likely moving down to DIII,

Now let’s talk about the latest Trump indictment. No…there is not a rogue state Attorney General in some blue state that has conjured up a new case against the President. What has indicted him this time is his own mouth. Donald Trump has always been…and will always be…ridiculously irresponsible with his rhetoric. Many of us suffer from having no filter between our instincts and our mouths; but Donald Trump is the poster child for this affliction.

The reckless language that many Democrats have been tossing around over the last several months regarding resistance to the Trump Administration has been increasing at an alarming rate…both in volume and in tone. There is simply no excuse for much of the uncivil, irresponsible, and ethically-criminal language that many Democrats are tossing about on a daily basis. Not only is it wrong, it should be embarrassing. Donald Trump has every right to be furious at these words.

Bearing the mantle of the opposition party has always translated into vigorous disagreement with the majority party. But when that opposition takes the form of careless, baseless, and incendiary remarks that clearly provide cover for violence of varying degrees…it is time to shut the hell up, fall back a bit, and reconsider your approach to the issues. To any objective observer, the Democrat Party, from the top down, has demonstrated a lack of self-awareness by its obsessive Trump Derangement Syndrome and has allowed itself to ratchet out of control.

But as bad as the Democrat behavior has been, Trump has somehow managed to meet it blow for blow. More and more, the crudeness and venom that is reflected in his response to the Democrats’ rhetorical onslaught has done nothing but inflame the verbal explosion. Schumer, Jefferies, AOC, Swalwell, Omar, Pritzker, Johnson, Newsom, Mamdani, ABC, CBS, PBS, CNN, NY Times, Washington Post…all of these sources have been undisciplined loose cannons as far as reasonable political discourse is concerned. But entitled as he is to respond to ridiculous attacks on his person and Administration, President Trump is not justified to respond in equal measure when that measure is so inflammatory. The simple fact is that our nation has one President and he is that. Schumer, Jefferies, and the rest of the heel-nipping pack do not distinguish themselves by their words and actions; but they are much smaller pieces in the machinery than our President. Their actions and words simply make them more irrelevant.

Donald Trump has essentially three years left in his final term as president to accomplish his policy goals. Every time he leaps down into the mud to wrestle with Democrat flamethrowers, he is wasting the precious time that has been allocated for him to serve this nation. The plain and simple fact is that Donald Trump is all too often his own worst enemy. He is a wise man…a strong man…with good instincts. But he is also an undisciplined egomaniac with an atrocious lack of self-control whose entitled life has been ruled by a “shoot first and think later” philosophy. America deserves better from our president and Trump is capable of being so much more than what he is. He could be historic

Now on to the news of the day….

Priority One: Restore the integrity of our National Education system…

https://amgreatness.com/2025/11/26/public-schools-are-failing-and-parents-are-bailing/

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/the-pernicious-effects-of-grade-inflation/

Why is national education so critical? Just consider what the results have been…

https://amgreatness.com/2025/11/27/can-the-lost-generation-be-found/

https://www.msn.com/en-us/health/wellness/why-we-actually-should-worry-about-gen-z/ar-AA1RbJUx

The Russia-Ukraine war continues its tragic harvest of death and destruction. There are no good answers, but one must be found…

https://amgreatness.com/2025/12/01/the-war-in-ukraine-lots-of-questions-and-a-few-answers/

https://www.nationalreview.com/2025/11/lets-hope-the-russia-ukraine-peace-proposal-improves/

https://freebeacon.com/columns/why-the-ukraine-peace-plan-may-be-pointless/

https://thefederalist.com/2025/11/24/former-zelensky-spox-ukraine-must-sign-peace-deal-to-avoid-even-greater-losses/