COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. — For college football fans who also follow the English Premier League, or who watched Ted Lasso, the concept of promotion/relegation in sports is familiar - but for many others it is, quite literally, a foreign concept.
But, according to Ross Dellenger of Yahoo! Sports, the Mountain West and Pac-2 are considering exactly that, an incredibly innovative new structure that has not been done in college athletics.
Locked on Pac-12 host Spencer McLaughlin likes the concept in theory because of the innovation and high likelihood it would make the conference more watchable, even if there are a lot of barriers to implementation.
"It does add intrigue to leagues that right now are either at the G5 level or in a state of complete limbo," McLaughlin said. "It would provide structure, it would provide clarity, and it would provide intrigue because they have something over there that no one else has."
As of now the Pac-2 and Mountain West merging would result in 14 football schools, and with eight teams being the minimum it would require two additions - which could include FCS powerhouses North Dakota State and South Dakota State.
This way the eight Pac schools (the Pac-8) would compete as their own conference while the other eight schools (Mountain West) would compete as a separate conference, with two schools getting promoted and relegated every year (or two) based on a points system that would be determined.
A scheduling alliance would be part of this system, with Dellenger explaining it as two non-conference games, seven games within the conference, and three against the partner league.
The proposed alliance could also include a BracketBuster weekend in the middle of the season, as well as relegation and promotion games with the idea that those games would draw a large audience and would be appealing to television partners and therefore drive up the conference's media rights deal.
Barriers are significant, the least of which is teams not wanting to risk falling into the lower level - although the only two schools that aren't currently G5 are Oregon State and Washington State. How this would impact other sports is a big one as well - would the 14 team conference just merge for every other sport and only do promotion/relegation for football? Or would they try this in other sports as well?
For now this is just one of many ideas being discussed in response to this unique situation the Pac-2 and Mountain West find them in, but it is certainly a way to draw attention to your league and innovate in a way no one has attempted to do in college athletics before.