How GPT and I Tried to Fix College Football
I’ve been thinking about college football.
Which, by itself, is not dangerous. Millions of us do that every Saturday. We scream at teenagers, question play calling, and spiritually blame referees we’ve never met. Totally healthy activities.
But then… I asked a logical question.
That was the mistake.
It started with rankings.
Then fairness.
Then head-to-head results.
Then conference alignment.
Then suddenly I was building spreadsheets like I’d been appointed Commissioner of Vibes.
And before I knew it, GPT and I were redrawing the entire structure of college football, two people with zero authority and absolutely no chill.
Step One: “Let’s Just Make It Logical”
It sounded harmless.
What if we grouped all 134 FBS teams regionally?
What if conferences actually made sense geographically?
What if travel didn’t require a passport and an emotional support pillow?
What if winning your conference actually meant something?
You know.
Socialist witchcraft.
So we built it. Every school. State. Current conference. Then redistributed them into 12 clean, regional conferences. Balanced sizes. Mostly 10–11 teams. Nice, clean 10-game seasons. Head-to-head mattered again. Rivalries protected.
We even trimmed heavy regions by floating out schools like UTEP and Sam Houston because, respectfully, they weren’t exactly running the sport anyway.
And for about ten beautiful minutes—it looked perfect.
Logical.
Fair.
Elegant.
Which is always your first sign that something is about to go terribly wrong.
Step Two: “Wait… This Is Bad Football”
Once the initial excitement faded, I started actually reading the conferences.
And that’s when the cracks showed.
Some conferences were absolute monsters.
Some were solid.
And some looked like Alabama was about to play Navy, UNLV, and a school whose mascot sounded like a Pokémon.
And that’s when it clicked:
If we made college football truly fair, a lot of it would be deeply unwatchable.
Not unwatchable in a moral way.
Unwatchable in a “this game is over by the second commercial break” way.
The stacked conferences we love?
They’re not organic.
They’re engineered ecosystems.
Power stays near power.
Money stays near money.
Recruiting pipelines stay warm.
And everyone else gets scheduled for “character building.”
When you rip that scaffolding away in the name of fairness, you don’t create parity.
You create exposure.
Step Three: “The Only Way This Works Is If Everyone Gets the Same Money”
That’s when we hit the nuclear option.
The only way our clean, fair, regional system actually works is if:
Every program gets the same base funding
Same facilities ceiling
Same NIL rules
Same spending caps
Same access to resources
In other words…
The NFL model, but with marching bands and student loans.
Tulsa gets the same opportunity as Texas.
UTEP gets the same shot as Alabama.
No booster arms race.
No oil money versus bake-sale budgets.
For about thirty seconds, that version of college football felt like pure magic.
And then reality tackled it from behind.
Step Four: “Oh… That’s Never Going to Happen”
Because you’re not just asking schools to change.
You’re asking:
Billion-dollar TV contracts to politely step aside
Legacy boosters to surrender status
Donors to give up leverage
Entire regional economies to stop orbiting logos
Some people didn’t donate millions to build football programs.
They donated to own influence.
Equal money doesn’t just mean fairness.
It means lost control.
And power does not surrender itself voluntarily.
Ever.
The Part That Actually Stings
The frustrating part isn’t that the system is broken.
It’s that it’s broken on purpose.
College football isn’t designed to be fair.
It’s designed to:
Manufacture narratives
Protect brands
Sustain dynasties
Create just enough injustice for us to argue all week
It’s not a clean sport.
It’s reality TV with face paint and trauma.
And once you see that clearly… you can’t unsee it.
The Ending I Didn’t Want But Fully Expected
GPT and I didn’t fail to fix college football.
We discovered exactly why it can’t be fixed.
Not without:
Revenue sharing
Spending caps
Booster neutralization
And a full philosophical reset of what the sport is actually for
None of that is happening soon.
So maybe college football really is just reality TV now.
With helmets.
And marching bands.
And emotionally devastating preseason hype.
The Part I’m Still Glad About
Even with the disappointing ending, I’m glad we tried.
For a little while, we stood in a version of this sport where:
Logic mattered
Head-to-head mattered
Geography mattered
Access was fair
And winning actually meant something again
And yeah… that version was fun.
Even if it only lived in a spreadsheet for a few hours.
