With college football expanding the playoffs, should the season be 11 games?

Shortening schedule could cause big trouble

It would cause gigantic problems across college football if the regular season were reduced to 11 games, creating all kinds of arguments and conflict within the sport.

Case in point: How many of you want to see Penn State play Pitt? Well, that probably would never happen again if the schedule is reduced to 11 games.

Why? Because with only two non-conference games each season, Penn State would have to play both of those at home every year. There's just too much money to be made with home games -- roughly $9-10 million apiece -- so the program couldn't afford to give up that money by going on the road for one of its two non-con games.

In that scenario, we might see nothing but a never-ending stream of Delaware and Kent State type of opponents in the non-con. Every. Single. Year.

Having a third non-conference game gives PSU the option of scheduling the likes of West Virginia, Auburn, Syracuse or some other name program for a home-and-home series. James Franklin doesn't want to play the biggest of the big boys, but the current setup does allow for at least some variety.

Now, if the Big Ten decided to drop from nine conference games to eight, then yeah, maybe the 11-game schedule could make sense. But I don't see the Big Ten ever going away from the nine-game slate, because that's more TV inventory which, in return, brings in tons of money on TV contracts.

Look, that's what all of this is really about — money.

Does it make sense for college football players to have to play upwards of 17 games in a season? Absolutely not. That's ridiculous.

But we're beyond any of this stuff making sense. Like it or not, money is at the root of every decision, and going from 12 games to 11 would cost pretty much every program in the country a whole lot of money.

It also would probably cost us a lot of rivalry games. Because you gotta think that lots and lots of programs need as many home games as they can get to help pay the bills, and if they get one less game to play, they would have to make some really difficult decisions.

Would we still get non-con games such as Florida vs. Florida State or Clemson vs. South Carolina in an 11-game season? Maybe those games don't mean much to fans here. But they mean a ton to fans of those teams, and I can see more Penn State vs. Pitt kind of bickering when it comes to ending long-standing rivalries.

Lastly, this entire debate seems to be centered around teams making the College Football Playoff and the demands an extended season puts on those players.

But only 12 teams are going to make the playoff. There are more than 150 FBS programs. So, this doesn't even impact more than 90 percent of the players in college football.

Yet dropping to 11 games would significantly impact every single program from a financial standpoint.

That would be a bad idea. And it's just not gonna happen.

Cory Giger covers Penn State for DK Pittsburgh Sports and hosts "Sports Central" weekdays from 4 to 5 p.m. on 96.1 Hank FM.