Log onto social media, listen to your favorite podcast, or tune into the big game of the week and one thing is clear – everyone loves college football, but no one likes where it is headed. One side believes the big brands in the SEC and Big Ten are propped up by ESPN and FOX. The other side feels like inclusion of the little guy – like SMU or Boise State – is akin to a welfare state. 

The coaches hate the calendar. The players hate the limitations. The fans hate the roster turnover. And the television executives hate the first-round blowouts in the College Football Playoff. 

So, what is the answer to these problems? How do we fix the nation’s favorite sport? Well, I have some ideas.

• Five years to play five seasons: Ditch the redshirts. All the redshirts. No more four games or less to preserve a year. No more multiple applications for medical redshirts. Give every player five years to play five. If you get injured one year, well, you still get four years to play football. College football was meant to be played by college-aged kids. Injuries are an unfortunate part of a violent game. No one needs to be in their 7th season of college football. Go get a job. 
• One transfer window: The business of college football is booming, but the industry of college is even bigger. School still matters. College football used to be a fall semester sport. It now bleeds into the spring semester. Eliminate the winter transfer portal window. Players can transfer after the spring semester. The NFL Draft isn’t until April and those rookies figure out a way to make it onto the field. Maybe if the players are forced to stick it out through spring, some no longer even want to be in the portal anyway. 
• Limit the transfers: Unlimited transfers wasn’t the answer. Neither was punishing a player for transferring. Let’s split the baby. Each player gets one free transfer. Any transfer after that costs a year of eligibility. The exceptions are for a head coach leaving or for graduates. Earn a degree, get another free transfer. Your head coach leaves for more money, so can you. Otherwise, you get one transfer in your career before it costs eligibility.
• Ditch automatic byes for conference champs: Entry into the CFP should be guaranteed for the five highest ranked conference champions, but not a spot in the quarterfinals. The top four ranked teams get a bye into the quarterfinals. That will include conference champions most years. I’m okay with giving conference champions an automatic home game in the first round, but not a trip to the quarterfinals. 
• Create pods in conferences: The reason an 11-1 team from the Big Ten (Indiana) can get nitpicked by the public is because of the uneven schedules created by mega conferences. Indiana played the two teams in last year’s national title game and won 11 games as members of one of the top two conferences in America and some people still don’t believe the Hoosiers deserved a spot. Why? Because not every conference schedule is created equal, and that’s because the conferences are too big. Maybe pods create an easier way for us to judge these teams at the end of the year because it'll be easier to compare schedules. 
• Eliminate spring ball: One of the main reasons that coaches and players prefer the winter transfer window is so that they can get their team together in spring for three weeks of practices. Turn that into OTAs like the NFL model and give colleges three weeks in June to replicate spring practice. That way programs and players stop wasting three weeks in April with incomplete teams. Spring ball is already a bastardized version of what it was a decade ago. Just eliminate it all together and put more on the team’s plate over the summer. 
• Leave signing day where it is: Moving up early signing period was one of the few smart decisions made by the NCAA. More and more prospects are enrolling early and need to sign in December. Moving the date to before the transfer portal keeps colleges from over signing transfers at the expense of recruits who were committed for months. 
• Create contracts: A system already exists for the transfer portal and that is in European soccer. If these players were under real contracts, there would be buyouts like there are for coaches. If Texas wants UTSA’s edge rusher and that edge rusher wants to move to Austin, great. But the Longhorns should owe the Roadrunners some money for poaching. That’s how the big clubs in Europe snag the top young prospects in soccer. The adults – coaches, admin, support staff – will make less money when the players become employees, but that is a good thing, not a bad thing.