Perhaps the BEST B1G Forum anywhere, here at College Football Fan Site, CFB51!!!

My concern is that I doubt that CFB can sustain itself with only fans of UGA, Bama, tOSU, M, and a few other schools that can actually compete once all the fans of PU, MSU and the rest of the non-helmets go the way of @betarhoalphadelta and @ELA and either drop out or decide that the NFL and the MLB playoffs are more important.

it's always been a sport of the haves vs have nots. nothing has really changed. what changed things for the worse is the playoff ruining the bowls bc now there is really no point to play in a bowl game and risk injury if you're going to be a 1st or 2nd rd pick. my hope is that by expanding the playoffs they will fix some of that.

the sport has always been in desperate need for parity. that is why I think going to a 48 to maybe even 60 team super league and trimming a lot of the fat that is left over from the B12/ACC/PAC4, cutting scholarships to about 75, and then allowing for revenue share with the players and instituting a salary cap where every player makes the exact same thing at every school might be the way to go. make it so that guys that finish their degrees get bonus $$$$.

do all that. keep the one time transfer portal rule. NIL is here to stay can't really do anything with that- but by doing a rev share with a salary cap where every single program pays X million a year in salary and every player from every program gets paid the same thing- you can probably get rid of the NIL collectives that set up those funds where position X makes X amount- which is really just pay for play schemes to try and get recruits at that position to come to the school. Won't really be a need for that with rev share and players actually earning money. NIL can instead than be used what it was intended for- letting the proven star players and starting QBs to cash in on their names and earn money.

truly is an art not a science.

Tim Couch went #1 overall. Tom Brady went in the 6th round. Crazy.

It's not totally random of course.  There is some correlaation between high draft pick and NFL success, but the exceptions stand out.

Yup.

And sometimes it's neither an art nor a science, but rather a crapshoot.

I think Cincy is right. We can all point to early-round busts and late-round gems and call it a crapshoot, but it's not a crapshoot. 

It's like poker. If you always make the right statistical plays (at least in limit games), you're likely to have few "monster nights" but a net positive outcome over the long term. If you make risk plays, try to bluff a lot, and generally go for the big scores rather than the statistical play, you might win big on a lot of nights, lose big on a lot of nights, and have a net negative outcome over the long term. 

I'd argue a team like the Patriots are built on making non-flashy, solid, statistical plays. A team like the Browns goes "all-in" pre-flop with a massive contract to Deshaun Watson in a high-risk, high-reward strategy that if it fails, hampers their ability to make any good moves later. 

I'm with you. I like all the changes because it benefits the player. At the end of the day that's all any fan should care about. The players.

I understand where you're coming from. 

However, some of the changes might be good for the player in the short term, but damage the sport long term. Because if the sport is just Michigan/OSU/Georgia/Bama/USC/Texas/ND/etc battling it out every single year, and NOBODY else has a chance because they can't recruit and spend with those guys, well, you'll see fans start to step back from the game. And then ratings drop. And then revenues drop. And then the goose is dead and we run out of golden eggs.

We've never had true parity in the past. But we've at least have reasons for the lesser teams to care. Now we don't, and I might argue it will hollow out the fandom of the sport because there's a lot of other things to do on Saturday for the fanbases of those schools than watch the games. 

#1- Limit the number of scholarship players from 85 down to maybe 75.  I know that it's tough having the necessary depth etc but the NFL does it with 55.  Obviously there are differences like trading players mid-season and promoting players from practice squads.  But if all teams have a cap of 75 or so, they all have the same limit.  The better teams will have to take less players, and the bubble 3/4* players will be pushed to the 2nd tier programs like Wisconsin, A&M, oSu, and such. 

Couple of issues here.

First, the college game is by definition a development level of the sport. ESPECIALLY for the OL and the defensive front 7. These are positions where having a player have a competition-ready body coming out of HS is REALLY rare. Whereas someone who enters the NFL via the draft will typically have had at least 3 years of physical development and be capable of competing. Since you're not going to have any player that spends 9 years with your franchise like in the NFL, and since you're waiting on pure physical development from others, 75 in the NCAA is going to be FAR more limiting than what the NFL sees.

Second, there's also the aspect of "scholarship players" which could potentially get problematic. Players with real endorsement deals like DJ w/ Dr Pepper or Caleb Williams certainly can afford to pay their own tuition and don't need a scholarship. If these NIL collectives just decide to up their contribution to pay someone's tuition and room & board, a lot of schools could make an end-around any scholarship limits by having much larger rosters of non-scholarship players and blow parity out of the water anyway. I think instead of limiting scholarship players, you would need to limit roster size directly. 

it's always been a sport of the haves vs have nots. 

Agree.  

nothing has really changed. 

Disagree.  What changed is that, as discussed upthread, fans of "have nots" as you put it had non-NC things to root for that were seen as worthwhile.  Those things (beating rivals, knocking off helmets, winning a league title once in a great while, winning the Rose Bowl) were enticing enough that @betarhoalphadelta (PU) and @ELA (MSU) were serious followers of the sport as a whole.  I think we are losing those guys and if we're losing message board fanatics like those two guys, we're in big trouble.  

what changed things for the worse is the playoff ruining the bowls bc now there is really no point to play in a bowl game and risk injury if you're going to be a 1st or 2nd rd pick. my hope is that by expanding the playoffs they will fix some of that.

As I've said before, the CFP has effectively sucked all the oxygen out of the room.  When I was a kid up through college (the BCS didn't start until after I graduated) even a "helmet" fan like me was really rooting for sub-NC goals.  We always said the goals were:

• Beat Michigan
• Win the Big Ten (then Big11Ten)
• Win the Rose Bowl
• Win the NC.  

Here I somewhat disagree with @Brutus Buckeye .  I still want to beat Michigan and especially after two-straight losses but for me, that has lost a part of it's importance.  I think it is fair to say that Brutus sees it as an end in and of itself where I always saw it as a means to an end.  Generally in the past, goals #2, #3, and #4 were dependent upon achieving goal #1.  Now it only somewhat is and when we expand to a 12-team CFP winning the NC will be only marginally related to the outcome of The Game.  

Once the playoff expands to 12 there will be no more high-end non-CFP bowls.  On top of that, regular season games will each individually be vastly less important and I'll have almost no reason whatsoever to care about regular season games not involving my team.  

I still root for MY team and I still watch most of MY team's games but I'm much more willing to miss one here or there because if I miss the Maryland game (because it is on Peacock and I don't bother to use @Temp430 's code for a discount) and Ohio State loses, so what?  The Buckeyes can still get to the CFP.  In the old days a random upset like that would have been devastating.  Now it just narrows the path but there is still a viable path.  

Expanding the playoff will create more interesting playoff games but I don't see it as fixing anything.  At best it simply replaces interesting Rose Bowl and Sugar Bowl matchups with interesting CFP matchups.  

The great thing about CFB was always that each regular season game was important.  I've watched a lot of games involving helmets around the country over the years usually because I was rooting for @OrangeAfroMan 's Gators or @rolltidefan 's Tide or @utee's Longhorns to lose.  I'm sure those guys have watched a number of Ohio State games rooting for Ohio State to lose for the same reason, to clear room for their own team in the NC or BCS or CFP.  Once we go to 12 that all becomes rather meaningless.  

the sport has always been in desperate need for parity. that is why I think going to a 48 to maybe even 60 team super league and trimming a lot of the fat that is left over from the B12/ACC/PAC4, cutting scholarships to about 75, and then allowing for revenue share with the players and instituting a salary cap where every player makes the exact same thing at every school might be the way to go. make it so that guys that finish their degrees get bonus $$$$.

do all that. keep the one time transfer portal rule. NIL is here to stay can't really do anything with that- but by doing a rev share with a salary cap where every single program pays X million a year in salary and every player from every program gets paid the same thing- you can probably get rid of the NIL collectives that set up those funds where position X makes X amount- which is really just pay for play schemes to try and get recruits at that position to come to the school. Won't really be a need for that with rev share and players actually earning money. NIL can instead than be used what it was intended for- letting the proven star players and starting QBs to cash in on their names and earn money.

I think that this might make for an interesting discussion but I also think that the discussion would be purely academic because it is simply NEVER going to happen.  

 What changed is that, as discussed upthread, fans of "have nots" as you put it had non-NC things to root for that were seen as worthwhile.  Those things (beating rivals, knocking off helmets, winning a league title once in a great while, winning the Rose Bowl) were enticing enough that @betarhoalphadelta (PU) and @ELA (MSU) were serious followers of the sport as a whole.  I think we are losing those guys and if we're losing message board fanatics like those two guys, we're in big trouble.  

Yup.  I have a good friend who is a longtime die hard Texas Tech fan.  He's now despondent about the whole thing and hasn't watched college football since TX/OU announced they were leaving the B12.  He just doesn't care anymore.  And this guy was a MASSIVE fan, traveled from Austin to Lubbock for pretty much every home game, ran a big tailgate party up there, and attended plenty of UT home games just to get a fix when he couldn't make it to Lubbock.

Now, he just doesn't care.  At all.  This is not an isolated case, it's happening all over the place. I don't see it stopping, it'll only get worse in the coming years.

I knew it was far but I wasn't sure how far so I checked and Google says Austin->Lubbock is six hours . . . Each way. That's 12 hours of driving plus probably two nights in a hotel for each game.

Like you said, massive fan. If we are losing guys like that and the two from our board, we're in big trouble.

I think part of the reason we are losing them is that their team's can no longer ruin our teams' seasons. In the old days a Texas loss in Lubbock or an Ohio State loss in West Lafayette or a Michigan loss in East Lansing usually derailed TX/tOSU/M's NC hopes. Thus, TxTech, PU, and MSU could and did have a major impact on the NC race. Now, not so much. Next year, hardly at all.

Absolutely.  Even if those teams weren't a direct part of the NC race, they could still affect the ultimate outcomes.  

And I used to date a girl that went to Tech.  That is a long, boring drive.  But I will say, she was totally worth it.