I have to say that I don't like the trend toward mega-conferences stacked with giants, with the little teams kicked to the curb.
There's no charm in them. There are no rags-to-riches stories. There's no Bill Snyder making K-State into a winner. There's no Matt Campbell at Iowa State beating OU twice in four years. There's no Pat Fitzgerald making woebegone Northwestern into a dangerous program in the B1G West. Those programs would all be relegated to lower divisions. There's no Dabo Swinney turning mediocre Clemson into a monster. Clemson too would have been banished to a lesser league.
And there will be fewer brilliant seasons. No OU's 2000 season out of the blue. Nothing but a slog through an impossible schedule, maybe winning the conference with an 8-4 record, and staggering into the playoffs held together with first-aid tape and ace bandages. And far fewer showdowns of undefeated teams late in the season or in the post-season.
More like the NFL, in other words.
And I do not watch the NFL.
I think you know I echo these sentiments, almost 100%.
So I really only see a few choices for myself.
1) Get angrier and more bitter as the days go by
2) Stop caring about the sport completely
3) Decide just to enjoy the games for what they are. Watch what happens inside the white lines, for 60 minutes, on a lovely Saturday afternoon in the Fall, without worrying about the national implications of every little thing. Enjoy the games as entertainment, which is all they were ever supposed to be, anyway.
I can tell you I've done a lot of choices 1 and 2 over the past couple of decades.
But doesn't #3 sound a lot more pleasant and enjoyable? I don't know if I'll be able to practice what I'm preaching here, but I think I've decided to try.
And there's some urgency here, because honestly, with all of the CTE and other health and liability issues mounting against the sport, I honestly don't think we have more than a couple decades of it left, anyway. Possibly a lot less time than that. So I'm going to try to make the choice, to enjoy what little time we have left.