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'm with you, but I haven't been as attached to the sport as I used to be in several years now, so that makes it a little easier to roll with.
I've never liked the NFL-ization of the sport, although it's been inevitable for a while now. I don't object to the idea of a super-league, per se. Adding UT and OU will be neat, in a way, and there's no shortage of our own fanbase who've always thought LSU and Texas should be playing all the time. (I have no idea why. They've can never offer an explanation other than "neighbors.") What I don't like is most of the realignment scenarios I've seen kick Alabama and Auburn away from us on an annual basis, and that I do mind. I'm not
not-interested in watching my favorite team play UT and OU. But not at the expense of some of our oldest foes and participants in many of our best games.
Honestly, as much glorious history as the Mississippi schools might be lacking and whatever their outlook for the future is, I don't want to lose those annual games either. In some scenarios I've seen we wouldn't have to. But there's a lot of options where that would happen, not to mention that UT and OU are just the first rumbling of an earthquake that's going to leave the landscape drastically altered. I don't even want to lose Florida, and that only became a thing in the '92 expansion. But, I was only 13 then, so that's the majority of my football awareness, and even though the schools themselves don't seem to care about the contrived rivalry, there are a ton of fans on both sides who love that game, myself included.
I hope somebody finds a way to preserve the games people care about. I saw some really good models for the SEC when A&M and Missouri came that preserved all rivalries, made sure the schools all played each other far more often than we see cross-division teams now, but didn't have divisions. Obviously something that made so much sense was doomed. I suspect we'll wind up in pods and teams like LSU and UGA will be conference-mates in name only. We pretty much already are now anyway.
Meh.
