CFB51 College Football Fan Community
The Power Five => Big Ten => Topic started by: betarhoalphadelta on December 29, 2024, 04:43:12 PM
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From another thread... Something that I wanted to delve into as its own thing:
Yep. But as I've pointed out for years now... The CFP has sucked all the air out of the room, so the old goal for a school like Purdue, i.e. a winning season, a bowl game, and hopefully beating your rival, is now worthless. And with the transfer portal and NIL, the new goal--getting to, and not getting embarrassed in, the CFP--is unattainable b/c you can just expect any star you manage to recruit and develop to take off and find brighter lights and more $$$.
So... Hope y'all enjoy your sport going forward. The rest of us will slowly just lose interest and do something else with our lives...
A response:
In some of these spaces, people are very interested in letting media people who they claim to think are idiots define what they find joy in and send them into a pity party.
Like the former First Lady told us, you can just say no.
And as the response wasn't directly quoting me, and there was confusion what was meant, a follow-up:
It was somewhat in response to something our Purdue friend said about non-playoff things feeling worthless. Which is a matter of one’s own perspective, not changing the game.
I’ll be honest, I was scanning, so it’s not in the flow of the rest of the thread. Don’t mind folks bothered by the churn. I find it a little funny because fans have historically wanted change when things are actually happening, but a level of (unrealistic) predictability year-over-year.
Thought perhaps I should explain and defend my position a little here:
Sports fandom is a bit of a strange and irrational thing. After all, there's no real reason that someone in Cleveland should be a Browns fan. I mean, unless they play for the team and are getting paid, the Browns are just a collection of people who work for the Cleveland Browns organization in the service of entertainment. Ultimately it would be just as rational for someone from Cleveland to be a Bengals fan, or a Lions fan, or a Dolphins fan. The only "logical" reason that someone from Cleveland might root for the Browns is that they live in Cleveland and it's the "local" team... But for many folks in the Cleveland area the fact that they live in Cleveland is purely an accident, determined for them by their parents having lived there when they were born, and thus living in Cleveland is as accidental as a football team named the Browns also happening to be in Cleveland.
Obviously, for a sports fan--short for "fanatic"--to become rather rabidly partisan for a team comes from something else. It comes from the fact that a sports team is something that we've built as an emotional, shared, experience. In Cleveland, that's being surrounded by people who are fans, with whom you share the [rare] wins as well as the [constant] disappointment. Even the struggles help cement those emotional bonds, which is why we all look down on fair-weather fans. Standing together during the hard times makes celebrating the good times ever more sweet.
I didn't grow up a Purdue fan. I grew up in Chicago (a pro sports town) to parents who went to colleges that didn't have football teams and didn't have that experience. College football was literally something I never thought about. That led to my freshman year not having tickets, and largely not even realizing that football was happening on Saturdays. My fandom didn't start until my sophomore year, where I had joined a fraternity and got tickets in our seating block. The communal experience on game day is what built that fandom. The pregame tailgates on Slayter Hill for home games. Watching away games on a Saturday in the fraternity house with my buddies. Purdue football became something that had meaning, because the people I experienced it with made it meaningful. And yeah, Purdue's not [ever] going to be national champs, but on any given Saturday, we could beat anyone. Especially in the Tiller/Brees era. You know you might be down two TDs in the 4th, but you also knew anything can happen, and sometimes does. Hope is a hell of a drug.
But this doesn't mean that Purdue fandom is just forever tattooed on my soul. Fandom isn't innate. It's something that we must develop and nurture. It's ultimately irrational, so we have to continually find a reason to care.
And I'm having difficulty finding reasons to care any more.
Part of that is living 2000 miles from campus in a place that I'm not surrounded by many people who actually care about college football at all, much less Purdue fans. I don't have that "communal" aspect outside of this place--and this place isn't much about Purdue for me any more. These days CFB51 is about a bunch of old friends shooting the breeze [even if I haven't met anyone except one Boiler fan in person], and football is just sort of a backdrop for that now.
But another part of that is that college football is changing in ways that make it a lot less worthy of caring.
The College Football Playoff, as I've said, has sucked all the air out of the room. It's not the only reason I'm having trouble caring, but for the 100+ teams in CFB that have no realistic national championship aspirations, the playoff is irrelevant to us but it's literally the only thing that the college football media talks about. Now, the concern BAB brings up is that I shouldn't base my enjoyment on what college football mediots say, and he's right. But it also seems like it's not something that other college football fans care about either. And to the extent that college football fandom is built around a communal experience, that means something. Look at this forum--how many discussions did we used to have about bowl projections, about whether a team could get to 6 wins and go, about where they'd go and the bowl pecking order? How many did we have this year? I count 1--and that was just the Wisconsin fans lamenting the end of their bowl streak. Even on this board, nobody cares about non-CFP bowls. And it's just year 1 of the playoff. I have to think it will get worse over time, and bowls will continue to fade into obscurity.
But it's bigger... The changes to the college football landscape are also driving this. As a non-helmet fan, there was some dignity to battling for a winning season and a bowl. And a lot of it was that even if we had lower aspirations, we had players who came and wore the uniform and battled for each other. They cared if they won a bowl game. That's broken too.
It's easier to root for a team when you know these kids chose to proudly wear the Boilermaker moniker. Yeah, maybe Ohio State and Michigan didn't want them, and maybe they're salty for the fact that they are "only" at Purdue, with a giant chip on their shoulder. Or maybe they were recruited by a bunch of MAC schools and Purdue showed interest, and they felt like a diamond in the rough because of it, and want to make good on the fact that someone saw something in them that nobody else at this level did. But once they signed that NLI and came to West Lafayette, they were invested in the same thing that the fans were invested in--the team. But that's broken. It seems that everyone's in it for themselves and nobody cares about the team, especially come bowl time.
Now, the players increasingly don't even want to play in the bowl games. A group [smaller for a school like Purdue] opt out because they've declared for the draft and don't want to get injured. A larger number of players opt out because they're in the portal hoping for NIL riches elsewhere. Hell, didn't WSU have 32 players opt out for the portal this year, for a team that MADE a bowl game? If the players don't care enough to complete the season and show up for the bowl game, why should the fans? The players know it's not the CFP, and they don't care. So why don't the fans follow suit because it's not the CFP, and not care?
It seems that college football is becoming a single-season transactional world of perennial free agency. Maybe the players never cared about the name on the front of their uniform like the fans do. But in the old world, they at least seemed to care. And honestly, if you are going to be spending four years (or five with a redshirt) with the same team, I think you grow to care about the team. You go to war with someone for nearly half a decade, and that guy is now your brother. If you know you might be gone by the next January, as a player are you going to build those relationships the same way?
So it becomes hard... Maybe if I lived in Indianapolis or Chicago and was hanging out with my Purdue friends, it might still be meaningful to me. But I don't have that. So I have to ask, what about Purdue football is still meaningful? Is it non-CFP bowl games? Not really--nobody cares, not the media, not the fans; not even the players. Is it the chance to make the CFP once every other decade? No, with our roster it's just going to result in pain; look at IU. Is it that I look at these kids as a representative of my university, a place that's meaningful to me? Not really; they're almost hired mercenaries at this point, always looking for a higher bidder. They'll bolt the second they can get a bag.
What made college football special--at least to me--might be gone. For a fan of a non-helmet team, all we are now is cannon fodder to rack up wins for the teams that are going to the Playoff. All we are now is a development farm team for those teams that are going to the Playoff, who can snatch whoever they want with big bags of NIL in the transfer portal era. And the Playoff--something meaningless to a non-helmet team--is the only meaningful thing now in the sport.
Being a fan of a non-helmet team has always been hard in college football. But my own struggles are not JUST a matter of personal perspective driven by mediots. They're partly caused by major changes to a sport that took away some of the joys of being a fan of a non-helmet team.
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From CincyDawg on another thread............
A Tech fan posted this on FB, just to note that for some fans, a pretty good season is reason to celebrate.
Just now getting to post it, but it’s been a Helluva year for these Yellow Jackets and now that it’s over, I couldn’t be more proud of a group of guys that have stuck with the program through the rough past four seasons. A team that has brought back the pride in being a Georgia Tech fan and earned the respect of the nation. It’s been a year for them and for me that has seen highs and lows, but it’s been the most memorable season in my life. Here’s to a Helluva season in 2025 too
They finished 7-6 and beat Miami and took UGA to the wire (8 OTs) and lost their bowl game to Vandy. They certainly have improved under Coach Key.
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I've mentioned before that perhaps it's better to be a fan of say "K State". You can enjoy the game, and the tail gating, and if you win that's great, if you lose no big deal, it's kind of relaxed fandom.
I was a Braves fan in the TBS days before they got pretty good. I'd watch their antics, they'd go to Cincy for a four game series and IF they won one it was pretty neat. It was a different kind of fun. Then they went "worst to first" and the whole thing was just too tense and stressful, really. I was kind of happier when they lost 100 games a year.
In CFB I happen to be a fan of a program that is doing well and it's the same kind of thing, almost too stressful at times. So, maybe it's better to be a nonhelmet fan and revel in minor bowl games just for the joy of the sport without much stress. And you can always think "Wait 'til next year!!!".
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From CincyDawg on another thread............
A Tech fan posted this on FB, just to note that for some fans, a pretty good season is reason to celebrate.
Just now getting to post it, but it’s been a Helluva year for these Yellow Jackets and now that it’s over, I couldn’t be more proud of a group of guys that have stuck with the program through the rough past four seasons. A team that has brought back the pride in being a Georgia Tech fan and earned the respect of the nation. It’s been a year for them and for me that has seen highs and lows, but it’s been the most memorable season in my life. Here’s to a Helluva season in 2025 too
They finished 7-6 and beat Miami and took UGA to the wire (8 OTs) and lost their bowl game to Vandy. They certainly have improved under Coach Key.
Some have not yet been beaten down by the world. I commend them.
I've mentioned before that perhaps it's better to be a fan of say "K State". You can enjoy the game, and the tail gating, and if you win that's great, if you lose no big deal, it's kind of relaxed fandom.
I was a Braves fan in the TBS days before they got pretty good. I'd watch their antics, they'd go to Cincy for a four game series and IF they won one it was pretty neat. It was a different kind of fun. Then they went "worst to first" and the whole thing was just too tense and stressful, really. I was kind of happier when they lost 100 games a year.
In CFB I happen to be a fan of a program that is doing well and it's the same kind of thing, almost too stressful at times. So, maybe it's better to be a nonhelmet fan and revel in minor bowl games just for the joy of the sport without much stress. And you can always think "Wait 'til next year!!!".
Yeah, I grew up a Cubs fan. The "Lovable Losers". Going to a Cubs game was a drinking event (despite that I was too young as kid lol) where a baseball game occurred in the background. Clearly it was a communal/cultural thing.
However the difference with pro sports and college is that in the pros, you're always one GM/coach away from relevance. Hell, just look at the Detroit Lions! I used the Cleveland Browns, but there is no reason that in the NFL that the Browns can't win a Super Bowl five years from now. Because parity is built into the sport, with the draft, CBA, free agency rules, the salary cap, etc. It's just incompetence that they keep failing, not structural imbalance.
The Cubs fans lamented "The Curse", and how they hadn't won in a century, but... Then they did. With the current structure of college football, is there ANY future in your mind where IU or Georgia Tech has a roster capable of doing that within the next 50 years?
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if the Hoosiers and the Cyclones can win 11 games
the boilers can win 11
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if the Hoosiers and the Cyclones can win 11 games
the boilers can win 11
Iowa State only won 11 games because they had the 55th ranked strength of schedule (https://collegefootballnetwork.com/2024-college-football-strength-of-schedule/), and Indiana because they had the 63rd. For P4 teams, that's terrible SoS.
Oh, and Iowa State was actually only a 10-win team in the regular season, losing their conference championship game and then winning a bowl game against a team who had no defense and sat their star QB as soon as he reached a certain statistical record, because the bowl game ultimately didn't matter.
Indiana won 11 games in the regular season, but probably wouldn't have gotten into the CFP if they'd qualified for the CCG (and lost, as would have been all but assured). And in the CFP, they got trounced in the first round.
The Boilers can win 11. But much like 2024 ISU or 2024 IU, what will that get them?
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their best season EVER and something to celebrate and be proud of?
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Iowa State only won 11 games because they had the 55th ranked strength of schedule (https://collegefootballnetwork.com/2024-college-football-strength-of-schedule/), and Indiana because they had the 63rd. For P4 teams, that's terrible SoS.
Uhhhh, yeah. Bill Snyder school of scheduling. Do it, Purdue!!!
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Wild Bill learned that from Hayden Fry
So did Kirk
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Networks and Universities went too far,couldn't leave well enough alone.Destroying was was once enjoyable
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I think there are still some of the same highs for a non-helmet fan as there always were, even with that impossible gauntlet now at the end of the season.
:96:You could do what ISU and IU did and have your best season ever. That's a real, tangible thing that goes down in the history books (ie - media guide).
:96:You could reach a #1 ranking during the season, a la 1990 Virginia or 2007 Missouri, despite not winding up near the top.
:96:You can upset a blueblood, and for bonus points, be their only loss of the season (as Purdue fans are well aware).
Now, yes, with no leader guiding things, college football itself is like a 16 year old driving a Ferrari. That's bad (duh).
NIL and the portal is a mess. And while players are going both ways (from top teams to other teams and from other teams to top teams), it's uneven. The best players from 'other' teams are going to top teams and (generally) the worst players from the top teams are going to 'other' teams to get some playing time. Very uneven.
PLUS the non-helmets can't build on successes, as those players who caused it leave. It sucks.
A simple 2-year rule or something would fix it, but someone would have to propose it and everyone would have to buy in.
And for non-playoff bowls, you'd have to have a widespread buy-in on players getting half for the regular season and the other half of their money for playing in the bowl. End of opt-outs.
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A larger issue that existed before all that is the number of bowls. Many would say you can't have too many bowls, what's the harm, etc. Well, when you have 10 of them, they're special. When you have 40 of them, they're no longer special. When you need to go shopping for sub-.500 teams to fill all the slots, HELLO, there's a problem.
Non-playoff bowls would feel more meaningful to EVERYONE if there were few of them. Hell, people talked about relegation of programs, have relegation of bowls. Whether it's by payout, attendance, or whatever, have 10 set bowls only, and the 9th and 10th ones may vary from year to year. But the other 8 would be consistent and have 2 very good teams playing. Special!!!
An even better fix would be to go back, have the old bowl system, and instead of the +1 game as needed that I've long advocated for, just have an automatic final 4 after the normal bowls. A 4-team, post-bowls playoff. The 4 teams may come from any of the limited number of bowls that occur, no slot automatic, but earned. By a vote :57:
College football CAN be fixed, but it would take a Saban or someone to lead it. We CAN construct something that worked from the past within the modern structure.
And conferences need to stop adding just good programs. Include a non-helmet for every helmet added. That'd be a good start.
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And conferences need to stop adding just good programs. Include a non-helmet for every helmet added. That'd be a good start.
the Big Ten added a helmet, USC
and 3 non-helmets, Washington, UCLA, & Oregon as travel partners
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the Big Ten added a helmet, USC
and 3 non-helmets, Washington, UCLA, & Oregon as travel partners
I'd say USC and Oregon are big adds, and UW + UCLA as tagalongs. Smart move.
Adding just Texas and OU wasn't a great plan, long-term. It'd have been better with 2 others, like OKST + a KS school or a UNC/NCST + a VA school, something like that.
If you only add great programs, your existing great programs suffer.
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hah, Sooners win over Bama hurt
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hah, Sooners win over Bama hurt
Not as much as the schedule OU got vs what Texas got.
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Texas and OU were always gonna be a package deal. And the SEC was always going to take Texas if/when the Horns were willing.
Anyway, as a fan of a helmet school that's currently in the playoff, I can say that even so, I'm becoming less interested with each passing year as well. It's hard when there's so little continuity in players. The NFL has been the ultimate laundry league for generations and even it doesn't have completely unrestricted free agency.
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Not as much as the schedule OU got vs what Texas got.
sooners got even with the conference commish by knockin the 4th team out of the playoff
and steppin on teacher's pet bama
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Some of you guys have an unhealthy Bama obsession.
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some folks think I have a similar obsession with the Horns
they are wrong
how much did the Horns pay for that schedule?
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If you have to ask, you can't afford it...
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About 10 gallons of money
(https://i.imgur.com/dWzh1q5.jpeg)
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We’re currently in a CFB transitory period. It’s a surprise to nobody that the transfer portal has been a disaster that everyone saw coming. Honestly, I don’t even GAF who we sign on signing day, because they’re mostly hired guns, and an ungodly amount won’t be here in a year or two. And some will leave because we want them to.
But this had to be done so that it could get out of the way, so long term plans could be formulated and agreed on. It’s been in the works for 30-40 years, because there’s just too much interest, and along with that money, in CFB. I mean we can piss and moan about networks and presidents effin up CFB, but in reality it’s just you and me, because we love the shit. And we talk about it all year, we watch it, even though we say we don’t the ratings show otherwise. So the business people find a way to give us what we want, and in the process make a buttload of money that we shove down their throats and then complain about the world we created.
But we’ve all seen the rumblings about CBA and pay for players and restrictions on NIL. It’s coming, you can bet that. So who knows what the CFB landscape will look like in 5-10 years, but we all know it will be different. Will it be like it was 5+ years ago? No friggin way. But if we can at least restrict unrestricted free-agency, put some kind of a cap on NIL or at least make it somewhat equitable it will be better. And finally, I think we should cap the number of D1 programs to 50ish, redistribute the conferences back to semi-regional.
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But if we can at least restrict unrestricted free-agency, put some kind of a cap on NIL or at least make it somewhat equitable it will be better. And finally, I think we should cap the number of D1 programs to 50ish, redistribute the conferences back to semi-regional.
Yeah, definitely.
I think it should be around 60, with 10-team divisions under 2-3 conferences, so everyone plays everyone else in their division. Winning a division in 2030 will be akin to winning a conference in 1990.
Division champs and possibly runners-up get into a playoff....or better, divisions are geographic and tied to certain bowls, with a 4-team playoff post-bowl.
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One final thing I have thought about a lot that would really help some of these smaller non-blue chips like Purdue and dozens of others.
Give the players 5 full years. Skip the redshirt BS, allow everyone to transfer one time penalty free, and I think you’d have a lot of players that are good to great college players that would never sniff the NFL but would really be awesome CFB players one last time to shine.
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But if we can at least restrict unrestricted free-agency, put some kind of a cap on NIL or at least make it somewhat equitable it will be better. And finally, I think we should cap the number of D1 programs to 50ish, redistribute the conferences back to semi-regional.
A couple of more years of this aberration and most might want to do just that
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For 30 years Wisconsin rose up and was relevant. That's over now. The portal and NIL killed the program.
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I'm fading fast. I don't give a damn about a team of mercenaries.
Love to cheer for one of your guys --- He gone.
New guy comes in, plays well, you begin to cheer for him --- wants a raise --- He gone.
F this nonsense.
I'm as big a CFB sicko as it gets, and if they are losing me, I'd advise someone get control real fast. How, I don't know? But it better happen ASAP.
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(https://i.imgur.com/3FIHpVU.jpeg)
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If I had the power to change on thing it would be the portal thing.
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I'm fading fast. I don't give a damn about a team of mercenaries.
Love to cheer for one of your guys --- He gone.
New guy comes in, plays well, you begin to cheer for him --- wants a raise --- He gone.
F this nonsense.
I'm as big a CFB sicko as it gets, and if they are losing me, I'd advise someone get control real fast. How, I don't know? But it better happen ASAP.
Exactly this.
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Clemson and Florida State would kill to have the Big Ten revenue that the Big Ten basketball schools take for granted.
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Texas and OU were always gonna be a package deal. And the SEC was always going to take Texas if/when the Horns were willing.
Anyway, as a fan of a helmet school that's currently in the playoff, I can say that even so, I'm becoming less interested with each passing year as well. It's hard when there's so little continuity in players. The NFL has been the ultimate laundry league for generations and even it doesn't have completely unrestricted free agency.
I'm fading fast. I don't give a damn about a team of mercenaries.
Love to cheer for one of your guys --- He gone.
New guy comes in, plays well, you begin to cheer for him --- wants a raise --- He gone.
F this nonsense.
I'm as big a CFB sicko as it gets, and if they are losing me, I'd advise someone get control real fast. How, I don't know? But it better happen ASAP.
Exactly these two statements.
All of us here are/were crazy enough about this sport that we joined a message board and not even just one about our team but one more generally about the sport and yet our fandom is wavering. This is a mess.
Note that @utee94 (https://www.cfb51.com/index.php?action=profile;u=15) , @jgvol (https://www.cfb51.com/index.php?action=profile;u=1567) and I all root for teams that MADE the playoff and two of us for teams that are still in it and even we are questioning this. This is a mess.
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Sports fandom is a bit of a strange and irrational thing. After all, there's no real reason that someone in Cleveland should be a Browns fan. I mean, unless they play for the team and are getting paid, the Browns are just a collection of people who work for the Cleveland Browns organization in the service of entertainment. Ultimately it would be just as rational for someone from Cleveland to be a Bengals fan, or a Lions fan, or a Dolphins fan. The only "logical" reason that someone from Cleveland might root for the Browns is that they live in Cleveland and it's the "local" team... But for many folks in the Cleveland area the fact that they live in Cleveland is purely an accident, determined for them by their parents having lived there when they were born, and thus living in Cleveland is as accidental as a football team named the Browns also happening to be in Cleveland.
Obviously, for a sports fan--short for "fanatic"--to become rather rabidly partisan for a team comes from something else. It comes from the fact that a sports team is something that we've built as an emotional, shared, experience. In Cleveland, that's being surrounded by people who are fans, with whom you share the [rare] wins as well as the [constant] disappointment. Even the struggles help cement those emotional bonds, which is why we all look down on fair-weather fans. Standing together during the hard times makes celebrating the good times ever more sweet.
Not sure if my thoughts agree or disagree with your first two paragraphs, and worse, I might be repeating your points, but a Clevelander who roots for the Browns is exercising a more predictable rationality than a Clevelander rooting for the Bengals, Lions, or Dolphins.
What is this more predictable rationality? There’s probably a more striking phrase for it. In their search for meaning and validation, humans seek shared experiences (community), and escape from everyday mundanity while conversely seeking to connect more deeply with one’s everyday experiences (authenticity).
Without delving into how, rooting for the local sports teams can to a certain depth fulfill these personal searches which in turn is doubly reinforced by the communal experience of localized fandom for the team down the street. Whether it’s small town Texans turning out every Friday the high school’s football games or New Englanders passing the protracted summers months with game by game attention paid to the Red Sox. None of what humans search for, whether they are aware of it, and are even less likely to articulate well, is as communally met by rooting for teams in other time zones.
Humans also want identity and, once in a while, the crude satisfaction of exercising their raw survival instincts. Sports can hit these marks as well, though likely in a more detached rather than primal internalization.
Cleveland is a shared identity for Clevelanders. Rooting for the Browns is wearing a form of battle armor in defense of Cleveland, their shared identity.
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Exactly these two statements.
All of us here are/were crazy enough about this sport that we joined a message board and not even just one about our team but one more generally about the sport and yet our fandom is wavering. This is a mess.
Note that @utee94 (https://www.cfb51.com/index.php?action=profile;u=15) , @jgvol (https://www.cfb51.com/index.php?action=profile;u=1567) and I all root for teams that MADE the playoff and two of us for teams that are still in it and even we are questioning this. This is a mess.
Add me to the list. As I have already stated multiple times, CFB is screwed up and my interest level has gone from intense to nearly gone.
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Not sure if my thoughts agree or disagree with your first two paragraphs, and worse, I might be repeating your points, but a Clevelander who roots for the Browns is exercising a more predictable rationality than a Clevelander rooting for the Bengals, Lions, or Dolphins.
What is this more predictable rationality? There’s probably a more striking phrase for it. In their search for meaning and validation, humans seek shared experiences (community), and escape from everyday mundanity while conversely seeking to connect more deeply with one’s everyday experiences (authenticity).
Without delving into how, rooting for the local sports teams can to a certain depth fulfill these personal searches which in turn is doubly reinforced by the communal experience of localized fandom for the team down the street. Whether it’s small town Texans turning out every Friday the high school’s football games or New Englanders passing the protracted summers months with game by game attention paid to the Red Sox. None of what humans search for, whether they are aware of it, and are even less likely to articulate well, is as communally met by rooting for teams in other time zones.
Humans also want identity and, once in a while, the crude satisfaction of exercising their raw survival instincts. Sports can hit these marks as well, though likely in a more detached rather than primal internalization.
Cleveland is a shared identity for Clevelanders. Rooting for the Browns is wearing a form of battle armor in defense of Cleveland, their shared identity.
No, I think we agree.
I might call it a "more predictable irrationality" though. The itch that is being scratched in Cleveland by rooting for the Browns is an emotional itch, not a logical one. It's a coping mechanism against the fear of staring out into the existentialist void and not finding meaning at all. Some go to church on Sundays. Others go hang out in a parking lot in Cleveland and drink beer and grill meat before going into the stadium with 60,000 of their closest "friends" to root for the Browns.
Ultimately the meaning is what we assign it to be. The point of my post is that it seems more and more that the structural changes of the sport are chipping away at the foundation and making it seem like we're trying to assign meaning to a cathedral in the process of collapsing.
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Purdue, Iowa State, Missouri (etc.) have all been happy to take the TV money that the conferences have been generating. That leads to this point.
I'll say again what I've said many times: the NCAA was probably right back in the 1980s when it was trying to control TV rights for football that losing that control would lead to the end of collegiate sports as we know it. And here we are.
The helmet schools and the large state schools (with healthy athletic department revenue) can probably survive this new version of college football, but I agree that it is a very different version of the sport than we grew up with. Does that doom Wisconsin? Maybe. Thanks to Donna Shalala, Pat Richter, and Barry Alvarez Wisconsin built a very healthy athletic department, but one based on the old model. I don't know how seriously the Wisconsin football fan takes UW football if it becomes the doormat for the helmet schools in a 50-team league.
I don't know if Wisconsin will continue to fill Camp Randall if its reduced to finishing .500 or worse year over year. Professional teams manage to do that, to some extent, but the state of Wisconsin already has a professional team. What Wisconsin rebuilt its program on starting in 1991 was the ability to compete for conference championships. The reality of that in the current environment is questionable, to say the least.
All of the revenue, player movement issues, etc. need a CBA to address them. Otherwise, yes, a continuation of constant free agency, no program building, and just a question of who is willing to invest what and when (as it is in the pro game, except that they have better control of the movement of players because of the CBA). That CBA is going to be tougher than the pro CBAs to figure out because the financial model is so different for a third string safety at Purdue than it is for a third string safety for the Browns. Plucking kids out of high school to figure out who is good enough to get paid (and how much should they get paid) includes a lot more risk than figuring out how much to pay an NFL-level (even if just barely) talent.
NIL, too, is more complicated at the collegiate level. It's curious to see how much boosters will continue to be willing to pay directly to players (or collectives, to pay players) in a world in which the schools directly pay their revenue generating players.
So, yes, change is here. And the Purdue's of the world are definitely at risk. Maybe it will be good for many programs--including Wisconsin--to go to a FCS model, where Michigan, Ohio State, Alabama, Georgia, USC, Oregon, Texas (etc.) is where the real money is--NFL-lite--and the leagues below are the development leagues. But I don't know if Wisconsin can fill an 82K seat stadium in that model.
And maybe this is all ok. Maybe it's long overdue that kids who have the talent to generate real income by playing a sport can accept that income, without the fiction of being students at major universities. And the other kids, who can't, contribute to their school's spirit and camaraderie by being really good at their sport, but not expecting a big paycheck out of it--instead, getting a solid education, which is what they need in life, because their athleticism won't pay the bills for very long IRL.
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I don't know if Wisconsin will continue to fill Camp Randall if its reduced to finishing .500 or worse year over year. Professional teams manage to do that, to some extent, but the state of Wisconsin already has a professional team. What Wisconsin rebuilt its program on starting in 1991 was the ability to compete for conference championships. The reality of that in the current environment is questionable, to say the least.
Eh, but no pro teams really do that. MLB doesn't have a salary cap, but the team control of players is so high, that there is more parity than is assumed, and you mix in a fairly wide open post season, and there is still a chance for everyone.
I think the NBA might face this issue, because of the player contract maxes. If a guy can only get paid a specific max, no matter where he goes, how is Detroit or Indiana or Utah going to compete. They can be willing to spend to the cap, but if they can't offer more than anyone else, they are SOL. Particularly because the NBA is a winter sport, so you are there for the winter. Being a baseball player in a cold weather city is fine. You can live wherever from October-January, then you spend February and March in Arizona or Florida anyway.
NIL is getting blamed for a lot of this, but I think it's getting rid of the one year sit out rule for transfer. Now it seems like the 4 year eligibility rule will follow. I think if you put back in the one year sit out rule, with zero exceptions, and say you have 5 years to play 4 seasons, and any season where you appear in any portion of 4 games counts, no exceptions, you could have unregulated NIL, and it would be fine.
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Eh, but no pro teams really do that. MLB doesn't have a salary cap, but the team control of players is so high, that there is more parity than is assumed, and you mix in a fairly wide open post season, and there is still a chance for everyone.
I think the NBA might face this issue, because of the player contract maxes. If a guy can only get paid a specific max, no matter where he goes, how is Detroit or Indiana or Utah going to compete. They can be willing to spend to the cap, but if they can't offer more than anyone else, they are SOL. Particularly because the NBA is a winter sport, so you are there for the winter. Being a baseball player in a cold weather city is fine. You can live wherever from October-January, then you spend February and March in Arizona or Florida anyway.
NIL is getting blamed for a lot of this, but I think it's getting rid of the one year sit out rule for transfer. Now it seems like the 4 year eligibility rule will follow. I think if you put back in the one year sit out rule, with zero exceptions, and say you have 5 years to play 4 seasons, and any season where you appear in any portion of 4 games counts, no exceptions, you could have unregulated NIL, and it would be fine.
Most of your post is CBA related. Player comp and control is all about the CBA for the pro leagues.
The Jets, Browns, Cardinals, Chargers, Raiders, Jaguars, etc., all seem to be ok with having shitty teams. They generate enough revenue (probably mostly through TV) that they can be consistently mediocre. Do they care that their stadiums aren't packed? Apparently not. For the larger state schools (Wisconsin, Illinois, Minnesota), maybe that's the future. There is likely a lot more tribalism for IU than there is for Purdue, simply because of the name (notwithstanding that they are both public schools in Indiana), although maybe I'm wrong about that. For Wisconsin, having a team to cheer for, even a lousy one, will generate some fans. And if the revenue is coming in from the TV deal that helps pay for other things, maybe the University is fine with that, even if Camp Randall becomes a library most Saturdays. Maybe not. Absent a CBA, that is likely the future to contemplate.
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Most of your post is CBA related. Player comp and control is all about the CBA for the pro leagues.
The Jets, Browns, Cardinals, Chargers, Raiders, Jaguars, etc., all seem to be ok with having shitty teams. They generate enough revenue (probably mostly through TV) that they can be consistently mediocre. Do they care that their stadiums aren't packed? Apparently not. For the larger state schools (Wisconsin, Illinois, Minnesota), maybe that's the future. There is likely a lot more tribalism for IU than there is for Purdue, simply because of the name (notwithstanding that they are both public schools in Indiana), although maybe I'm wrong about that. For Wisconsin, having a team to cheer for, even a lousy one, will generate some fans. And if the revenue is coming in from the TV deal that helps pay for other things, maybe the University is fine with that, even if Camp Randall becomes a library most Saturdays. Maybe not. Absent a CBA, that is likely the future to contemplate.
Have you paid attention to what Wisconsin is doing to track and field?
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Do you mean that they are a relatively successful non-revenue program, or that the University tore down their practice facility in favor of a new one for football?
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Do you mean that they are a relatively successful non-revenue program, or that the University tore down their practice facility in favor of a new one for football?
Both. And they have no home. They now have their home matches in Chicago.
All for a football program that's going to end up a perennial also-ran.
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...and generates a lot of money for the university's athletic department. And probably will continue to do so.
It's a harsh world, but money continues to talk.
(It's not that I'm not sad about it--I am.)
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Most of your post is CBA related. Player comp and control is all about the CBA for the pro leagues.
The Jets, Browns, Cardinals, Chargers, Raiders, Jaguars, etc., all seem to be ok with having shitty teams. They generate enough revenue (probably mostly through TV) that they can be consistently mediocre. Do they care that their stadiums aren't packed? Apparently not. For the larger state schools (Wisconsin, Illinois, Minnesota), maybe that's the future. There is likely a lot more tribalism for IU than there is for Purdue, simply because of the name (notwithstanding that they are both public schools in Indiana), although maybe I'm wrong about that. For Wisconsin, having a team to cheer for, even a lousy one, will generate some fans. And if the revenue is coming in from the TV deal that helps pay for other things, maybe the University is fine with that, even if Camp Randall becomes a library most Saturdays. Maybe not. Absent a CBA, that is likely the future to contemplate.
I think a CBA is the only thing that can save college sports
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IMHO the problem with any sort of CBA is simple...
Most of the time, the CBA exists to ensure the stability and viability of the sport. And a portion of that is in the service of parity. Yeah, there are traditional "doormat" programs in the NFL, because the competence of management is the one area where parity isn't controlled. But teams like the Lions this year are an example that a few straight years of quality management and coaching can turn a traditional doormat into a contender. You have to have at least a chance at parity for everyone to feel that the competition is legitimate. Letting one team just out-spend everyone else ruins it.
But the powers of college football desperately want to avoid anything that introduces parity. They want the doormats to remain doormats forever.
And there are only two ways to do that--either avoid a CBA that enforces parity via a player-selection model (i.e. a draft), or have a CBA that enforces parity via a player-selection model and restrict the top of the sport to maybe 36 or fewer teams so that the doormats simply go away.
But even then... I'm not even sure how a CBA works, if you're still allowing things to be determined by recruiting rather than a draft? You need a draft to have any sort of continued parity. Because the myth of college football is that it's a "student-athlete" model, and now you're going to determine which university a student-athlete goes to based on which sport teams selects them?
I talk a lot about the power of myth. Things that are powerful, whether they're true or not, because enough people agree on that. And one of the things in the foundation of college football is that the myth of the student-athlete is important. Even if they're "general studies" majors, we have the myth that going to class and getting a degree is at least the goal, maybe not for the 5* guys, but for the 3* and fewer guys who will likely never sniff the NFL. Knock that out by forcing players to go to "whatever school drafted them" and suddenly college sports just becomes a shitty development league for the pros. There'll be no difference between watching college football and watching the UFL.
Personally I wouldn't mind a breakoff of the top 36 programs and Purdue being left out in the cold. It's better than lying to me and telling me that my team actually plays the same sport and has a seat at the same table as the helmets.
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At some point in the next few weeks, I will probably spend something comprehensive about my thoughts about this wider thing. But for the moment …
College sports has never fully wrapped his arms around the idea of real live parity. Like it is sort of antithetical to the way the sport has always functioned.
No one has ever said Michigan State HAS to be on equal footing with Michigan. And I’m sure everyone would say there’s something inherently dumb if I say Eastern Michigan should be put and equal footing with the Wolverines.
It’ll be interesting how things evolve. This season was kinda heavier on parity. Is that how it’ll be?
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I don't think anyone expects total parity. But every change has only increased gap, since scholarship limits
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Ok. My interest level is better than I thought TODAY.
I FIND MYSELF ROOTING GARD FOR IOWA!!
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It’ll be interesting how things evolve. This season was kinda heavier on parity. Is that how it’ll be?
Yes and no. I think this might be what you meant but:
There seems to be a LOT of parity AMONG the elite but a widening chasm between the elite and everyone else.
It is too early to tell, but I *THINK* that is due to NIL and the portal. It is increasingly difficult to get substantially more talented than the rest because if you have too many talented QB's (tOSU a few years ago) some of them transfer and end up leading a contender somewhere else (Texas). At the same time, it is less likely for an elite team to have a MAJOR weakness because if you strike out on QB's or LBers or OLmen or whatever for a couple years and end up with a weakness you just hit the portal and grab replacements.
Overall, I think that contributes to parity among the elite and a widening chasm between the elite and everyone else.
Looking at the elite in the B1G:
- Oregon went 9-0
- Penn State went 8-1, the loss was to fellow-elite tOSU
- Ohio State went 7-2; one loss was to fellow-elite Oregon. The other loss was to Michigan. They didn't perform at an elite level this year but they are a fellow helmet.
- Michigan (5-4) and USC (4-5) obviously had rough years.
Looking further afield at the SEC:
- Texas went 7-1, the loss was to fellow-elite UGA.
- UGA went 6-2 and the losses were to fellow-elite Bama and near-elite Ole Miss.
- Tennessee went 6-2 with one of the losses to a fellow-elite.
- Bama went 5-3 with losses to Tennessee (elite), Oklahoma (like M - elite but not this year), and Vandy.
- LSU went 5-3 with losses to Bama, aTm, and UF (all elite or eliteish even if not this year per se)
Most of the biggest upsets of the year were cases of elite teams (Michigan, Florida, Oklahoma) having mediocre years but jumping up and knocking off a contender.
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And how the playoff went is only going to make it worse. So many people I know who barely follow college football were mad at how bad the games are. The best way to appease those types is to just cancel the season and let the top 12 in the 247 composite rankings duke it out. Granted the only person I talked to with that take who is a fan of a non-helmet P5 is a WVU fan. Everyone else is a Steelers fan who tuned in to college football for the first time all year. But that's where your ratings come from
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Yes and no. I think this might be what you meant but:
There seems to be a LOT of parity AMONG the elite but a widening chasm between the elite and everyone else.
It is too early to tell, but I *THINK* that is due to NIL and the portal. It is increasingly difficult to get substantially more talented than the rest because if you have too many talented QB's (tOSU a few years ago) some of them transfer and end up leading a contender somewhere else (Texas). At the same time, it is less likely for an elite team to have a MAJOR weakness because if you strike out on QB's or LBers or OLmen or whatever for a couple years and end up with a weakness you just hit the portal and grab replacements.
Overall, I think that contributes to parity among the elite and a widening chasm between the elite and everyone else.
Looking at the elite in the B1G:
- Oregon went 9-0
- Penn State went 8-1, the loss was to fellow-elite tOSU
- Ohio State went 7-2; one loss was to fellow-elite Oregon. The other loss was to Michigan. They didn't perform at an elite level this year but they are a fellow helmet.
- Michigan (5-4) and USC (4-5) obviously had rough years.
Looking further afield at the SEC:
- Texas went 7-1, the loss was to fellow-elite UGA.
- UGA went 6-2 and the losses were to fellow-elite Bama and near-elite Ole Miss.
- Tennessee went 6-2 with one of the losses to a fellow-elite.
- Bama went 5-3 with losses to Tennessee (elite), Oklahoma (like M - elite but not this year), and Vandy.
- LSU went 5-3 with losses to Bama, aTm, and UF (all elite or eliteish even if not this year per se)
Most of the biggest upsets of the year were cases of elite teams (Michigan, Florida, Oklahoma) having mediocre years but jumping up and knocking off a contender.
Watching all those “elite” teams, all were eye test worse than a lot of recent elite teams.
That feels like a potential step to parity. It might not be, but it also could be.
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Watching all those “elite” teams, all were eye test worse than a lot of recent elite teams.
That feels like a potential step to parity. It might not be, but it also could be.
I agree, but:
It feels to me like we have six of them left in the CFP (all but ASU and Boise) plus a few more that either missed the CFP or already lost instead of the usual one or MAYBE two per year.
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We've never had parity.
What we had was a system where the teams that didn't have a snowball's chance in hell of being in the MNC discussion still had goals and aspirations. Where bowl games were exciting rewards for a good season, not poorly-watched and poorly-attended meaningless exhibitions--and by poorly-attended I mean by both the actual players from those teams and by the fans.
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On the bright side, all of these changes are allowing young adults who have a skill that is marketable to make money for marketing that skill, instead of allowing the NCAA member institutions and their corporate partners (gambling and media--including advertisers) to rake in all (or nearly all) of the money those skills generate, while some people (mostly coaches) get fantastically wealthy off of all of those people and their skills.
If it really does kill college football as a market, then they will have to rethink how all of the money gets allocated. To go back to another comment on a different thread, the market is correcting itself. It's ugly because the people who created and run the market chose not to address the markets' fundamental weaknesses, so now it's been thrown into disarray (at least part of it is). Big picture: the market cares if people are watching their TVs, but it doesn't care about who those people are. So it doesn't care about us.
Change is certain. As it always is.
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For 30 years Wisconsin rose up and was relevant. That's over now. The portal and NIL is killed the program killing the sport
FIFY
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We've never had parity.
What we had was a system where the teams that didn't have a snowball's chance in hell of being in the MNC discussion still had goals and aspirations. Where bowl games were exciting rewards for a good season, not poorly-watched and poorly-attended meaningless exhibitions--and by poorly-attended I mean by both the actual players from those teams and by the fans.
That's my issue, and everyone says "don't listen to it". Hell, the MSU team I take the most shit for is the one that beat Oregon, UM, OSU and PSU, beat Iowa in the CCG, and got crushed by Alabama in the CFP. Indiana just had a historic season and all they get to hear is that they didn't belong. Hell, I think both teams would have been better off having a fun Citrus Bowl, and letting some helmet school that couldn't get their shit together play in the playoff. But we don't even get that anymore, because every player worth a damn opts out anyway
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I'm fading fast. I don't give a damn about a team of mercenaries.
Love to cheer for one of your guys --- He gone.
New guy comes in, plays well, you begin to cheer for him --- wants a raise --- He gone.
F this nonsense.
I'm as big a CFB sicko as it gets, and if they are losing me, I'd advise someone get control real fast. How, I don't know? But it better happen ASAP.
Most would sign this manifesto
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Most would sign this manifesto
Our former CFO is a Kentucky alum/season ticket holder. He's retired now, but I remember talking to him back in 2013ish, and he said he obviously preferred winning to losing, but it was hard to care when you brought in a new team every year. And that was before that, that was just when the NBA went to the one and done to protect their owners from paying kids straight out of HS.
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might as well start paying high school kids
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This is what unfettered capitalism looks like. Not so great, huh?
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This is what unfettered capitalism looks like. Not so great, huh?
Make up your mind Fro. You are on here frequently complaining about corporate greed. Passing the Revenue down to the worker bees.
Well, that’s exactly what happened in college football. All the screaming at the TV networks and their executives and the corporate greed of keeping all the money but now it’s being passed down to the Work bees.
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it's BS, not NIL
many many players are being paid by a collective while less than 5% of the fan base knows their name, or what they look like.
Their image is not used as marketing to promote a product or service
it's BS
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What really irks me is we've gone from the big, fat lie that having 120 teams in the same level of football (no rules against a 12-0 MAC team ranked ahead of a 12-0 Texas) to technically including 1 and only 1 of the programs living under that past lie into an impossible gauntlet of the expanded playoff.
It's all bullshit.
The fixes aren't that difficult, but there's no one to instill them.
NIL monies are what they are, the programs with advantages there earned that advantage over time. But there obviously needs to be some substantial responsibilities included in the contract on the players' ends.
Transfer portal needs some combination of limited number of moves w/o sitting out a year.....maybe 3-year minimum when signing out of HS (with HC change allowing for an exception). Hell, incorporate it into the NIL contract.
There has to be a way to allow advantaged programs their advantage without literally thousands of players changing schools every year.
Also, obviously, fix the TP calendar.
All of this is just a band-aid without a planned, organized realignment idea in which the big-name, big-money conferences are the overlords and our smaller, regional conferences of yesteryear still exist underneath those umbrellas.
Totally fixable. Just have to open some decision-makers eyes into understanding the health of the sport will yield more $$$ than limited-scope, health of my program or my own conference thinking.
Duh.
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Make up your mind Fro. You are on here frequently complaining about corporate greed. Passing the Revenue down to the worker bees.
Well, that’s exactly what happened in college football. All the screaming at the TV networks and their executives and the corporate greed of keeping all the money but now it’s being passed down to the Work bees.
One is real life and the other is a game. Not the same.
College football can never wind up in a violent revolution. Real life can and does.
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how about a non-violent revolution in court?
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One is real life and the other is a game. Not the same.
College football can never wind up in a violent revolution. Real life can and does.
When millions of dollars are on the line, it's pretty fucking real
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Wow guys.
In society, radical income inequality yields a few ultra-wealthy people and many in poverty and homelessness.
In college football, radical income inequality yields a few winning programs and many student-athletes on scholarship with free room and board.
Let's stop pretending they're anything alike and move on with the actual topic, MMMMKAY?
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I'm ok with that
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I might call it a "more predictable irrationality" though. The itch that is being scratched in Cleveland by rooting for the Browns is an emotional itch, not a logical one. It's a coping mechanism against the fear of staring out into the existentialist void and not finding meaning at all. Some go to church on Sundays. Others go hang out in a parking lot in Cleveland and drink beer and grill meat before going into the stadium with 60,000 of their closest "friends" to root for the Browns.
Ultimately the meaning is what we assign it to be. The point of my post is that it seems more and more that the structural changes of the sport are chipping away at the foundation and making it seem like we're trying to assign meaning to a cathedral in the process of collapsing.
For as much as I dislike the earthquake of recent changes to college football, I’m not quite as pessimistic toward college football losing its personal value and social highlight. But the nature of how I will relate to college football is and will change, for me. While college football is veering on becoming too difficult to have value as an entertainment escape, it can meet another human need I earlier left unmentioned: fulfilling a yearning for our past.
A yearning for our past – is a yearning, to quote the novelist Philip Roth, for “…the unfiltered way meaning comes to children, just flowing off the surface of things.” When meaning was inherent everywhere. It’s why our favorite eras of college football are almost always the eras we grew up with. It’s why the different generations of Star Wars fans – Gen X, Millennials – defend the versions they grew up with – Original Trilogy, Clone Wars. It’s why you might see the elderly restlessly chase youthful urges through unwise romances or unrealistic purchases.
The changes college football is currently inflicting itself with is accelerating this sense of loss. On one hand, there’s community in remembering the good times, and the older among us will inevitably consult the past. Older Michigan and Ohio State fans fondly remembering the rivalry between Woody Hayes and Bo Schembechler, for example.
Leveraging the past is everywhere now, and it plays out beyond its age-driven inevitability: Talk Radio airing archived 1990s rebroadcasts of Art Bell to fill Saturday night airtime. McDonald’s selling ‘adult Happy Meals.’ Harrison Ford getting dragged back into the Indiana Jones franchise. Nicole Kidman, Demi Moore, and Pamela Anderson unironically featured as sex symbols in very recently released movies (good for them!?).
So why the yearning for the past? As we get older the past is where we find more of ourselves – or at least a growing sense of ourselves that’s heightened by a present that’s increasingly more difficult to keep up with. The past is where we’ve spent so much of ourselves, and will still see ourselves.
For as much as we’ve stated our dislike of college football’s abrupt changes – especially the transfer portal – there’s a viewer’s way through this mess by living for the moments when the more grounded, appreciable past days appear in the present. Watching Washington/Rutgers on a Friday night carries no sense of the game we accustomed ourselves to. But watching Tennessee/Kentucky on a Saturday night might relive the sport’s potential. That’s what I’ve learned to watch for these days. The recent Ohio State/Michigan game lived up to its history, pepper spray and all. As did Texas/Texas A&M and Iowa/Iowa St.
Growing a greater appreciation of your past in light of an increasingly uncertain present is a consolation of growing older that nobody mentions.
In a twist to this, it isn’t just college football fans going through similar dissatisfaction. After years of mindlessly formulating remakes, sequels, and live-action reimaginings, Hollywood has put itself in the less profitable position of competing against its past self, where mainstream viewership is starting to prefer more time with older shows like Gilmore Girls, to the point a few of the older shows are topping streaming ratings.
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I'm with BaB from the OP. The bowl games were never important unless your team was playing in them. The media never cared about the trophy games unless they were covering them. Even today you can easily google up articles and videos about those topics, if that interests you more than the cfp
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The bowl game thing was another bad case of unfettered capitalism? Oh, you can throw a couple of random-ass, .500 teams together and still make money?!? Deal!!!! It's like the Producers. It doesn't have to be good, it just has to exist!
College football needed someone to say "no, flooding the market with mediocrity isn't a good thing for the sport," and stop the dozens of bowl games. Not because they were a bane on our existence and not for any other excuse/reason other than it wasn't good for the sport.
IF you want bowls to be special and matter in the eyes of the fans, make them rare and exclusive. Duh!
So the bowls basically water themselves down to near meaninglessness AND THEN the CFP comes along and saps what little interest there was in them. Brilliant.
I'm at the point of feeling like even bad leadership would have been better than the zero leadership the sport has had.
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College football doesn't have some central authority (some want one, Saban). Bowl games can be created because no one can stop it from happening, and ESPN et al. of course like the programming. So, it happens. The NCAA is a pretty loose group with disparate interests by its members. They aren't going to stop a new bowl game.
They aren't going to do much of anything without legal pressures. So, we end up with a major hodge podge of "stuff". This is closer to anarchy than reflecting some economic system. If this were somehow "capitalism", most current programs would have died long ago.
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And that hasn't happened simply because the haves haven't (yet?) trimmed the fat of the have-nots. They could do it now, they could have done it 50 years ago - the top third of the Big Ten hasn't really changed since the mid-90s, has it? UM, OSU, UW, PSU....maybe Iowa, if you're feeling inclusive. Who else brings more than they take away?
They could have done it at any point. But it would have required communication with other top thirds of other conferences, and that's yet another reason the regionality of college football was a plus. Being focused on your own shit prevented 'grass is greener' thinking.
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The bowl game thing was another bad case of unfettered capitalism? Oh, you can throw a couple of random-ass, .500 teams together and still make money?!? Deal!!!! It's like the Producers. It doesn't have to be good, it just has to exist!
It's not like The Producers. The Producers is a failure of intentional fraud.
The existence of 1,000 bowls is deeply fine. It's utterly OK. It offends busybodies.
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I'd say USC and Oregon are big adds, and UW + UCLA as tagalongs. Smart move.
Adding just Texas and OU wasn't a great plan, long-term. It'd have been better with 2 others, like OKST + a KS school or a UNC/NCST + a VA school, something like that.
If you only add great programs, your existing great programs suffer.
The SEC should collect the remaining Bulldogs and Tigers that are out there.
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It's not like The Producers. The Producers is a failure of intentional fraud.
The existence of 1,000 bowls is deeply fine. It's utterly OK. It offends busybodies.
It's not about offense, it's about the good of the sport. And these 60-whatever bowls are like the Producers in that the quality of the product on the field is irrelevant to the money being made.
All of these bowls don't exist to get exciting matchups, lol. If I can make money with a 5th-place MAC team and a 6th place MWC team and fly them in to X-southern city, and I do it.....that's what I'm talking about.
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Lot of truth here Ive noticed and haven't liked too. The individual bowls used to matter a lot more, even down the lineup. It was never easy to win, but on 8-11 team conferences with co-champs and more value in things beside the national chmapionship, there was a lot more to play for. Now, everything so much is about the national title it sucks the air out. It is fun as an OSU fan right now, but wish it was different still.
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Lot of truth here Ive noticed and haven't liked too. The individual bowls used to matter a lot more, even down the lineup. It was never easy to win, but on 8-11 team conferences with co-champs and more value in things beside the national chmapionship, there was a lot more to play for. Now, everything so much is about the national title it sucks the air out. It is fun as an OSU fan right now, but wish it was different still.
Well put,many guys will opt out the more games that get added
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The individual bowls used to matter a lot more, even down the lineup. It was never easy to win, but on 8-11 team conferences with co-champs and more value in things beside the national chmapionship, there was a lot more to play for. Now, everything so much is about the national title it sucks the air out. It is fun as an OSU fan right now, but wish it was different still.
Reaching the Citrus Bowl should almost always signify a season to be proud of. I think for South Carolina and Illinois their rosters and fans were glad to be there, both teams finishing the best seasons they've had in a while. And it was a fun game. Same should be true of the Pop Tarts Bowl. But both Iowa State and Miami might've taken this Bowl like a consolation after ISU lost the Big 12 championship and Miami crashed after ranking as high as #4 in November. If you watched either Bowl, like I did, every commercial break ran adverts for the CFP, the halftime shows talked about the CFP, and the announcers digressed to discussing the CFP during timeouts.
The thing we're supposed to actively be captivating ourselves with (Citrus Bowl) is parlayed into hype for something else (CFP). And I'm sure if we're watching the CFP, it'll turn into a commercial for the NFL playoffs. Remember when TV let us watch something for the sake of watching something? Yesterday was the 28th anniversary of King Of The Hill premiering on FOX. To this day I still remember tuning in as a kid, and then watching the X-Files themed crossover episode of the Simpsons airing next, all followed by a new X-Files episode drawing over 20 million viewers. We don’t get TV nights like that anymore.
(https://i.imgur.com/nRKnaUE.png)
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It's not about offense, it's about the good of the sport. And these 60-whatever bowls are like the Producers in that the quality of the product on the field is irrelevant to the money being made.
All of these bowls don't exist to get exciting matchups, lol. If I can make money with a 5th-place MAC team and a 6th place MWC team and fly them in to X-southern city, and I do it.....that's what I'm talking about.
But what I don't understand is... Where is the harm to the sport from bowl proliferation? Because it's terrible to give a team without MNC hopes something to look forward to at the end of the year?
A bunch of meaningless bowls doesn't imperil the good of college football just by virtue of existing, just as the NIT and other meaningless extra basketball tournaments don't imperil the good of college basketball just by virtue of existing.
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It's not about offense, it's about the good of the sport. And these 60-whatever bowls are like the Producers in that the quality of the product on the field is irrelevant to the money being made.
All of these bowls don't exist to get exciting matchups, lol. If I can make money with a 5th-place MAC team and a 6th place MWC team and fly them in to X-southern city, and I do it.....that's what I'm talking about.
More football that some people care about is fine. Sounds perfectly good for the sport.
If two teams don’t play a random game in December, that’s better for the sport? Probably not.
Of you’re weird and precious about some bizarro version of the sport, I guess? But chances are, anyone getting panties bunched about too many bowls is really just prone to bunched panties. And if we cut down on bowls, they would gain no joy, but others would lose joy.
Doesn’t sound good for the sport over in this corner.
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betarhoalphadelta (https://www.cfb51.com/index.php?action=profile;u=19)
I try to attend one college football game each year. In 2023 I went to a game with a buddy I went to law school with, his daughter who was in a graduate program in Pittsburgh, my wife, and me, went to FSU @ Pitt. I understand some of what you speak to in this thread. I am so distant from FSU geographically and media-wise, I have difficulty keeping up with the players. I can understand the distance you have with Purdue football.
In November 2024, a different law school buddy with a thin Iowa connection (his mother grew up in Iowa until age 7, and she received a masters degree in the 1940s from State University of Iowa), and I went to the Wisconsin game, and we tailgated with several others. We had such a great time. It cemented my bond back to Iowa football, as you can imagine, because it was a social thing.
Unlike your late connection to Purdue football, my dad started taking me to Iowa games when i was about 8 or 9. You can imagine how college football became ingrained in my mindset.
I have difficulties with the changes, especially the transfer portal, and I question whether NIL will cut out teams like Iowa and Purdue from title hopes. That said, Arizona State did well this season, as did Indiana. Of course, I have to say that while the Big 12 is a P-4 conference, it has no helmet schools, and someone has to rise to the top. Indiana is the only real outlier in the playoffs. Not all the evidence is in, so we'll see.
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It will help the non helmets that NIL has reduced the SEC to a carnival sideshow act.