The Bittersweet ending to a Beautiful Season

Hello darkness my old friend… Although I’m still relishing Michigan winning the national championship and proving all the witch hunters and naysayers (actual naysayers, not what Rece Davis was referring to) wrong, post football depression has set in and the landscape of college football is about to change forever. With the expansion of the college football playoff, regular season games, conference champions and rivalries will become diluted, group of 5 teams will take a backseat, and our beautiful sport will become a minor league system for the NFL. I’m terrified a lot of the beautiful aspects of college football will get lost with these super-conferences and NIL deals.

The Regular Season Matters

We already saw evidence to the contrary this season with a power 5 school, Florida State, going undefeated and getting shafted by the selection committee. Although they screwed over a team that “deserved” to be in the playoff, I’m not blaming the selection committee because they got the 4 “best” teams in the playoff. The problem with the playoff system from 2013-2023 was having 5 “power” conferences and only 4 “playoff” spots. I use the terms “power” and “playoff” loosely because most years a conference would have a down year (like the ACC this year), and I believe a semi-final and a final does not deserve the label “playoff”. 

Fast forward to 2024 and we will have 4 “Super Conferences” with the PAC12 extinction. We will see every team that “deserved” to be in the playoff, which in my opinion are the power 4 teams that win their conference, will get in. However, we have 8 more spots to fill. Does this mean every conference’s runner up will also be included? Okay, 8 spots are filled and most of these teams deserve a chance at a national title–now who do we put in? 3rd place teams? A G5 team and 3 at large? Winning your conference used to mean something. If you won the B1G, you’d go to the Rose Bowl and face the PAC12 champ, now it feels like a placeholder to decide seeding. Regardless of how you feel–the selection committee either overcorrected itself and should’ve reduced the number of teams included to 8, or it should’ve recognized every conference by including their champions and expanded to 16. If you’re in favor of putting out the best product, you’d want 8 teams. If you’re rooting for the recognition of every school in FBS, you’d be in favor of 16 teams. 12 teams feels like a weak attempt to do both.

Rivalries

With the creation of these Super Conferences, divisions are out the window, and rivalries will suffer the most from this. Picture “The Game” this year being played under next year’s circumstances. Michigan and Ohio State would’ve met in Ann Arbor in the final week of the season, (because it’s tradition and we don’t fuck with that in college football) but they would’ve then met in Indianapolis the very next week! What happens if they split that matchup? Who gets the 1st round bye in the playoffs? Let’s say one of those teams had a loss heading into “The Game” and the other team was the number 1 team in the nation. The one loss team proceeds to lose both “The Game” and the B1G championship by a narrow margin. Does this team still get into the playoff with 3 losses? Should they get leapfrogged by a 1 loss team that didn’t make their conference championship? Better yet, let’s say the teams split that matchup. Who gets the bye in the playoff? If it’s the conference champion, you’re telling America that “The Game” doesn’t matter anymore. If it’s the winner of “The Game” –or both– you’re devaluing conference champions. Then you run into an issue where these 2 teams might faceoff three times in one season. In our example, Michigan/Ohio State could play in “The Game”, the B1G championship, and the national title in the span of a little over a month. A travesty to our historic rivalry.

The Little Guys Get Smaller

I doubt we’ll see these 4 super conferences get over 80 total teams. With 133 teams in college football’s FBS level, 53 teams are getting the shaft. As a Wyoming fan, this bums me out. Outside of guys making a name for themselves in the NFL, we’re not making as big of a splash nationally as we were 30+ years ago, so we’re on the outside looking in. Teams like Wyoming who haven’t had recent success but have rich history will NEVER have an opportunity to win a national title. Chances were slim now and during the BCS era, but it’ll be impossible to get over the hump with the new realignment. What will happen to these teams? Do they drop down to the FCS level? If so, many of these programs just upgraded their facilities and are looking at a mountain of debt without TV deals. Do they have their own G5 playoff? I’m curious how much attention this will actually bring and if the G5 would become the new FCS.

“Free Agency” is Killing CFB

Tinfoil hat time. Nick Saban is getting older, but part of me thinks he’s walking away because college football is going in a completely different direction starting next year. Not only are students able to make money on their name, image, and likeness, but the NCAA is researching ways for universities to directly pay their players. I’m all for student athletes making money. The fact they couldn’t sell an autographed picture of themselves for a little extra shopping money is fucking ridiculous, however, direct payment feels like we’re overcorrecting again. “But what about the 5 star offensive lineman who wouldn’t be able to sell his autograph?” Pay him under the table like you’ve been doing for years, but now we’re turning college football into a minor league system for the NFL. Is it good for students to have a choice to stay in college while making a few dollars to develop their career or roll the dice and declare for the NFL draft? Sure, but it already feels too much like free agency with the transfer portal; imagine what it will look like when universities can directly pay players. I understand coaches can move around as much as they want, so student-athletes should have the same freedom. However, I’ve seen really good athletes–like Isaiah Neyor for Wyoming–get offers from “bigger universities” and their career comes to a screeching halt because of promises of greener pastures.

Is there going to be a salary cap or will it be like the MLB? Imagine Texas pulling a Dodgers move and offering the top 5 quarterbacks in high school 10 million dollars to come play for them. Hopefully there’s a silver lining, like students signing contracts to stay with a school, adding incentives for student athletes who play in bowl games, and less shady under the table deals between boosters and players. I’m scared the traditions we love about college football will be erased because of playoff expansion/free agency.

Where do we go from here?

Maybe all of this is the post-football depression talking, but I do have legitimate concerns for the future of college football. There seems to be too much of an emphasis on the playoff and finding out who the “best team in the country is” rather than keeping traditions and pageantry of college sports. If you google “Nick Saban College Football Playoff”, you’ll know exactly what I’m talking about. Too many casuals wrote him off as a control freak afraid of change, but he was speaking for a lot of CFB fans who want to keep traditions alive. I’ll provide what I think is a solution in a later blog such as promotion/relegation. What do you think? Is college football headed in the right direction? I’m curious if there’s a way to draw more people to the sport while keeping traditions alive. I’ll leave you with a hot take–Conference Championships matter more than National Championships.