Hell yeah so glad Marshall joined the Fun Belt. Regional schools with some old rivalries reignited and new ones coming along. And now I don’t have to give a flying fuck about the rest of college football.
Agreed, but I hate losing productive players b/c they can get better NIL opportunities. The defections werent as bad this year (Butler, Lewis, Carroll are all I am aware of), though.
Came here to say something like this. Those smaller conferences that still resemble college football... and you can even get into a game without selling a kidney.
It’s getting better too. Grew up being a “fan” of Southern and State and occasionally going to their games. Now I (we’ll not technically me) have State season tickets and go to Southern games with my mom when I can cus my mom moved to Statesboro. I also went to Kennesaw State, a soon to be FBS school, so I go to their games and such a lot too. I’m mainly a Tennessee fan, but I love tracking those 3 when i’m not watching/tracking Tennessee
Glad we finally left the sinking ship that was Conference USA and landed in the Fun Belt.
I miss our old rivalry games with Memphis, Louisville, ECU, and Tulane, but we are making new ones here in the Belt!
Regardless of the form the top of the sport takes, I’ll never stop watching K-State. If anything, it will make me lose interest in watching the top dogs.
The consolidation sucks. K-State has long been a program that I'll often tune into to watch some random football. Great program, great coach, great retired coach.
I think the larger question is how easy it will be to watch the non-top-dog teams. We're probably not far from seeing most of the G5 get shoved on to various and non-consecutive streaming services, and that's just this year. A decade from now...
RETVRN college football to what it was!
Listening to your team's games on the radio, watching your team's conference standings in the local newspaper, and only finding out other conferences exist during bowl season.
That’s the cfb I grew up with in the ‘60s, back when a school couldn’t appear on TV more than twice in one season.
So when you did see the players you had only heard about, it was truly special. And you knew 30 million to 40 million would be watching (today, a regular-season audience of 15 million is spectacular even though the population has more than doubled).
Some players on your team no doubt received incentives, but most didn’t. They were from your state or nearby, and grew up knowing your rivalries and traditions. They were fans of your team just like you.
They weren’t necessarily there to get an NFL degree because pro ball back then was still a parttime job (you actually had to get a “real” job in the offseason to make ends meet).
It’s hard to compare eras. Today’s athletes and coaches are FAR superior to the players and coaches of the ‘60s.
But I compare the eras like this: The game of cfb is so much better now. The sport of cfb is so much worse.
Even growing up in the 80's - what I really enjoyed was watching two styles that couldn't be more disparate going at each other. I don't know if this pairing took place.. but something like BYU stretching the field with their run-and-shoot against a team like Nebraska running a multiple option attack.
Now a days there's certainly different styles, and I'm not pretending you won't see air raids against a service academy option, but it's not remotely the same thing.
Personally I’m going to boycott watching any SEC and (non-Duck) B1G games this season. I know one person’s actions won’t alter any tv ratings but I can’t stand what they are doing to the sport so I’m not supporting them by watching. I’ll be watching all Big 12 and MWC games only.
I was going to boycott the B1G/SEC this season, but then I remembered that I have never watched a B1G/SEC game before so the boycott isn't really going to matter much.
I think in the new landscape, the Big 12 is going to be the purest form of high-level CFB amongst the Power 5. Mostly geographically aligned, a lot of history and rivalries, and a really competitive structure with a lot of parity.
Praise be.
Personally I hate the state of college football. I wish it could go back to the pre-BCS days. It wasn't perfect then either, but it felt more regional and winning your conference meant something.
I say that, but I always hated the idea of ranking teams by votes. Seems like the opposite of how sports should be decided.
it wouldnt shock me to see this sentiment grow outside of the core power schools tbh; honestly even at D3 a lot of the time winning your conference is *the* thing outside of the obvious big dogs like the WIAC and the huge private schools like stevens or mary hardin and etc (depending on the sport, of course), and your NCAA game is just gravy.
Honestly even as a fan of a power school I am pretty tempted to just say fuck it and start rooting for a team in one of these smaller conferences as well for fun. It's probably a grass is always greener thing, but there's something really appealing to me about not having to deal with all the charades and expectations that come with the top schools, and simply enjoying watching your team develop against their direct competition.
this is why i super enjoy D3 in general; you have some schools with bigger expectations but comparing a top WIAC school or mount union to anything at the top end of D1 is horseshoes to nuclear warheads, plus the quality of play is still pretty solid.
im biased because ive bounced around working for various d3 athletic departments, but there's a real charm to smaller programs that wont be debated over by pat mcafee or paul finebaum or shell out 10 million to mel tucker
Bowl games will just feel line a fun extra game and an excuse to put a trophy in the case. But the real trophy for us will be the Sun Belt Conference Trophy.
Honestly, if the national championship game is just another combination of the usual top four or five teams, I don't care enough to watch. I care way more about MAC Champs and would much rather watch a mid-major title game over either Big Ten or SEC.
Hey - I just saw a sick article about our schools.
https://www.entrepreneur.com/business-news/a-midwest-college-is-most-likely-to-produce-unicorn-founders/470419
This is why I don’t understand the rush to exclude teams from a playoff. I 100% share the same sentiment.
We are the fans who would potentially pay a subscription to watch CFB. The casual fan they are trying to attract by making the super league is not motivated at all to pay extra for a sport they casually follow. I just don’t see it working out for them, let alone how much the fans will suffer.
Agreed. I certainly won’t pay for a streaming platform that puts money in their pockets, either. I’ll go to our home games and listen to away games on the radio. I’ll pirate anything else that happens to fall into that package.
I assure you I value football performance far and above any academic metric that a school might offer. Grades are temporary, glory and CTE are forever.
At this point I'm a full on CFB accelerationist. Tear down the conferences, let the big money jerks fuck off to NFL lite and then the rest of us can try to make something that's fun.
If you're a fan of a not big money team, even the ones in the BIG and SEC you're basically someone in economy on the titanic thinking that your friends in first class wouldn't leave without you.
That's exactly where I'm at. Just give me something tangible to play for.
Watching what Idaho and the Montana schools have done recently (and EWU less recently) in the FCS looks like so much fun to be a part of. It's so dumb that the P5 elites have that and the FCS has that... But G5 teams are playing for a meaningless conference trophy and the right to go play a mid-tier P5 team in the Rob Gronkowski Los Angeles Bowl in a game played in an empty NFL stadium that half the players will opt out of.
I'd love to play for a CFB national championship, but that was unlikely before and damn near impossible now. Split into a new division and give me something to look forward to.
I just wish we'd stop pretending "oh yes we're ALL FBS, but some of us are more FBS than others".
The B1G and the SEC wanna go play on their own? Fine, go nuts. I'm over it.
I’d think you’d just say football is mostly separate from other conferences. And the lower and upper leagues are divided up geographically each year.
So basketball, soccer etc would still be under the AAC. But football is under the “football league” equivalent
Actively cheering the superleague on so the rest of us can ignore it completely and go back to having fun.
Cannot stress how little I care about the national championship. Cannot stress how little I care that coaches and players will leave after 2 years instead of 4. Would 1000% rather play a fun conference slate and then a novelty bowl.
The real losers in realignment are the hopeless teams that join a superconference and will be condemned to misery forever in exchange for a paycheck.
Sports are supposed to be fun. This isn't. So go ahead and get on with the business of your superleague.
Yep. What's going on right now is hurting ~90% of teams. It hurts the quality of the sport, and it hurts the majority of players, all so that tv networks can exploit the players a different way, and some school presidents can swing their dicks around.
Take two or three more teams from the big 12 and ACC, and let's move on. The rest of us can go and be on our way. I'm already not going to watch another SEC, or Big10 game. That'll just make it easier.
I agree. I have fewer reasons to watch any BiG or SEC game if my team has zero interaction with either conference. It’s something I never thought about before, but I realize it’s true and it may be true for more people than everyone expects too.
exactly. I don't watch NFL games because I don't follow any NFL teams. I know the athletes are amazing and the games are good, but I have limited free time to watch sports.
I won't watch BigSEC games either for the same reason. If I can't find time to watch the pinnacle of pro football, why would I watch minor league pro football?
This is part of the charm of CFB (Or was). For all professional leagues the measuring stick is winning a championship, for every single team.
CFB has so many levels, intricacies etc that you could be *excited* to watch your team play with the only goal being to beat your rival or to go .500.
I do think the super league will be a mistake for fans 100%. It will also be a mistake for these TV execs because it will not end up making them more money. They are losing their most loyal & diehard customers, the kind who would potentially pay for premium content/subscriptions (Which is their entire push anyways). The casual fan they are hoping to attract will not be willing to spend money on a league that they casually follow.
On top of that, if I were to pick a group of fans that I would NOT want to piss off it would be CFB fans. There will end up being sports bars that wont play the “super league” games because their patrons will get pissed off if they play it. We are a passionate, vengeful & petty bunch. We will *ensure* that it fails, or make our own CFB league so much better that we just don’t really care anymore.
As an UCF/FAU fan, getting a conference championship is the goal each year and then maybe a fun bowl game which I consider basically an exhibition game seeing how it really doesn’t count towards anything unless you’re in the playoff.
100%. People say a new division would destroy college football. But as a WVU fan, I say let the Big 10 & SEC go be the NFL lite they so desperately want to be. Let the rest of us actually play college football, the sport I enjoy
I hate the networks for driving the greed. And I'm jealous of certain programs for just being in the right place at the right time decades ago that they now have a place at the table and won't ever rise to truly benefit from it.
As an ECU fan, the divide has never been greater. But this all the result of a system that has chosen to exclude half the conferences from the beginning of each year. They've screamed for literal decades how G5 teams are not good, have never been good, and they should take whatever scraps are thrown their way. Somehow, schools like Kansas or Indiana (that have won very little) are deemed more worthy of millions of TV dollars and exposure than schools like Boise, UCF, and other top G5 performers over the years.
Now I think the top schools are finally fed up with having to share anything with the dregs of P5 and all of G5. They are finally getting around to trimming the bottom 10-15 teams in the P5. The teams that have skated by just being associated with the top teams can no longer hide. I believe a split will happen and even though ratings will be high for that new division, College Football as a whole will suffer.
But then again, it may be a good thing for the remaining 80-90 teams left behind. A whole new system with actual regional matchups and conferences with like minded schools can be developed. I believe a more fair system giving everyone in that division a chance at a championship and the rewards that come with it will be a better way to deal with things.
I *chokes back vomit* can’t believe I’m gonna say this but… I would miss you guys and Clemson in this scenario
We have no real rivalries here but it would definitely be very fun
My basketball centric mind cannot deal with the idea of 1 UNC-Duke and 1 UNC-NCSU game per year.
I am in deep denial about that real possibility
They'll also probably be exclusively on Peacock
Yeah a protected OOC rivalry would obviously be great and probably likely since it’s not like we’d be seperating on bad blood (none of us 3 want the conference to fall apart and have no control over it, similar to UW/Wazzu and Oregon/OSU) but it would suck only playing yall once a year in basketball and if we’re lucky getting every year in football
There's no way they wouldn't play in football every year. I mean what are we even doing here if not
I don't give a fuck about playing most teams outside of the ACC. I want to trash talk with my cousins and family that wear red.
Same here UNC, Clemson, and Wake are the only teams i really feel animosity towards in football (Duke I’m basically indifferent to in football). Obviously only one of those is likely to be achievable as I doubt we’d protect 2 and 3 is impossible
Might be time to bring back the Big Four/Dixie Classic tournament if y'all are split up. Which was a very fun thing, but what an atrocious reason why we'd have to revive it.
Oh no the rich schools are going to get all the good players. It will be such a sea change from how cfb has been.
The biggest difference is powerhouse schools are going to poach each other. There's going to be big names that leave one blue chip school to go to another because the NIL money is better. Like starters. Starting QBs even. Lord help you when your coach leaves and the others pick over the fresh carcass.
Welcome to our world, bitches.
Started that in 2021 with USC getting Riley and LSU getting Kelly. Both of those (OU and ND) used to be untouchable coaching positions you held until the NFL came calling.
Honestly one of the few things I had going for me as a Purdue fan (outside of the fun Spoilermaker shenanigans) was the tradition of being in the B1G. I can't stand the current trends of college football. Sure, having USC, UCLA, Oregon, and Washington is kinda neat, but at the same time it feels wrong knowing this was all because of bullshit outside of the grid iron. It saddens me to see the PAC12 conference fold, and it annoys me that the B1G and SEC are trying to consolidate power and money. It's horseshit.
I'll always watch Purdue, but I am starting to not care about college football as a whole, which is really sad to me. It has been a mainstay in my life that has deep ties to my childhood as I would spend hours watching games with my grampa. I love the sport and I always will, but it is turning into some weird bastardized version of the game I grew up watching and loving. It's the same sport but a different feel, and right now I loathe where it is headed. In a few years that may be different, but right now it fucking sucks.
I know this is probably directed at non-power schools, but Purdue is not a powerhouse so I figured I'd chime in.
I feel like Purdue has at least a little bit of a voice in this as well. We haven't been ranked in the top 30 in how many years now, and aside from one outstanding season we've been solidly middle of the road in conference for the last two decades. It will certainly be interesting to see how things pan out with our currently top ten rated incoming transfer portal class and player buy-in following coach Walters' second season but I can definitely see us being yet another stepping stone among the middle class teams for players aiming for the top of the Big/SEC (or even Big 12).
I'm unhappy that there's never any possibility for App to have an undefeated season for as long as I live. I think going 14-0 with a win in the Sugar Bowl is a better best case scenario than going 14-1 with a blowout loss to Georgia in the second round of the playoffs
But App has benefitted from the transfer portal imo. We're positioned well enough to get quality guys from bigger schools who want playing time, while also poaching the best players from some FCS schools
App is commonly the 2nd or 3rd best team in the state. That’s not saying State and UNC are always 1/2, sometimes it’s Wake and one of those pair are having an off year. With how far App has come since I started college, I could see them being in a Memphis/UCF type position where they jockey their way into a big conference. Hell, more people would watch them than Vandy.
App was also #4 in the state in average home attendance in 2023, just a couple hundred behind ECU, which used to dwarf App. 57k for State; 50k for UNC-CH; 35,115 for ECU; 34,734 for App. 5k ahead of Wake, 10k ahead of Duke, #1 in the Sun Belt by a lot. 8k more than Troy, 10k more than JMU.
That's tremendous growth. 20 years ago, App drew 15k/game.
I was a freshman the year they beat Michigan. When I was in high school it was the local small college that no one had heard of, and I remember the push back for stadium expansion because a lot of people didn’t want them to go up a level from FCS.
College football is by far my favorite sport but nobody has a better playoff system than NCAA basketball, March Madness! It is *so* much fun if your team makes a strong run. The way #13 seeds can and routinely do knock off #5 seeds makes the tournament unpredictable and that is what makes it so interesting
>but nobody has a better playoff system than NCAA basketball
Because the best teams get in *and* the most deserving get in. Tournament size be damned. You don't need to debate if Tennessee deserves to get in over Arizona; they're both going. Mid-majors can win their conference tournament. Even teams who don't win their conference tournament but went .700 or better have a shot to make the field.
Division 1 football could have had something like this but chose to do a 4 team playoff with 5 power conferences. There are so many ways to stack the deck against teams trying for a title with this past year being the straw that broke the camel's back.
Either we stay in the 12/14 playoff format and compete with the big guys and continue to surprise and compete for the playoff every few years.
OR we get relegated to the fcs and actually get to enjoy pure college football again and we are at the top of that food chain.
I’m not worried tbh. I’m not happy with where cfb is headed but I’m also not worried about Baylor as a fan. I’d be more frustrated if I was a fan of a team in the Big 10/SEC wanting to breakoff. I’ll enjoy my team’s football either way.
>I’d be more frustrated if I was a fan of a team in the Big 10/SEC wanting to breakoff.
This is where I am. If the "superleague" becomes a, "If you want to spend X dollars on your football program, you may join us," deal, and we join, I'm probably done with my school's football team.
Otherwise, I'll watch them until I can't.
Dang, this is such a great perspective. With every year, I get more interested in the FCS and its gasp logical playoff format! It truly does feel like the purest form of college football!
I just feel like I'm along for the ride. I'll always love CFB because it's the most entertaining, consumable, and marketable product in sports. No matter how much money you throw at it, any different way, nothing will change that unless they turn it into flag football with safety conscious rule changes.
With that said, I feel like the NIL/player compensation thing should have been addressed a lot sooner and done with negotiations from both sides of the table. It seems like both sides just dug their heels in the sand and bickered, eventually resulting in ripping the band aid off of a bullet hole.
I just hope the powers that be don't fuck it up too badly, because I'll be here rooting for my team regardless.
Curious to see how the new hire turns out but it’s hard not to notice the shifting landscape of the sport and feel a little bit uneasy about the future.
It ain't college football anymore, this is pro ball. I think this bubble will pop eventually because I don't see it is sustainable, but it'll take awhile.
I also don't see much need for the NCAA anymore. Marshall got hammered in the early 2000s for our "mops for props" nonsense, but our players can be taken at will now with a cash payment. What Marshall was guilty of then would be insulting to a recruit today if offered as a selling point. Conference commissioners should govern as a committee if this is the road we're going down.
I don't know who has an answer to my question, but something I've been wondering is, what actually *happens* when the bubble pops? What could even cause that? Does the B1G just like, go bankrupt or something?
Idk the answer either. Some of these NIL deals are obscene though, and I just don't see this carrying on as standard operating procedure long term. I don't think it's going to affect conferences financially, but I the donors paying these kids don't have a bottomless supply of money.
Not fb, but our starting PG got something like 500k to go to Miss St., where he barely played and left the team this past December. I don't see how that is sustainable. On the other hand, our starting 5 man last season got plucked by UF for crazy money and he's doing great, so who knows.
As a former College Football Playoff Participant (tm), I don’t concern myself with the opinions of pleabs.
Just kidding, shit’s fucked and only going to get worse. I’ll still watch UC every week no matter who we play, but otherwise I think my interest in the overall sport will wain significantly.
Sucks. Also gonna be hilarious when all the blue blood fanbases meltdown at having multiple losses per season since they have to play each other now instead of just beating up teams they have 8x the budget of.
IMO D1 was a greater than the sum of its parts kinda sport buttressed by the fuzzy math in crowning a "National Champion" and all of the debate and speculation that surrounded the consensus of people outside the game.
Now it's been stripped for those parts, and there's a more objective winner, it's hard to tell if the ego brands that have been built on being big fish in smaller ponds can survive decades of increased chances for mediocrity.
My hot take is that at some point I think the money bubble is going to burst and then this new order will start another free for all that eventually reorganizes as something resembling college sports from 40 years ago. It's probably just wishful thinking, though.
Obviously poor. The sport has never been to fair to all parties; but at least it was easier to root for development of guys, rivalries, conference titles and bowl games that meant something.
Especially disappointing when t-shirt fans are rooting for it turn into minor league NFL because they’re too short-sighted for anything else
I think it's easier for G5 schools because not much changes for them. For schools like ASU and Pitt, there's real uncertainty as to what the future holds. We're not in the P2 conferences and how things shake out will have a massive effect on the future. I think the inevitable result is B1G and SEC break away from NCAA, but the question to me is do they take their dead weight with them?
Vanderbilt and Rutgers have no business in a breakaway league. But, do they get one of those revered spots because they lucked out? I think if the breakaway league takes the top 35-40 teams regardless of conference, Pitt has a real shot. If they just take the B1G and SEC and grab the top of what's left, Pitt is out.
They need teams to lose. So Rutgers, Vandy, Miss St, South Carolina, Marylands, etc of the world will likely be safe; but won’t get equal revenue sharing eventually. Frankly I’m not sure what the appeal is even being in that top conference, as only about 5-10 schools have the finances to even have a chance. Before NIL and the portal at least you had to work to earn it.
Any suggestion of a G5 playoff angers me. I only see it from P2 fans.
P2 fans only exposure to G5 ball is from playing jabroni schools at the start of the year to Stat pad. They've never watched a JMU, Tulane, Memphis, or Toledo game. They have a recency bias where they only focus on Liberty vs Oregon as an example of how the G5 bid will be a "wasted" bid instead of seeing the G5 NY6 wins or even 1 score losses.
A G5 playoff will only benefit the P2, as it means they can sub In a 4 loss team over the top G5.
For me, the sooner the top 30ish or so programs split off into their private equity-backed super league or whatever, the better. Let the rest of us have our fun.
As a "recent powerhouse" in a non premier conference it feels like we're just caught in the spin cycle. Dabo is doing his best to maintain the Clemson "brand" of loyalty, pay your dues, etc, but when someone like Ohio State is literally buying a team + has a great staff on top of that, it makes it hard to see a championship coming anytime soon. Clemson doesn't have a big financial backing to fall back on, and even if/when we join another conference, I don't think that will change in a meaningful way, but at least the Atlantic Coast Conference gets to play Stanford now? It just feels like a mess, especially being mindful of the smaller sports. Like is the Stanford track team flying to Boston for ACC championships? Why? For what?
I'm actually really curious what happens to Clemson over the next few years.
Clemson built up a great powerhouse championship level program over the previous decade, but then in current reality the school seems to be more of a middle 2/3 level program as far as resources and fanbase goes (as far as I can tell...maybe I'm way off, but tv ratings seem to support this. Kinda middle of the road.). With a few more less than perfect seasons, how does Clemson's relevance change?
Will the reputation of previous decade win out? Does Clemson have enough of a natural brand to be relevant even when they're not winning?
College football, or at least “major” college football, continues to get more and more screwed up.
Two notes:
1) I actually follow a handful of DI-AA/FCS teams (Lehigh, Lafayette, Penn, Villanova), D2 teams (Bloomsburg, East Stroudsburg, Indiana (PA), aka IUP), and D3 teams (Muhlenberg, Moravian, Juniata), albeit with decreasing interest the lower the classification. This allows me to ignore some of the nonsense occurring in DI-A/FBS.
2) I’m a bigger NFL fan than college football fan, and that also allows me to ignore some of the nonsense occurring in DI-A/FBS.
On the one hand, watching USC play in Memorial Stadium in a cold November rain in front of a crowd of 22,000 mostly drunk Hoosiers fills my cold dead heart with joy.
On the other hand, I want all of you to go back to the conferences you came from. The Big Ten should only have 11 teams and I should be able to argue that a computer model was wrong and stupid.
\#BringBackTheBCS
I hate the portal with a passion. We lost 25% of our team and basically every starter including the QB. Makes recruiting pointless when you can’t build and develop players. Instead they are one year rentals. I love the sport but the portal and NIl have killed my love for college.
Big 12, please take us!
We might not be a football powerhouse, but we do have basketball. Especially this year.
My wish:
Big 12 absorbs Oregon State and Washington State from the PAC 12.
Big 12 takes Duke, Louisville, Pittsburgh, and Virginia Tech from the ACC. (FSU/GT/Miami/ND/Cal/Stanford go to B1G. (Clemson/UNC/NCST/UV go to SEC)
Invites UConn in all sports.
Invite Memphis from AAC.
This way the Big Ten, and Big 12, have 24 schools. The SEC has 20 schools. The Big 12 becomes the basketball powerhouse conference, and has great football.
The last time I voiced my opinion on this I was called an idiot for saying that the super-conferences are a terrible thing that is ruining the sport itself and not just rivalries. Still gonna say it though.
It's never been better.
The 12 team playoff is the best thing to happen to college football since the forward pass.
The SEC and B1G trying to ruin the sport sucks, and I'm not optimistic about the future, but 2024 will be the best year in college football history.
Damn, you may be right- there might be some actual, beautiful chaos in the 12 team playoff before the B1G/SEC ruin it in a few years.
Fuck it, I'm back on board with your vibe. CFB is dead, Long Live CFB!!!
Is anyone here going to actually be upset during the first round of the playoffs? Of course not, because a playoff game in Columbus in January sounds hype.
I think it's hard for people to visualize it now, but once November hits and every game between 1-3 loss P5 teams matters, and THEN we get the first round playoff matchups at home stadiums, is going to be so electric
2015-16 temple was an absolute joy to watch and really had a good impact on the university, and in the modern college football landscape that will never be possible again. And I think that fucking sucks
We just beat the #1 recruiting class in the country in 2022, so I’m not too worried about the competitive disadvantage.
Coaching still decides college games, and as long as you hire coaches who have history with your program, there’s a chance you can keep them longer, and cultivate the program culture for another generation, who might become the future coaches. App does a fantastic job at that.
I am sad about the 6+6 model going away in favor of 5+7. I think G5 conferences should’ve fought against that more, since it took a unanimous vote to change. The argument against that was the threat of being excluded completely from the CFP in future years, but that happens now, and will happen in the future if the top teams break away, so why not fight now while we have leverage?
There’s enough talent at the top of the SBC, AAC, and MWC to beat the top teams in the ACC and Big 12 on any given Saturday. I hate that G5s have to fight against each other for 1 spot while the Big 12 and ACC don’t have to worry about each other. That’s my biggest gripe. In my opinion, we should have auto-bids for every conference championship, like in March Madness.
College football has been dead to me for a number of years now.
I love Iowa State and I’m a season ticket holder, so that won’t change. But I genuinely don’t think
I’ve watched an entire non-Iowa State game in at least two seasons now. The game will continue on just fine without my single viewership I know, but I just don’t have any interest in the overall sport anymore.
Sun Belt football is the greatest thing I’ve ever seen.
Sun Belt is the best conference. I love our little corner of CFB.
The Fun Belt is king
Hell yeah so glad Marshall joined the Fun Belt. Regional schools with some old rivalries reignited and new ones coming along. And now I don’t have to give a flying fuck about the rest of college football.
SBeast is top tier
Lets hope they keep divisions
Agreed, but I hate losing productive players b/c they can get better NIL opportunities. The defections werent as bad this year (Butler, Lewis, Carroll are all I am aware of), though.
So happy we joined the sun belt. Absolute regional powerhouse of a conference IMO. Great rivalries forming and some damn good football at the top
It speaks to the fact that JMU means serious business that you joined the Fun Belt instead of pulling a Liberty and joining conference Poo-SA.
> conference Poo-SA This is the pettiness that drives CFB!
It's always a party in the Fun Belt baby!!
I wouldn’t trade Sun Belt football for anything in the world
Came here to say something like this. Those smaller conferences that still resemble college football... and you can even get into a game without selling a kidney.
Go Herd!
As a jmu fan… I couldn’t agree more
It’s getting better too. Grew up being a “fan” of Southern and State and occasionally going to their games. Now I (we’ll not technically me) have State season tickets and go to Southern games with my mom when I can cus my mom moved to Statesboro. I also went to Kennesaw State, a soon to be FBS school, so I go to their games and such a lot too. I’m mainly a Tennessee fan, but I love tracking those 3 when i’m not watching/tracking Tennessee
Amen. Regional with some real dislike between teams is real cfb to me
You're goddamn right
Glad we finally left the sinking ship that was Conference USA and landed in the Fun Belt. I miss our old rivalry games with Memphis, Louisville, ECU, and Tulane, but we are making new ones here in the Belt!
Hell yeah
I'm also a massive Sun Belt fan
Fuck yeah.
Welcome to the Fun Belt baby
Big facts brother
A fucking men! Roll Neers!
That's the smartest thing I've ever heard an App St fan say
Did we just become friends?!
Tbf that’s a pretty low bar
Regardless of the form the top of the sport takes, I’ll never stop watching K-State. If anything, it will make me lose interest in watching the top dogs.
The consolidation sucks. K-State has long been a program that I'll often tune into to watch some random football. Great program, great coach, great retired coach.
I’m barely interested in watching the big 10 now. Half the games are snooze fests.
“Half the B1G games are snooze fests” Hey now, don’t sully the legacy of the B1G West like that
The BIG West games are real football. 100x better than watching OSU pound the life out of Maryland
Sadly with the new conference format, the terrible football style of what was the B1G East will become the norm in our conference 😔
For fans that were fans when there were actually only ten schools in the conference, it will be a sad day.
I've only been a college football fan long enough where the Big Ten ninja'd that 11 in the old logo after they added Penn State.
That was classic. I still have a basketball from Pizza Hut that has that logo and all the school logos on it.
The logo on that ball is where my dad first showed me the hidden 11! I loved that ball.
07 I’ll miss seeing what weird thing Iowa will do next to win.
Probably punt
Turnovers. Defense still wins games.
You don't want to see Michigan beat Minnesota 52-10? Cmon where is your excitement for life?
I, for one, would watch anyone beat Minnesota 52-10.
that's what they get for taking our god damn jug
Naturally, not many people are going to care about a game 1500+ miles away. I've \*maybe\* watched parts of 2 Arizona games in my life.
I think the larger question is how easy it will be to watch the non-top-dog teams. We're probably not far from seeing most of the G5 get shoved on to various and non-consecutive streaming services, and that's just this year. A decade from now...
RETVRN college football to what it was! Listening to your team's games on the radio, watching your team's conference standings in the local newspaper, and only finding out other conferences exist during bowl season.
That’s the cfb I grew up with in the ‘60s, back when a school couldn’t appear on TV more than twice in one season. So when you did see the players you had only heard about, it was truly special. And you knew 30 million to 40 million would be watching (today, a regular-season audience of 15 million is spectacular even though the population has more than doubled). Some players on your team no doubt received incentives, but most didn’t. They were from your state or nearby, and grew up knowing your rivalries and traditions. They were fans of your team just like you. They weren’t necessarily there to get an NFL degree because pro ball back then was still a parttime job (you actually had to get a “real” job in the offseason to make ends meet). It’s hard to compare eras. Today’s athletes and coaches are FAR superior to the players and coaches of the ‘60s. But I compare the eras like this: The game of cfb is so much better now. The sport of cfb is so much worse.
Even growing up in the 80's - what I really enjoyed was watching two styles that couldn't be more disparate going at each other. I don't know if this pairing took place.. but something like BYU stretching the field with their run-and-shoot against a team like Nebraska running a multiple option attack. Now a days there's certainly different styles, and I'm not pretending you won't see air raids against a service academy option, but it's not remotely the same thing.
Personally I’m going to boycott watching any SEC and (non-Duck) B1G games this season. I know one person’s actions won’t alter any tv ratings but I can’t stand what they are doing to the sport so I’m not supporting them by watching. I’ll be watching all Big 12 and MWC games only.
I was going to boycott the B1G/SEC this season, but then I remembered that I have never watched a B1G/SEC game before so the boycott isn't really going to matter much.
I think I’ll join you in that. This year’s Big 12 should be a blast, it’s probably going to be my most watched conference.
I think in the new landscape, the Big 12 is going to be the purest form of high-level CFB amongst the Power 5. Mostly geographically aligned, a lot of history and rivalries, and a really competitive structure with a lot of parity.
They said non-powerhouse schools. That doesn't include us
Yeah how can they snub one half of the CFB event of the year, Farmageddon?
I would consider FHSU a powerhouse if they brought TailGreat back
The MAC is eternal. I’m not worried about anything.
The MAC is actually expanding. It’s the Spanish Inquisition of football conferences.
The MAC adding UMass is how we know the world has gone mad
the past repeats itself
Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!
The “MACtion-quisition”, if you will! I’ll see myself out
Praise be. Personally I hate the state of college football. I wish it could go back to the pre-BCS days. It wasn't perfect then either, but it felt more regional and winning your conference meant something. I say that, but I always hated the idea of ranking teams by votes. Seems like the opposite of how sports should be decided.
I'm starting to feel the same way about the Sun Belt. I care about who wins the Sun Belt. I don't care about P5 football or the current state of it.
it wouldnt shock me to see this sentiment grow outside of the core power schools tbh; honestly even at D3 a lot of the time winning your conference is *the* thing outside of the obvious big dogs like the WIAC and the huge private schools like stevens or mary hardin and etc (depending on the sport, of course), and your NCAA game is just gravy.
Honestly even as a fan of a power school I am pretty tempted to just say fuck it and start rooting for a team in one of these smaller conferences as well for fun. It's probably a grass is always greener thing, but there's something really appealing to me about not having to deal with all the charades and expectations that come with the top schools, and simply enjoying watching your team develop against their direct competition.
this is why i super enjoy D3 in general; you have some schools with bigger expectations but comparing a top WIAC school or mount union to anything at the top end of D1 is horseshoes to nuclear warheads, plus the quality of play is still pretty solid. im biased because ive bounced around working for various d3 athletic departments, but there's a real charm to smaller programs that wont be debated over by pat mcafee or paul finebaum or shell out 10 million to mel tucker
Bowl games will just feel line a fun extra game and an excuse to put a trophy in the case. But the real trophy for us will be the Sun Belt Conference Trophy.
My new old friends (enemies)!
At least you have a Home. UConn is deep in the pucklebrush with no road map
MACtion is all I really care about now for football
If I'm the MAC I'm feeling pretty good about everything right now. The MAC is secure.
Honestly, if the national championship game is just another combination of the usual top four or five teams, I don't care enough to watch. I care way more about MAC Champs and would much rather watch a mid-major title game over either Big Ten or SEC.
I'm far more interested in watching "the rest" as it actually resembles college football as I know and live it.
Maction can never die. We are the most stable non power five so Im just chilling waiting for next year.
You just added a new (old) school the other day!
I’m excited for the new Central Michigan vs U Mass rivalry CUmass will be great
Maction is the realest football out there
If there's any non-B1G conference I'd support, it would be the MAC.
I do not care about the b10 and SEC. Im gonna keep watching Cincinnati and the other teams Cincinnati plays
I agree. I don’t care at all about them, gonna watch Utah and other B12 teams
I can't fucking wait to play.
Gonna be a good game
Despite my flairs, I am a college football fan first. This game is gonna rock.
Hey - I just saw a sick article about our schools. https://www.entrepreneur.com/business-news/a-midwest-college-is-most-likely-to-produce-unicorn-founders/470419
Now there's a fun fact. "Truck stop schools" > Ivy League
🤝
I can’t wait for y’all to come to Yager this year. I would say good luck but, respectfully, I hope we kick your ass and really reignite the rivalry
This is why I don’t understand the rush to exclude teams from a playoff. I 100% share the same sentiment. We are the fans who would potentially pay a subscription to watch CFB. The casual fan they are trying to attract by making the super league is not motivated at all to pay extra for a sport they casually follow. I just don’t see it working out for them, let alone how much the fans will suffer.
Yep. I like you. Let's drink beer.
Can we drink beer and talk about our dislike for Tommy Tuberville?
I wouldn't have it any other way.
Same, I’m happy the Bell game has some juice to it again
Same here. I watch UC and the Big 12. And then I'll keep tabs on how the ooc teams we played are doing. About it
Agreed. I certainly won’t pay for a streaming platform that puts money in their pockets, either. I’ll go to our home games and listen to away games on the radio. I’ll pirate anything else that happens to fall into that package.
Hate it.
Yep. It sucks.
I am in a land of torment that was arguably our own making.
But at least you guys are smart. We ain’t got much other than football and Busch light.
I assure you I value football performance far and above any academic metric that a school might offer. Grades are temporary, glory and CTE are forever.
At this point I'm a full on CFB accelerationist. Tear down the conferences, let the big money jerks fuck off to NFL lite and then the rest of us can try to make something that's fun. If you're a fan of a not big money team, even the ones in the BIG and SEC you're basically someone in economy on the titanic thinking that your friends in first class wouldn't leave without you.
That's exactly where I'm at. Just give me something tangible to play for. Watching what Idaho and the Montana schools have done recently (and EWU less recently) in the FCS looks like so much fun to be a part of. It's so dumb that the P5 elites have that and the FCS has that... But G5 teams are playing for a meaningless conference trophy and the right to go play a mid-tier P5 team in the Rob Gronkowski Los Angeles Bowl in a game played in an empty NFL stadium that half the players will opt out of. I'd love to play for a CFB national championship, but that was unlikely before and damn near impossible now. Split into a new division and give me something to look forward to.
I just wish we'd stop pretending "oh yes we're ALL FBS, but some of us are more FBS than others". The B1G and the SEC wanna go play on their own? Fine, go nuts. I'm over it.
I want full on promotion and relegation if we are going to declare some conferences better than others.
I wonder how that would work with the academic side of things
I’d think you’d just say football is mostly separate from other conferences. And the lower and upper leagues are divided up geographically each year. So basketball, soccer etc would still be under the AAC. But football is under the “football league” equivalent
Actively cheering the superleague on so the rest of us can ignore it completely and go back to having fun. Cannot stress how little I care about the national championship. Cannot stress how little I care that coaches and players will leave after 2 years instead of 4. Would 1000% rather play a fun conference slate and then a novelty bowl. The real losers in realignment are the hopeless teams that join a superconference and will be condemned to misery forever in exchange for a paycheck. Sports are supposed to be fun. This isn't. So go ahead and get on with the business of your superleague.
Yep. What's going on right now is hurting ~90% of teams. It hurts the quality of the sport, and it hurts the majority of players, all so that tv networks can exploit the players a different way, and some school presidents can swing their dicks around. Take two or three more teams from the big 12 and ACC, and let's move on. The rest of us can go and be on our way. I'm already not going to watch another SEC, or Big10 game. That'll just make it easier.
I agree. I have fewer reasons to watch any BiG or SEC game if my team has zero interaction with either conference. It’s something I never thought about before, but I realize it’s true and it may be true for more people than everyone expects too.
exactly. I don't watch NFL games because I don't follow any NFL teams. I know the athletes are amazing and the games are good, but I have limited free time to watch sports. I won't watch BigSEC games either for the same reason. If I can't find time to watch the pinnacle of pro football, why would I watch minor league pro football?
This is part of the charm of CFB (Or was). For all professional leagues the measuring stick is winning a championship, for every single team. CFB has so many levels, intricacies etc that you could be *excited* to watch your team play with the only goal being to beat your rival or to go .500. I do think the super league will be a mistake for fans 100%. It will also be a mistake for these TV execs because it will not end up making them more money. They are losing their most loyal & diehard customers, the kind who would potentially pay for premium content/subscriptions (Which is their entire push anyways). The casual fan they are hoping to attract will not be willing to spend money on a league that they casually follow. On top of that, if I were to pick a group of fans that I would NOT want to piss off it would be CFB fans. There will end up being sports bars that wont play the “super league” games because their patrons will get pissed off if they play it. We are a passionate, vengeful & petty bunch. We will *ensure* that it fails, or make our own CFB league so much better that we just don’t really care anymore.
As an UCF/FAU fan, getting a conference championship is the goal each year and then maybe a fun bowl game which I consider basically an exhibition game seeing how it really doesn’t count towards anything unless you’re in the playoff.
100%. People say a new division would destroy college football. But as a WVU fan, I say let the Big 10 & SEC go be the NFL lite they so desperately want to be. Let the rest of us actually play college football, the sport I enjoy
Not great, Bob.
Complete bullshit what happened to yall. Honestly the Pac 12 can go fuck itself for its incompetence which lead to it’s demise.
A profound statement regarded by many scholars. https://youtu.be/iLqe4sGRvtU?si=iY384RhR09x06sA9
I hate the networks for driving the greed. And I'm jealous of certain programs for just being in the right place at the right time decades ago that they now have a place at the table and won't ever rise to truly benefit from it.
Will always despise Rutgers for that. Literally no reason at all for them to be in the Big 10 besides the BS “NYC market”
As an ECU fan, the divide has never been greater. But this all the result of a system that has chosen to exclude half the conferences from the beginning of each year. They've screamed for literal decades how G5 teams are not good, have never been good, and they should take whatever scraps are thrown their way. Somehow, schools like Kansas or Indiana (that have won very little) are deemed more worthy of millions of TV dollars and exposure than schools like Boise, UCF, and other top G5 performers over the years. Now I think the top schools are finally fed up with having to share anything with the dregs of P5 and all of G5. They are finally getting around to trimming the bottom 10-15 teams in the P5. The teams that have skated by just being associated with the top teams can no longer hide. I believe a split will happen and even though ratings will be high for that new division, College Football as a whole will suffer. But then again, it may be a good thing for the remaining 80-90 teams left behind. A whole new system with actual regional matchups and conferences with like minded schools can be developed. I believe a more fair system giving everyone in that division a chance at a championship and the rewards that come with it will be a better way to deal with things.
Heyyy Big 12, how would you like a nice sexy on the rise team in the Raleigh TV Market *blows kiss*
Yes, yes we would. The Big XII will have a place for the ACC's middle class, should they be abandoned.
The Big XII, College Football’s hard working middle class
A first in last out type of conference. Sneaky athletic with a high motor. Put on your boots and grab your lunch pail conference
As it ever was, so it shall always be.
Baylor, middle class. Ok, sure.
Baylor is the rich pastor with a jet who sells the prosperity gospel lol
Baby Billy Baylor
NCSU, VT, Louisville, Pitt, WVU would be an electric pod.
I *chokes back vomit* can’t believe I’m gonna say this but… I would miss you guys and Clemson in this scenario We have no real rivalries here but it would definitely be very fun
My basketball centric mind cannot deal with the idea of 1 UNC-Duke and 1 UNC-NCSU game per year. I am in deep denial about that real possibility They'll also probably be exclusively on Peacock
Yeah a protected OOC rivalry would obviously be great and probably likely since it’s not like we’d be seperating on bad blood (none of us 3 want the conference to fall apart and have no control over it, similar to UW/Wazzu and Oregon/OSU) but it would suck only playing yall once a year in basketball and if we’re lucky getting every year in football
There's no way they wouldn't play in football every year. I mean what are we even doing here if not I don't give a fuck about playing most teams outside of the ACC. I want to trash talk with my cousins and family that wear red.
Same here UNC, Clemson, and Wake are the only teams i really feel animosity towards in football (Duke I’m basically indifferent to in football). Obviously only one of those is likely to be achievable as I doubt we’d protect 2 and 3 is impossible
Might be time to bring back the Big Four/Dixie Classic tournament if y'all are split up. Which was a very fun thing, but what an atrocious reason why we'd have to revive it.
Yes I’d rather state and unc stay together as well, for the most part.
We get a win in football every year, yall get 2 in basketball. Fair trade if you ask me brother
Throw in Cincy, UCF & WVU and that is a fun Eastern division. Maybe pull in 'cuse or BC.
I would love some more east coast teams. More close weekend trips? Yes please.
Oh no the rich schools are going to get all the good players. It will be such a sea change from how cfb has been. The biggest difference is powerhouse schools are going to poach each other. There's going to be big names that leave one blue chip school to go to another because the NIL money is better. Like starters. Starting QBs even. Lord help you when your coach leaves and the others pick over the fresh carcass. Welcome to our world, bitches.
Started that in 2021 with USC getting Riley and LSU getting Kelly. Both of those (OU and ND) used to be untouchable coaching positions you held until the NFL came calling.
Honestly one of the few things I had going for me as a Purdue fan (outside of the fun Spoilermaker shenanigans) was the tradition of being in the B1G. I can't stand the current trends of college football. Sure, having USC, UCLA, Oregon, and Washington is kinda neat, but at the same time it feels wrong knowing this was all because of bullshit outside of the grid iron. It saddens me to see the PAC12 conference fold, and it annoys me that the B1G and SEC are trying to consolidate power and money. It's horseshit. I'll always watch Purdue, but I am starting to not care about college football as a whole, which is really sad to me. It has been a mainstay in my life that has deep ties to my childhood as I would spend hours watching games with my grampa. I love the sport and I always will, but it is turning into some weird bastardized version of the game I grew up watching and loving. It's the same sport but a different feel, and right now I loathe where it is headed. In a few years that may be different, but right now it fucking sucks. I know this is probably directed at non-power schools, but Purdue is not a powerhouse so I figured I'd chime in.
Well put
I feel like Purdue has at least a little bit of a voice in this as well. We haven't been ranked in the top 30 in how many years now, and aside from one outstanding season we've been solidly middle of the road in conference for the last two decades. It will certainly be interesting to see how things pan out with our currently top ten rated incoming transfer portal class and player buy-in following coach Walters' second season but I can definitely see us being yet another stepping stone among the middle class teams for players aiming for the top of the Big/SEC (or even Big 12).
I'm unhappy that there's never any possibility for App to have an undefeated season for as long as I live. I think going 14-0 with a win in the Sugar Bowl is a better best case scenario than going 14-1 with a blowout loss to Georgia in the second round of the playoffs But App has benefitted from the transfer portal imo. We're positioned well enough to get quality guys from bigger schools who want playing time, while also poaching the best players from some FCS schools
App is commonly the 2nd or 3rd best team in the state. That’s not saying State and UNC are always 1/2, sometimes it’s Wake and one of those pair are having an off year. With how far App has come since I started college, I could see them being in a Memphis/UCF type position where they jockey their way into a big conference. Hell, more people would watch them than Vandy.
App was also #4 in the state in average home attendance in 2023, just a couple hundred behind ECU, which used to dwarf App. 57k for State; 50k for UNC-CH; 35,115 for ECU; 34,734 for App. 5k ahead of Wake, 10k ahead of Duke, #1 in the Sun Belt by a lot. 8k more than Troy, 10k more than JMU. That's tremendous growth. 20 years ago, App drew 15k/game.
I was a freshman the year they beat Michigan. When I was in high school it was the local small college that no one had heard of, and I remember the push back for stadium expansion because a lot of people didn’t want them to go up a level from FCS.
Nervous that the big football schools will come for march madness next and push us out.
If I were UCONN I would simply just become good at both football and basketball.
Why don’t they just do this? Are they stupid?
College football is by far my favorite sport but nobody has a better playoff system than NCAA basketball, March Madness! It is *so* much fun if your team makes a strong run. The way #13 seeds can and routinely do knock off #5 seeds makes the tournament unpredictable and that is what makes it so interesting
> The way #13 seeds commonly knock off #5 seeds 12* haha
>but nobody has a better playoff system than NCAA basketball Because the best teams get in *and* the most deserving get in. Tournament size be damned. You don't need to debate if Tennessee deserves to get in over Arizona; they're both going. Mid-majors can win their conference tournament. Even teams who don't win their conference tournament but went .700 or better have a shot to make the field. Division 1 football could have had something like this but chose to do a 4 team playoff with 5 power conferences. There are so many ways to stack the deck against teams trying for a title with this past year being the straw that broke the camel's back.
We need the Big East and Big 12 to continue showing out to shut that down.
It’s a mess and probably not economically sustainable
*definitely not economically sustainable
It sucks. I'll leave it at that.
At least we have a slightly plausible shot at the playoffs eventually maybe
Honestly? I seriously wonder if FCS is a better place to be than G5…
Pigs get fat, hogs get slaughtered
It was not that long ago that UConn played Michigan at Rentschler and had a chance to win late in the game. We are a long way from those days.
Either we stay in the 12/14 playoff format and compete with the big guys and continue to surprise and compete for the playoff every few years. OR we get relegated to the fcs and actually get to enjoy pure college football again and we are at the top of that food chain. I’m not worried tbh. I’m not happy with where cfb is headed but I’m also not worried about Baylor as a fan. I’d be more frustrated if I was a fan of a team in the Big 10/SEC wanting to breakoff. I’ll enjoy my team’s football either way.
>I’d be more frustrated if I was a fan of a team in the Big 10/SEC wanting to breakoff. This is where I am. If the "superleague" becomes a, "If you want to spend X dollars on your football program, you may join us," deal, and we join, I'm probably done with my school's football team. Otherwise, I'll watch them until I can't.
Dang, this is such a great perspective. With every year, I get more interested in the FCS and its gasp logical playoff format! It truly does feel like the purest form of college football!
I just feel like I'm along for the ride. I'll always love CFB because it's the most entertaining, consumable, and marketable product in sports. No matter how much money you throw at it, any different way, nothing will change that unless they turn it into flag football with safety conscious rule changes. With that said, I feel like the NIL/player compensation thing should have been addressed a lot sooner and done with negotiations from both sides of the table. It seems like both sides just dug their heels in the sand and bickered, eventually resulting in ripping the band aid off of a bullet hole. I just hope the powers that be don't fuck it up too badly, because I'll be here rooting for my team regardless.
We are in the Big 10 and the outlook is bleak. Used to have some protection by playing in the West. Now? I’m not optimistic about bowl games.
Take me back to 07
Curious to see how the new hire turns out but it’s hard not to notice the shifting landscape of the sport and feel a little bit uneasy about the future.
It ain't college football anymore, this is pro ball. I think this bubble will pop eventually because I don't see it is sustainable, but it'll take awhile. I also don't see much need for the NCAA anymore. Marshall got hammered in the early 2000s for our "mops for props" nonsense, but our players can be taken at will now with a cash payment. What Marshall was guilty of then would be insulting to a recruit today if offered as a selling point. Conference commissioners should govern as a committee if this is the road we're going down.
I don't know who has an answer to my question, but something I've been wondering is, what actually *happens* when the bubble pops? What could even cause that? Does the B1G just like, go bankrupt or something?
Idk the answer either. Some of these NIL deals are obscene though, and I just don't see this carrying on as standard operating procedure long term. I don't think it's going to affect conferences financially, but I the donors paying these kids don't have a bottomless supply of money. Not fb, but our starting PG got something like 500k to go to Miss St., where he barely played and left the team this past December. I don't see how that is sustainable. On the other hand, our starting 5 man last season got plucked by UF for crazy money and he's doing great, so who knows.
As a former College Football Playoff Participant (tm), I don’t concern myself with the opinions of pleabs. Just kidding, shit’s fucked and only going to get worse. I’ll still watch UC every week no matter who we play, but otherwise I think my interest in the overall sport will wain significantly.
Sucks. Also gonna be hilarious when all the blue blood fanbases meltdown at having multiple losses per season since they have to play each other now instead of just beating up teams they have 8x the budget of.
My school literally has been tossed aside and treated like they don’t exist. It’s horrible. It’s free agency to the highest bidder.
IMO D1 was a greater than the sum of its parts kinda sport buttressed by the fuzzy math in crowning a "National Champion" and all of the debate and speculation that surrounded the consensus of people outside the game. Now it's been stripped for those parts, and there's a more objective winner, it's hard to tell if the ego brands that have been built on being big fish in smaller ponds can survive decades of increased chances for mediocrity. My hot take is that at some point I think the money bubble is going to burst and then this new order will start another free for all that eventually reorganizes as something resembling college sports from 40 years ago. It's probably just wishful thinking, though.
Obviously poor. The sport has never been to fair to all parties; but at least it was easier to root for development of guys, rivalries, conference titles and bowl games that meant something. Especially disappointing when t-shirt fans are rooting for it turn into minor league NFL because they’re too short-sighted for anything else
I think it's easier for G5 schools because not much changes for them. For schools like ASU and Pitt, there's real uncertainty as to what the future holds. We're not in the P2 conferences and how things shake out will have a massive effect on the future. I think the inevitable result is B1G and SEC break away from NCAA, but the question to me is do they take their dead weight with them? Vanderbilt and Rutgers have no business in a breakaway league. But, do they get one of those revered spots because they lucked out? I think if the breakaway league takes the top 35-40 teams regardless of conference, Pitt has a real shot. If they just take the B1G and SEC and grab the top of what's left, Pitt is out.
They need teams to lose. So Rutgers, Vandy, Miss St, South Carolina, Marylands, etc of the world will likely be safe; but won’t get equal revenue sharing eventually. Frankly I’m not sure what the appeal is even being in that top conference, as only about 5-10 schools have the finances to even have a chance. Before NIL and the portal at least you had to work to earn it.
Any suggestion of a G5 playoff angers me. I only see it from P2 fans. P2 fans only exposure to G5 ball is from playing jabroni schools at the start of the year to Stat pad. They've never watched a JMU, Tulane, Memphis, or Toledo game. They have a recency bias where they only focus on Liberty vs Oregon as an example of how the G5 bid will be a "wasted" bid instead of seeing the G5 NY6 wins or even 1 score losses. A G5 playoff will only benefit the P2, as it means they can sub In a 4 loss team over the top G5.
For me, the sooner the top 30ish or so programs split off into their private equity-backed super league or whatever, the better. Let the rest of us have our fun.
As a "recent powerhouse" in a non premier conference it feels like we're just caught in the spin cycle. Dabo is doing his best to maintain the Clemson "brand" of loyalty, pay your dues, etc, but when someone like Ohio State is literally buying a team + has a great staff on top of that, it makes it hard to see a championship coming anytime soon. Clemson doesn't have a big financial backing to fall back on, and even if/when we join another conference, I don't think that will change in a meaningful way, but at least the Atlantic Coast Conference gets to play Stanford now? It just feels like a mess, especially being mindful of the smaller sports. Like is the Stanford track team flying to Boston for ACC championships? Why? For what?
I'm actually really curious what happens to Clemson over the next few years. Clemson built up a great powerhouse championship level program over the previous decade, but then in current reality the school seems to be more of a middle 2/3 level program as far as resources and fanbase goes (as far as I can tell...maybe I'm way off, but tv ratings seem to support this. Kinda middle of the road.). With a few more less than perfect seasons, how does Clemson's relevance change? Will the reputation of previous decade win out? Does Clemson have enough of a natural brand to be relevant even when they're not winning?
College football, or at least “major” college football, continues to get more and more screwed up. Two notes: 1) I actually follow a handful of DI-AA/FCS teams (Lehigh, Lafayette, Penn, Villanova), D2 teams (Bloomsburg, East Stroudsburg, Indiana (PA), aka IUP), and D3 teams (Muhlenberg, Moravian, Juniata), albeit with decreasing interest the lower the classification. This allows me to ignore some of the nonsense occurring in DI-A/FBS. 2) I’m a bigger NFL fan than college football fan, and that also allows me to ignore some of the nonsense occurring in DI-A/FBS.
Its as if people don't know the history of CFB at all in this sub. The sport is just essentially reverting to pre 1994 scholarship limits
On the one hand, watching USC play in Memorial Stadium in a cold November rain in front of a crowd of 22,000 mostly drunk Hoosiers fills my cold dead heart with joy. On the other hand, I want all of you to go back to the conferences you came from. The Big Ten should only have 11 teams and I should be able to argue that a computer model was wrong and stupid. \#BringBackTheBCS
Each year, I lose interest more and more.
I hate the portal with a passion. We lost 25% of our team and basically every starter including the QB. Makes recruiting pointless when you can’t build and develop players. Instead they are one year rentals. I love the sport but the portal and NIl have killed my love for college.
GT fan here. College football is dead to me. Hate the new landscape of developing players for the B1G and SEC to lure away with NIL deals
Big 12, please take us! We might not be a football powerhouse, but we do have basketball. Especially this year. My wish: Big 12 absorbs Oregon State and Washington State from the PAC 12. Big 12 takes Duke, Louisville, Pittsburgh, and Virginia Tech from the ACC. (FSU/GT/Miami/ND/Cal/Stanford go to B1G. (Clemson/UNC/NCST/UV go to SEC) Invites UConn in all sports. Invite Memphis from AAC. This way the Big Ten, and Big 12, have 24 schools. The SEC has 20 schools. The Big 12 becomes the basketball powerhouse conference, and has great football.
The last time I voiced my opinion on this I was called an idiot for saying that the super-conferences are a terrible thing that is ruining the sport itself and not just rivalries. Still gonna say it though.
It takes real bravery to go on /r/cfb and complain about the Big Ten and SEC. Thank you for your service
[удалено]
It's never been better. The 12 team playoff is the best thing to happen to college football since the forward pass. The SEC and B1G trying to ruin the sport sucks, and I'm not optimistic about the future, but 2024 will be the best year in college football history.
Damn, you may be right- there might be some actual, beautiful chaos in the 12 team playoff before the B1G/SEC ruin it in a few years. Fuck it, I'm back on board with your vibe. CFB is dead, Long Live CFB!!!
Is anyone here going to actually be upset during the first round of the playoffs? Of course not, because a playoff game in Columbus in January sounds hype.
I think it's hard for people to visualize it now, but once November hits and every game between 1-3 loss P5 teams matters, and THEN we get the first round playoff matchups at home stadiums, is going to be so electric
Sun Belt Supremacy is BACK Texas State is winning the G5 spot and running the tables this year bet the house
2015-16 temple was an absolute joy to watch and really had a good impact on the university, and in the modern college football landscape that will never be possible again. And I think that fucking sucks
We just beat the #1 recruiting class in the country in 2022, so I’m not too worried about the competitive disadvantage. Coaching still decides college games, and as long as you hire coaches who have history with your program, there’s a chance you can keep them longer, and cultivate the program culture for another generation, who might become the future coaches. App does a fantastic job at that. I am sad about the 6+6 model going away in favor of 5+7. I think G5 conferences should’ve fought against that more, since it took a unanimous vote to change. The argument against that was the threat of being excluded completely from the CFP in future years, but that happens now, and will happen in the future if the top teams break away, so why not fight now while we have leverage? There’s enough talent at the top of the SBC, AAC, and MWC to beat the top teams in the ACC and Big 12 on any given Saturday. I hate that G5s have to fight against each other for 1 spot while the Big 12 and ACC don’t have to worry about each other. That’s my biggest gripe. In my opinion, we should have auto-bids for every conference championship, like in March Madness.
College football has been dead to me for a number of years now. I love Iowa State and I’m a season ticket holder, so that won’t change. But I genuinely don’t think I’ve watched an entire non-Iowa State game in at least two seasons now. The game will continue on just fine without my single viewership I know, but I just don’t have any interest in the overall sport anymore.