BleedGopher
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per Kevin:
There are two quotes you can use as guideposts to college football’s great unraveling. The first is from Paul Finebaum, who said on a WJOX radio show in April that college football “is going to come apart, the NCAA is on its last breath, and I think college football as we know it is on its last breath. And it’s happening with unbelievable speed, supersonic speed that I could not have predicted.” The second is from writer Pete Thamel: “No one is in charge. For all the billions of dollars, millions of fans and boundless passion that surround college football, that has always been its glaring and bizarre flaw. No one is looking out for the greater good of the game. No one is guiding the sport toward long-term prosperity and short-term sensibility. No one is building consensus and channeling all of the ratings, financial success and popularity toward an outcome that is positive for everyone in the sport.”
Thamel wrote that in 2011, during the first wave of the realignment boom, and it is more true now than it was then. No one is in charge of college football (well, maybe the TV networks), and no one is guiding the sport toward anything meaningful beyond grabbing more land in bigger TV markets.
This probably feels like background noise for people who do not religiously follow the sport. College sports always seem to be at a crossroads, always on the verge of a paradigm-shifting blowup, be it realignment, a court case, NIL panic, or the transfer portal. It is a system designed for anxiety about the future and your team’s status in it. But even by these standards, this is a new era. Two weeks ago, USC and UCLA announced they will leave the Pac-12 for the Big Ten in 2024, accelerating a decade-long trend of top teams consolidating into the Big Ten or SEC. (The SEC poached Texas and Oklahoma last summer, and the two are scheduled to depart the Big 12 in 2025.) The move had two major aftershocks: The first is that everyone realized, if they hadn’t already, that geography will mean absolutely nothing in the conferences of the future—a five-hour flight between schools is no longer a barrier to entry. They also realized that it is time to start worrying if you are not currently in or in line to join one of the two main conferences, both of which are about to triple—at least—every other conference’s revenue. Nike founder Phil Knight, according to CBS’s Dennis Dodd, has started cold-calling, trying to get Oregon into the mix. Washington also called around and was told the Big Ten isn’t adding anyone right now. Every school is thinking about this, because they have to. There is no other timeline for the future: There will be two superconferences.
Now, any debate about the future of a sport becomes reductive very quickly, so let me say a few things about where we stand: College football’s playoff, and the availability of nearly every game on television, has been great for the sport over the past decade. Ask your parents about buying nonconference games on pay-per-view in the ’90s, or trying to find out what the UPN affiliate was to catch the end of a particularly thrilling Kentucky game. This is unquestionably a better time to be a football fan—college or pro—than 2002, or 1992. With that said, there is no way to look at the events of the past two weeks and think college football in 2032 will be better. You can brand me, or anyone else criticizing the direction of the sport, as an old man yelling at a cloud, but my counterpoint is that what is happening at this very moment sucks, and you’re allowed to think and say it sucks.
Here’s one major problem: There is no end to this upheaval. On Monday, Matt Hayes and Dennis Dodd both reported that the SEC will stand pat at 16 teams, in an effort to halt the expansion wars. But what if the Big Ten adds four more teams tomorrow? What if one of them is Notre Dame? What if Clemson finds a legal way out of its seemingly ironclad ACC deal, which runs until 2036? Any report that a conference is standing pat means that there simply isn’t a logical team to add at that very moment.
www.theringer.com
Go Gophers!!
There are two quotes you can use as guideposts to college football’s great unraveling. The first is from Paul Finebaum, who said on a WJOX radio show in April that college football “is going to come apart, the NCAA is on its last breath, and I think college football as we know it is on its last breath. And it’s happening with unbelievable speed, supersonic speed that I could not have predicted.” The second is from writer Pete Thamel: “No one is in charge. For all the billions of dollars, millions of fans and boundless passion that surround college football, that has always been its glaring and bizarre flaw. No one is looking out for the greater good of the game. No one is guiding the sport toward long-term prosperity and short-term sensibility. No one is building consensus and channeling all of the ratings, financial success and popularity toward an outcome that is positive for everyone in the sport.”
Thamel wrote that in 2011, during the first wave of the realignment boom, and it is more true now than it was then. No one is in charge of college football (well, maybe the TV networks), and no one is guiding the sport toward anything meaningful beyond grabbing more land in bigger TV markets.
This probably feels like background noise for people who do not religiously follow the sport. College sports always seem to be at a crossroads, always on the verge of a paradigm-shifting blowup, be it realignment, a court case, NIL panic, or the transfer portal. It is a system designed for anxiety about the future and your team’s status in it. But even by these standards, this is a new era. Two weeks ago, USC and UCLA announced they will leave the Pac-12 for the Big Ten in 2024, accelerating a decade-long trend of top teams consolidating into the Big Ten or SEC. (The SEC poached Texas and Oklahoma last summer, and the two are scheduled to depart the Big 12 in 2025.) The move had two major aftershocks: The first is that everyone realized, if they hadn’t already, that geography will mean absolutely nothing in the conferences of the future—a five-hour flight between schools is no longer a barrier to entry. They also realized that it is time to start worrying if you are not currently in or in line to join one of the two main conferences, both of which are about to triple—at least—every other conference’s revenue. Nike founder Phil Knight, according to CBS’s Dennis Dodd, has started cold-calling, trying to get Oregon into the mix. Washington also called around and was told the Big Ten isn’t adding anyone right now. Every school is thinking about this, because they have to. There is no other timeline for the future: There will be two superconferences.
Now, any debate about the future of a sport becomes reductive very quickly, so let me say a few things about where we stand: College football’s playoff, and the availability of nearly every game on television, has been great for the sport over the past decade. Ask your parents about buying nonconference games on pay-per-view in the ’90s, or trying to find out what the UPN affiliate was to catch the end of a particularly thrilling Kentucky game. This is unquestionably a better time to be a football fan—college or pro—than 2002, or 1992. With that said, there is no way to look at the events of the past two weeks and think college football in 2032 will be better. You can brand me, or anyone else criticizing the direction of the sport, as an old man yelling at a cloud, but my counterpoint is that what is happening at this very moment sucks, and you’re allowed to think and say it sucks.
Here’s one major problem: There is no end to this upheaval. On Monday, Matt Hayes and Dennis Dodd both reported that the SEC will stand pat at 16 teams, in an effort to halt the expansion wars. But what if the Big Ten adds four more teams tomorrow? What if one of them is Notre Dame? What if Clemson finds a legal way out of its seemingly ironclad ACC deal, which runs until 2036? Any report that a conference is standing pat means that there simply isn’t a logical team to add at that very moment.
College Football Can’t Be Killed. But It Can Be Changed for the Worse.
Following USC’s and UCLA’s deal to join the Big Ten, and rumblings that more moves are on the horizon, it’s clear that those in charge of college football don’t understand—or care about—what makes the sport great
www.theringer.com
Go Gophers!!
) next to my wife's quotes next time. We're good. I showed her your post and she said "I didn't know Dr. Phil was a Gophers fan". She's a spitfire and I love her dearly.