The State of the Union of College Football

Are you angry about College Football? Do you talk to your friends about how you miss the CFB of your childhood? Do you miss geographical conferences? Do you miss when bowl games mattered? Do you miss when only two teams made the national championship? Is it nostalgia? Is it sincere? If you feel this way, I have to tell you something.  The college football of yore is FUCKING DEAD and it is NEVER coming back.  It doesn’t matter how many tweets you send, it doesn’t matter how many message boards you post on, it doesn’t matter how often you bring it up to your friends.  Now, I don’t want to be misconstrued. I am not offering a value judgement on this fact, it is merely acknowledging the fundamental truth of the situation.  

So lets explore how we got here.  If we were to list all the ways college football has changed over the last half decade, it might actually be easier to list the ways in which it has remained the same, but I think its’ important to point out that not all of these changes are created equally.  

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Players being paid, unlimited transfers, extra eligibility, revenue sharing, these are all drastically different from what we knew, but not the reasons why the sport seems so fundamentally different.  The driving force behind these changes are due to the NCAA being an anti capitalist, anti free market monopoly for over 100 years.  Ever since Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote "Nowhere else in America can businesses get away with agreeing not to pay their workers a fair market rate on the theory that their product is defined by not paying their workers a fair market rate, and under ordinary principles of antitrust law, it is not evident why college sports should be any different.  The NCAA is not above the law." The NCAA has completely lost any legal footing upon which to stand.  

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These are free market course corrections that should have taken place a long time ago.  In my view, these changes are not responsible for fundamentally altering the sport, rather that blame falls at the feet of the shattering of geographical conferences, traditional rivalries, and an ever shifting postseason structure.  These are the true culprits for why College Football feels so unrecognizable.  

How interesting then, that while it was the lack of a free market that led to the aforementioned benign changes, it has been the power of the free market that has led to the more drastic changes and shattered the sport that so many of us love.  Make no mistake, good ole fashioned greed is what has changed this sport.  The pursuit of ever increasing TV revenue is why the Pac 12 was torn down for parts.  Unrelenting avarice is why we continue to add more and more playoff games.  Monetary gluttony is why we have the ever looming threat of a college football super league forming.  Again though, I am not even saying that anyone has done anything wrong.  Any of us would make the same decisions if it meant that at the end of the day we are all getting more money put in our pocket.  I just want us to have a clear view on how we arrived at this current set up, in order that we can discuss where we should go next.  

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The college football playoff is going to expand to 16 teams.  This is undeniable.  So lets join forces and be clear about what the best way to execute said expansion will be.  There are two major proposals in play.  One in which 5 conference champions would get automatic bids followed by 11 at large; the other in which you would have 4 bids apiece for the SEC and B1G, 2 for the Big 12 and ACC, then supplemented with 4 at large bids.  Lets be clear, the 5 and 11 model is an unquestionably terrible idea.  You think the committee has been frustrating over the last decade when it came to choosing who the four teams should be, or last year with who the final 7 teams should have been, why in the WORLD would we bump that number up to 11?! Why would we encourage subjectivity when we are trying to find the objectively best teams.  It boggles the mind in its’ overly opinionated stupidity.  

While far from perfect, The 4-4-2-2 model is clearly superior for one simple fact.  The participants would be almost solely decided through win loss results on the football field.  Imagine that? Using the regular season and who wins the most games against their conference opponents to determine who is best.  It is a system that removes all the byzantine mysticism of strength of schedule, analytical analysis, and margin of victory arguments from the equation.  You want to make the playoffs? Finish top four (two) in your conference.  Simple, clean and concise.  Sure one conference may be a bit better than another one year, but spread over time these differences are so minimal as to be irrelevant.  

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So, as we move into this next age of College football let us lean on the wisdom of old.  

“Lord, grant me the strength to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.”

There is no going back to the college football of our childhood, but we can do our part to ensure that the college football that we have is the best it can be in the context of our times.  Let us join forces and make our voices heard and refuse to allow subjective opinion to overrule objective results.  Say NO to the 5-11, and accept the 4-4-2-2 into our hearts.  Amen.