Mr. CFB: Enjoy The 2023 College Football Season For It Will Be The Last As We Have Known It
Since June 11 I have made 14 speaking stops at touchdown clubs, quarterback clubs, Rotary clubs, chuch breakfasts, and, a hosptal fund raiser. The talks ranged from the (UGA) Terry College of Business young alumni, to the Red Elephant Club in in Huntsville, to the Center for Life Enrichment in beautiful Highlands, N.C., and the Coweta Samaritan Clinic in Newnan, Ga.
Other than the fate of their favorite team for 2023 the folks all wanted to know one thing:
What are you people doing to our game?
"My family has been sitting in the same seats at our school for over 45 years and now I'm afraid of what's going to happen," said a long -ime season ticket holder at Georgia Tech. "My entire family loves college football. It is an imporrtant part of our lives."
I'm not sounding the alarm bell here. But I am offering some advice from a guy who has covered the sport of college football for four decades.
Enjoy the 2023 season, that gets into full swing this week. In fact, you really need to enjoy the hell out of it.
Because after this season college football will never be the same.
Specifically:
NIL: In 2024 we'll be into our third year of "Name, Image, and Likeness" payments to players but still with no clue about how this is supposed to work. With coaches making seven and eight figures it's good that the players are finally getting a piece of the action.
But we still don't have one set of rules for everyone to follow and that is an invitation to all kinds of bad behavior.
Mike Parson, the governor of Missouri, has signed a bill that would allow high school players to take NIL benefits. That's good but there is a catch. The high school player in question keeps the money as long as he commits to playing for a school in the great state of Missouri. It goes into effect on Monday.
Gee, what could go wrong there?
The Transfer Portal: Fans don't like it, especially when they lose a high quality player like quarterback Sam Hartman who left Wake Forest to play his final year at Notre Dame. So far, so good for Hartman, who led Notrre Dame to a 42-3 win over Navy in his debut on Saturday. Coaches love it but won't say so because it allows them to remake a bad roster faster than ever. Right, Deion?. At least they've cut the number of days the portal is open to 15 in the spring and 15 in December.
The NCAA is making noises about enforcing a rule that allows only one free transfer without sitting out a year. Law suits will follow. The players will win.
Conference destruction/realignment: This has made for the strangest summer ever. Barring some kind of miracle, the Pac-12 conference, which has been in business since 1959, will exist no more come 2024. USC, UCLA, Washington, and Oregon will be playing in the Big Ten and counting their Frequent Flier miles. And of this writing Stanford, California, Washington State, and Oregon State are looking for a home. Stanford and Cal have had meaninfull discussions with the ACC. The fact that two of the great academic institutions on this planet are going hat in hand, agreeing to take little or no money just to get on somebody's life boat should be a source of embarrassment. How did we let it get this far?
Divisional play goes away: This is one of the net pluses for 2024. Since Arkansas and South Carolina joined the SEC in 1992, the conference has played with two divisions, East and West. The winners of the respective divisions play for the conference championship. With Texas and Oklahoma coming on board to form a 16-team conference, the two highest rated teams will meet in Atlanta for the SEC title.
One of the benefits that comes from divisionless football is a vastly impoved scheduling model.
Each team would keep one pernament opponent on its schedue: Alabama would play Auburn, Georgia would play Florida, etc. Then the teams would play seven more SEC opponents in 2024 and the other seven teams in 2025. So every two years every team would play every other team in the conference. Every four years each team would play every team in the conference both home and away.
It's a much better scheduling model for players and fans.
Example: In 2024 Georgia plays at Alabama, at Texas, at Ole Miss, and at Kentucky.
12-team playoff: There will be critics but again, it is a net-plus for the sport starting in 2024..
The four-team playoff has served college footbal well since it was instituted in 2014.. It was certainly better than the two-team BCS championship. But it was limited. Fact: Of the first 28 bids to the College Football Playoff, 22 went to only five schools (Alabama, Clemson, Ohio State, Oklahoma, and Notre Dame). There needed to be greater access to all of college football, not just the blue bloods.
When we get to November with a 12-team playoff we will have at least 15-20 teams still in the discussion for a spot.
And those discussions will be more interesting because there are several access points to the playoffs.
If a team wins its conference and finishes in the top four as determined by the selection comittee, it gets a bye in the firsrt round. An extra week off at that time of year will be priceless.
Right now the top six conference champions are guranteed a spot some where in the field. With the demise of the Pac-12 that will surely change. SEC Commissioner Greg Sankey has made it clear that he wants to talk about it during a meeting of the CFP commissioners this week. Don't be surprised if the commissioners of the College Football Playoffs cut the automatic qualifiers list from six to four.
And think about those late November games that could decide the final 2-3 spots in the playoffs. Think those could be a little intense?
A Greek philosopher, Heraclitus is given credit for the idea that "the only constant in life is change."
If old Heraclifus was still with us he would be a college football fan.
Hey, I don't like all this change. But, as Bobby Bowden once famously told one of his players: "Son, the train is leaving the station. You just have to decide if you want to be on it."
I've heard people say that they are so frustrated about all the change that they are going to give up on college football.
Yeah, right.
It's the most ridiculous comment I've ever heard. Here's a fact: Once the games start the fans don't care where the players get their NIL money. They still still watch the games both at home and in the stadium in record numbers.
And here is the ultimate irony in today's discussion. The game that we see every Saturday is better than it's ever been. There are more good players, good teams, and good coaches than we've ever had.,
The ultimately reality is game is so strong that we adults can't mess it up no matter how hard we try.
Have a great season.