Even though the news leaked months ago, if you listen closely, you can still hear it—the hand wringing, the teeth gnashing, the tears for fears from fans of the greatest sport on earth, college football. It definitely disrupted the status quo when we all first heard that the SEC and the Big 10 would be growing. First, we discovered that Texas and Oklahoma would be leaving the Big 12 to join the SEC. More recently, we were told the Big Ten would be taking the Pioneer Trail out West, adding UCLA and Southern Cal.
In the short term, it means the rich are getting richer, quite literally. Sure, the SEC and Big Ten, already stuffed with great football teams, have added four teams that will likely help them increase their stranglehold on the top spots in the college football playoff rankings. But it is also about increasing their geographical footprint, which in turn makes them more valuable to TV networks. The Big Ten’s recently announced new media rights deal will clear them over a billion dollars a year, thanks to deals with CBS, Fox and NBC. The SEC media rights are all locked down for a while—according to The Athletic, the SEC can’t put its entire media rights up for sale until 2034. (And by then who knows if television will even exist?)
If you are a fan of a school from the SEC or Big Ten, this is great news. Your already strong conferences are getting stronger, and your school is going to get even more cash to splash on indoor practice facilities or barber shops in the locker room. These 32 colleges were already recruiting at a high level, and that will probably only continue to grow.
Where the fun starts to fall apart, I suppose, is if you’re a fan of any of the other 92 FBS teams. In this new college football landscape, do teams like Memphis or Cincinnati or BYU, who are outside the Power Two conferences, have a legitimate chance at winning a title? Let’s say a school like Utah runs the table this season, which the Utes have a legitimate chance of doing. Would that be enough to get them into the college football playoff? Or would a one-loss squad from the SEC or Big Ten be considered a stronger overall team?
I’m not convinced teams outside the Big Two would have much of a chance of getting in the final four. And if we’re being real here, it’s not like they would have much of a shot anyway. Look at last season, when Michigan (Big Ten!) and Cincinnati swaggered their way into the final four and lost to two SEC teams (UGA and Alabama) by a combined score of 65-17. The SEC is unbelievably stacked right now – 12 of the last 16 College Football national champions have come from the SEC.
But I get it, I really do: You just want a chance, just an opportunity for your school to play against the best of the best, and who knows, maybe they’ll be able to shoot that slingshot and hit Alabama or whoever right between the eyes. If Lloyd Christmas could manage to end up with Mary Swanson, maybe Oklahoma State or Georgia Tech does have a chance of winning a national title one day.
Whatever happens, I don’t think it’s worth worrying about right now. Because college football isn’t going anywhere, not anytime soon.
People complained forever that players getting paid would be the death of college football.
People complained forever that a playoff—even just a four team playoff!—would be the death of college football.
Now players are getting paid. Now we have a real playoff, and seem to be closer than ever to playoff expansion. And yet college football has never been more popular, as evidenced by the money being splashed out by television networks.
I moved from Atlanta to New York City two decades ago, and among the many surprising things I discovered in Manhattan, was for the first time in my life meeting people who were fans of the NFL over college football. I knew that people loved pro football, but someone preferring the NFL over college football was unthinkable to me.
Didn’t they know? The NFL was slick and polished, but college football had soul. College football is the lifeblood of so many areas across the country, and especially across the South. College football makes heroes and legends out of regular people. College football is a community experience that unites families and neighbors and friends and enemies. College football matters to regular people, and it matters emotionally and, maybe most relevantly, financially, on those six weekends each year when tens of thousands of people descend on random rural regions.
Perhaps one day, years or even decades from now, there will be a college football team that goes undefeated, winning every game by double digits, but because they aren’t in the SEC or the Big Ten or whatever the monster conference is at the time, maybe they won’t have the chance to play for a championship. It will bother their fans, and they’ll be upset about it for a while, maybe even forever, but eventually a new season will start and they’ll turn the page and show up on a crisp autumn Saturday afternoon dressed in their team’s colors to see some friends and to root for the same team they’ve rooted for their entire life.
Despite all the complaining this offseason, college football is giving us some bangers right out of the gate this year: Nebraska, playing in Ireland (what could go wrong?); Ohio State against Notre Dame on Sept. 3; A great Utah team at a rebuilding Florida on the same day! Can Georgia repeat? Will Nick Saban find his mojo? Can anyone unseat the SEC? Answers to all these questions, plus a million other questions, will be figured out over the next few months. And we’ll all be watching.
The very best things live forever. You can try, but you will never kill college football.