In case I need to preface, I don't think I've reached old curmudgeon age. Maybe I have. But I am 37 and graduated from Ohio State for both undergrad and grad school, and have probably been to about 175 Ohio State games. I've seen them play in 13 different states; the Rose (1x), Fiesta (1x), and Sugar (3x); and I've been to 24 consecutive Michigan games home and away.
All this to say before I just vent on how absolutely awful college football is now. It is becoming so incredibly difficult to enjoy. Maybe it's not for fans like me anymore?
Recruiting is absolutely miserable to follow now. I am happy the kids are getting paid, but the complete lack of national oversight has just turned this into a bag race. Add on the transfer portal (more on this later) and signing a high profile recruit gets a "meh," because who knows if they will be there even a year later.
The expanded conferences absolutely suck. Sports are regional games -- that is why all pro sports are organized around geography and you play against teams in your area more than others. It has been 8 weeks since we lost to Oregon and I have yet to see any Oregon fan in Northeast Ohio. It's been 8 days since Michigan and I have seen hundreds of M memorabilia to rub my face in the loss. That's sports! Now we have to pretend that Oklahoma at Ole Miss in a conference game is good TV. It's not.
The loss of divisions make these even worse. The divisions were hyper-localized and based on historic rivalries. Bama had to get through LSU, Auburn, and Ole Miss; Oklahoma through Texas and OK State; Oregon through Washington, WSU, and Oregon State; Ohio State through Michigan and Penn State. Only one team emerged from these divisions with bragging rights over all their rivals. Now they are gone and we are stuck with conference championship games that are the product of historically imbalanced schedules. Ohio State and Penn State are theoretically in the same conference but had one common opponent!!! ONE!!!
Speaking of those conference championship games, this year had the most meaningless conference championship games ever. It used to be you had to win to get into the playoff. Now if you lose, ho hum, you drop a seed or two, but no big deal. Where is the drama in that? Who the hell is going to watch these next year?
Finally when this miserable slog of a season with ahistoric matchups finally reaches its culmination, the transfer portal blows everything up before the playoff even starts. Seriously what moron thought of this? Can you imagine any other sport where literally every single player is a free agent every year? It is absolute chaos and makes it impossible to follow. I watch games in late September and think "Oh he plays for them now?" It sucks.
The cherry on top is that they put it smack in the middle between conference championship games and the playoff. What are the backups supposed to do? Again, imagine if free agency opened at the start of the NFL playoffs and players could sign with new teams because they were offering more money. Would anybody think that was a good idea?
Lastly, of course, is how unbelievably flawed the playoff is structured. By definition if there are two non-elite conference title winners, the actual 3rd and 4th best teams will get pushed to the 5 and 6 seeds, and thus have a better path to the semifinals than the 1-2 seeds. The lack of foresight here was astonishing.
Overall I just cannot believe how much this all sucks. You used to be able to follow high school recruiting, get excited watching players develop, and then watch those players play against your local rival teams -- and these games were as high stakes as any in all of sports. Now we operate in a highest bidder rent-a-player system, and these players play against random teams (next year only 7 of our 12 games are against teams in the traditional B1G footprint, and one of those is Ohio University), and then the rivalry games have lost their impact (worst loss ever to UM and we are gearing up for the playoffs; it just feels disgusting). Then after all this we will lose probably a dozen players to the portal, and it all starts over again.
The pundits of the world will point to TV ratings as proof all of this is fine. They are short-term thinking idiots. They remind me of people in 2007 bragging about getting a $500,000 mortgage without showing any proof of income. The bill will come due. Will they fix all this crap in time before it all collapses in on itself?
