So this is what things have come to.
I wonder if Missouri’s AD still has the same rosy thoughts about how everyone in the SEC operates with the mindset of what’s in the best interest of the league.
I can’t speak for him, but if I still give a shit about college football in five years, I’ll be amazed.
Get The Picture 
Amen, brother..
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You and me both, brother. Amazing how the dollar chase has caused the powers to be to piss all over the things that made college football the valuable commodity it is. This all reeks of what happened to NASCAR about 10 years ago.
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This all reeks of what happened to NASCAR about 10 years ago.
Totally agree.
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My favorite part is the response to Schad by @rlag09 says “LSU is sounding like a bunch of whiny bitches today” hahaha.
Bullseye in less than 160 characters.
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WTF (Welcome to Facebook) Joe, Alabama’s feasting on Tennessee on the 3SiO http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_Saturday_in_October
is just as important as UNC thumping Duke for the Victory Bell
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victory_Bell_(Carolina-Duke)
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Agreed.
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I said this before and I’ll say it again: The SEC East needs to secede from the SEC, form the CSC (Confederate States Conference) and kick USCe out while we’re doing it.
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Why not just wait for them to secede? They’ve done it before. Besides there would be no exit fee this time.
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For whom the bell tolls, football is gone.
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I can’t speak for him, but if I still give a shit about college football in five years, I’ll be amazed.
+1
I never thought I would even think this but I too am headed this way.
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With the head injury lawsuits seemingly building in momentum, this conference scheduling / re-alignment / TV contract bullshit may end up not mattering much. In 5 years this could be very different game.
I feel like I am watching the real estate and tech bubble all over again.
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TV is doing everything it can to turn CFB into the NBA, NASCAR and MLB. Over commercialized and totally irrelevant. Remember when watching MLB was a treat?
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“Remember when watching MLB was a treat?” Yes. Barely. It was quite a few years ago.
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Off the ledge people.. as long as UGA fields a team you’re gonna pour your heart and soul into them.. They know it, the networks know it, everybody knows it. We’re just to personally invested to give up on something as amazing as college football in the fall.
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Maybe you’re wired that way, but if it happens, it wouldn’t be the first time I’ve walked away from a sport I’ve been emotionally invested in.
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Well said, sir.
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It is less you walking away from it as much as it is being dragged away from us all by people hell bent on wringing out every last nickel and blindly pursuing narrow self interests. We may be witnessing the equivalent of Elvis in ’74 — a bloated, self-indulgent caricature tumbling toward the inevitable.
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Jacksonville in the 90’s and 00’s made me emotionally separated from college football. I still love UGA, I go to several games a year and try to make at least one away game every year other than Jacksonville. Now I go to hopefully see a competitive game and enjoy the time around friends and family.
I was 9 when UGA won it all in 1980. After seeing UA and AU win the national title of the past couple of years I have come to understand that just because your team wins it all does not make you a winner. Those fans are still bottom dwellers. It has been hell living in Columbus.
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It wont be us walking away from UGA football. It will be the bean counters and the Mike Adams-style empire builders walking it away from us.
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If the powers that be get what they want, then I agree with you. I never thought I would ever say that.
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Let’s see, what can we do to take maximum intensity out of the college game experience? How about:
– Eliminate ancient rivalries, such as Huskers-Sooners, Aggies-‘Horns, Pitt-PSU, Kansas-Mizzou? Check!
– Schedule “championship” games that you don’t even have to be a conference winner to compete in? Check!
– Jack up ticket prices while increasing # of games with multi-directional cupcake institutes? Check!
– Expand or distort conferences so that teams with no history will play every year and even dedicated fans will have difficulty making away games? Check!
– Break up old conferences that have preserved such rivalries and reinforced their luster by maximizing the value/pain of each win or loss? Check!
Hell, let’s just start putting schedules together by letting computers make random picks from all major colleges–save a lot of time and trouble, and then have a playoff based on records, points, attendance. That way, “the regular season will still matter.” We just won’t care as much about each individual game.
Anyone who doesn’t understand that each long time rivalry brings with it a history, a set of traditions, a set of shared experiences passed down across generations, and that each rivalry exists in a zone of its own, apart from the regular season itself, doesn’t get college football.
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I’ll try to give it my best shot at hanging around. I still enjoy the game regardless of the ancillary bullshit. However, once they start tying flags to the players’ waists, I’m done.
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While lawsuits and injuries will eventually make it too expensive to play the game we love, one competing element will likely extend CFB’s time on the ventilator…minority participation. Nothing has elevated black inclusion into the traditional college scene like college sports…mostly football. W/O CFB what will the academically challenge groups do?
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Me thinks you mighta had a cocktail or two when you wrote that post..
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ennui
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The amazing thing about those fucking cowards over at LSU is the simple fact that LSU is light years ahead of where Florida is right now. I know they’re worried that Alabama is so far ahead of Tennessee, but if LSU just keeps the ship on course, Florida’s got at least a couple more years until they’re back on LSU’s level. So, shut up, man. Your main competition in the West gets to play Tennessee, and that sucks for you. However, Auburn has to play Georgia every year and they’ve only managed one win in the series in the last six years. Arkansas has to play South Carolina and despite recent successes, the Gamecocks are turning into one of the East’s premiere teams and they’ve got Steve Spurrier. So just pipe down, LSU. You’re embarrassing yourself. You ran the table in the regular season last year with one of the toughest schedules I’ve ever seen. It’s not Florida’s fault that ESPN wanted Alabama to get a rematch.
I have lost all respect for LSU.
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And another thing, hey Joe! Did you miss it a couple of years ago when CBS put LSU-Florida on in prime time? That’s a big TV draw every freaking year, and much more often than not, CBS features it as their game of the week. Wasn’t the whole purpose of this fool’s errand to bring in two more teams to the happy SEC family just to go beg CBS and ESPN for more money? What is taking away the promise of one of the year’s best matchups going to do for that mission?
Hitch up your skirts and play football. If you want to win national championships, tell your coach not to try to run option with a mouth breather at quarterback who can’t run the option. Tell him to remember that he has another quarterback who got his team to 6-0 when the mouth breather was suspended.
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Gee, is CFB becoming a bit too corporate in its thinking and approach to the fans? Starting to feel like a sucker rather than a patron?
We all talk about the money, but it’s that same “maximize profits now, let someone else worry about tomorrow” crap that we see from Wall Street to Destin. I could give you a list a mile long of businesses and products that I have walked away from in the past decade because management became so obsessed with their spreadsheets and metrics that they forgot the person on the other side of the counter was a person rather than a unit.
I used to be a huge sports fan. Now I would consider myself a casual, “tune in to see the playoffs” fan – except for CFB. But the NFL stadium experience (excrutiating, IMO) is coming to your favorite college stadium soon enough, and the NFL model is overrunning CFB as we speak.
Sad to see, but I agree with the Senator – the Golden Age is at its end.
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It’s like they’re not even trying to hide it anymore. We’re nothing more to Greg McGarity than 90k interchangeable wallets on Saturday.
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Concur, Senator. CFB was on this amazing roll starting in the mid to late 90s – attendance was up, TV #s were up, the quality of play was going up, the quality of media coverage was going up, the fun was going up – but I’m starting to feel like it plateaud around 2008.
Either that or I’m getting old.
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