So, Finebaum asks a Twitter question.
And gets this in response.
Number four in particular.
I know many of you are convinced that player payment is what’s going to ruin college football, but as far as I’m concerned, the death spiral began when the people running the sport took the knee and accepted Mickey’s coin on the condition that college football lose its regional focus and attractiveness and chase national appeal in its place.
What’s good for Mickey decidedly isn’t for college football. Too bad it’ll take the geniuses running college athletics at least another decade before that message really sinks in. Of course, by then it’ll be way too late… for us.
Get The Picture 
The playoff is going to kill the best of the sport, the rivalries … just like the ever-expanding March Madness did to the regular season of college basketball.
The schools will have only themselves to blame when the bubble bursts.
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They are probably just sick of Bama. Time for the Dawgs to step up, probably against one of those west coast teams in a MNCG…or maybe Big 10.
Definitely not another SEC team.
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It costs far too much to go to more than a game or two a year for the average consumer.
The home-watching experience ain’t as much fun, but it’s damn good and a lot more manageable than diving into the mosh pit of a college stadium.
It’s still a great product whether the players are paid or not, but the big money aspect of the sport chills my soul to an extent.
Mainly, see No. 1. It shouldn’t cost me a vacation budget to go to a decent college game.
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Are you kidding? I LOVE the home-watching experience! I no longer have to battle traffic, stand in lines, endure 90 degree temps in September, sit between Elmer from Ellijay and Cletus from Cairo, and walk miles to and from parking spots.
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I cant afford it is #1 on my list. And I see no reason to drive very long drives pay for hotels pay for gas pay for food and then cheap seats. And the traffic getting out. But I miss going to a game a year or so.
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Agree wholeheartedly about the ersatz playoff detracting from the regional appeal. Example, in 1976 w ed best Alabama, Florida Auburn and Tech and won the SEC. In those days we hailed that as great season. Now fans would consider it a meaningless season since they think only the CFP counts.
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I can still see the SI cover from The Sugar Bowl with Tony Dorsett on it. I agree it was a great fun year 21-0 over bama still ranks as the craziest party ever in Athens.
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Yeah, losing to Pitt didn’t take the glow off of that season. Now I know people who do not enjoy 2017 because we did not win the final game.
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That’s sad. 2017 is one of my all time favorite seasons. I was lucky enough to see us win at ND and at the Rose Bowl. Pretty sure that won’t happen again in my lifetime.
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It is sad. If a Georgia fan cannot enjoy an SEC Championship with beat downs on the road of UT, UF and Tech totaling 121-14, and a frigging Rose Bowl win (plus a win in South Bend), then he or she will always be disappointed
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What y’all are posting about is the fans’ fault, pure and simple. Just because we have playoffs now, people devalue the other great aspects of CFB. I’ve read several post from fans saying stuff like, games are only meaningful if winning keeps you in the Natty race.
With this attitude, we’re allowing ourselves to miss out on a lot of CFB enjoyment.
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If only Vince Dooley hadn’t fought for TV rights so hard in the early 80s … 🙂
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On a side note, The Solid Verbal is a really good podcast. They cover CFB as a whole (as opposed to mainly one team and/or conference) and without an agenda/bias. They do 1-2 per week depending on whether it is football or off season. If you listen to podcasts, add that one to que.
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The Playoff is necessary and makes the game better.
Funny how the actual reason for falling attendance figures isn’t on here:
Terrible home schedules where 3 or 4 games are against Sunbelt or FCS teams.
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When the CFP goes to 8, will it make the game better? I know some believe yes. For me, when we start seeing a Group of 5 automatic qualifier and/or wild cards, the regular season officially becomes good for nothing but playoff positioning. That’s the day the regular season becomes just like March Madness.
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I would have the playoff go to and stop at 6. Five P5 Conference Champs and one wild card. Two highest-ranked teams get a “bye.” The wild card could be among the highest two ranked, too. The first two games are played at the home stadiums of the 3rd and 4th ranked teams vs. 6 and 5.
Yes, some years a G5 team will deserve to get into the playoff. Some years, the SEC would get 2 teams-in. Some years Notre Dame would make it. That’s all great for the sport.
Regardless, every other sport is decided on the field with a playoff. College football not being so was never a feature, it was always a bug. The CFB Playoff Committee, much like the NCAA Tournament Committee, is a feature not a bug, however.
Anything that lessens the importance of bowls and the corrupt power structure that’s kept those people rolling in money for years, the better. I hope the bowl structure collapses.
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There is no way the expansion is going to 6. No one (other than Gary Danielson) with influence is talking about it. With 8, the Gof5 is going to scream for a spot with Danny White at UCF leading the way. You have likely 2 wild cards because each P5 champ is getting a spot unless ND has 1 or fewer losses.
By the way, expansion to 6 is what I would like to see when the CFP expands.
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Danny White can bitch, but his team and his conference don’t belong. P5 will split from FBS as we know it. It’ll happen when the contract for the current CFB Playoff is up, when they’ll decide between expanding to 6 or 8 teams.
When that happens, the G5 will be their own thing. Leave half the bowls to them. Who cares.
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Why would anyone agree to all P5 conference champions getting in every year? We would have plenty of 3 and 4 loss teams in the playoff. Asinine to do that. Leave it as is.
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The playoff isn’t about getting the best teams. It’s about splitting up the money Mickey is willing to shell out. If Mickey puts the money on the table for 8, the WWL is going to have a say on the format. They want national appeal … therefore, Washington gets in, and Ohio State is in from last year. When the format goes to 8, all of the P5 champions are getting in.
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Mind you, ESPN, ticket prices, ADs having apathetic at best views towards fans, and all the like are all factors in the decline. But IMO TVs are by far the #1 reason for dwindling attendance numbers.
I bought my first HDTV back in ’03…it was a 46 inch Samsung DLP that set me back over 3K. So I was an early adopter I guess soon my bachelor pad became the spot to watch games with my group of friends. It was around that time that I started cutting back going to games and in fact gave up my season tickets for good in ’05.
These days TVs are larger and much better than the DLP technology of old, and far far cheaper to boot. Thus pretty much anyone can take advantage of HDTV technology, and I even saw a 65 inch TV for sale the other day in Costco for $799.
At some point college stadiums will start replacing bleachers with individual seats as they continue to shrink capacity. Either way, the problem will only get worse from here.
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Hell, with the jumbotrons a lot of folks are watching it on TV AT the stadium!
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TVs – and ESPN in particular – are a factor, but for me, they just make not going a reasonable option. I would still rather be there with fellow fans. For me, the gouging of the fan base for parking, the sheer commercialization of the stadium experience without any improvement in the actual facilities has ruined it for me. Call me spoiled: in the late 70s-early 80s I went with a friend whose family had six tickets. Three were on one side of the 50, three were on the other side. Wally Butts family’s tickets were behind us. We were on the South Side, under the overhang; bathrooms and concessions were a very short walk away. No tailgating for us: we met at my friends antebellum house, ate a nice lunch, left to drive to the stadium, parked for free at the Pharmacy School lot, and a leisurely 3-5 minute walk later were enjoying the Redcoats warming up the crowd. We stayed until the band quit playing after the game was over.
But I also spent 2-3 years on the tracks with a bunch of folks before that and afterwards on the club level and even once in a suite. The fan experience in Athens has deteriorated a lot; it’s part of the reason I want the WLOCP to remain in Jax: the tailgating experience isn’t free, but it is worth paying for and the atmosphere is amazing. It is the one good thing left and they are talking about killing it.
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DDB, you are correct in that the game day experience is harder than it used to be. I thought that stadium expansion to the third deck was a mistake because the campus and the roads were not built to handle those additional fans and their cars.
The ADs promised that the electronic banner ads would “improve the gameday experience.” Would your gameday experience be worse if they suddenly went away?
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“Improving the gameday experience” for me would involve things like bringing back the vendors who used to roam the aisles selling bottled water.
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Nice post DDB.
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Not a dance down memory lane with DDB, we all listened over the air waves to the Dawgs and Munson cause UGA wasn’t on the tube (every saturday), we went to games cause UGA wasn’t on the tube (every saturday) we parked and tail gated with in a 10-15 minute walk to the east gates cause UGA wasn’t on the tube (GOOOOOD TIMES HAD BY ALL)…true dat , mickey has slain the game as we loved it, today i pick and choose games/location…mainly ’cause of my location….
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Driving 6 hours week after week each way, paying higher game weekend prices for a 2 night minimum stay, wining and dining, horrible concession stand lines and prices, not being able to bring a bag of peanuts in, etc, etc, etc. HOT temps, long bathroom lines, as mentioned concessions sure make my beachfront home’s large T.V., ice cold beer with hot peanuts, no bathroom lines etc makes a heck of a lot of sense to me. Now The Ga-Gayturd game is the only game I attend and it’s a 3 hour drive from Cape San Blas.
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How did you make out in the storm last year ? Hopefully well.
Family and friends in Mexico Beach so spent some time out on the cape… very nice.
I will be heading down for a long weekend soon to spend some money with the locals (I figured that’s the best way I can help recovery).
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I don’t think this is caused by selling their soul to Mickey, unless you limit it partially to the number of games available to watch on TV. Even then, there are other network partners, and would be even more if the WWL wasn’t there. Football is a valuable asset with plenty of buyers. I could do without the sheer numbers providing almost total access to CFB, the best games will always have an audience for TV and be available even if the Sunbelt, AAC, and bottom tier Power 5 teams get dropped. That will provide the same level of watching for me, more than enough to fill every Saturday’s time slots. In fact, getting the number of games down would clear up some overlap.
I now have an OLED, and QLED large screens, watching at home with great sound crushes the issues associated with live attendance. Why give up the day for one game when I can watch all, or portions of, several from noon until after midnight. I enjoyed the live attendance for decades, but I wasn’t missing games to attend, particularly when the match ups are much better than all but 1-2 games a year in Sanford. Appreciate those who feel differently, but the trend is not going away.
My decision seems even better every year. I can still pick and choose to go when I want, but one game every couple of years is enough strolling down memory lane for me. As I age, and hassles are added, I will likely be cutting back on those experiences. I like CFB even better this way, and it will get even better when we expand to 8 as the regular season games will have even more meaning. Playoff games may become the majority of “live” games for me because you won’t miss much, and you are going to see the top teams in an electric atmosphere. We get the best of both worlds with great SEC games during the season, and a chance to play top national teams afterwards.
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You want a bigger playoff and you don’t attend games. Of course you don’t.
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My one way drive to Athens is 75 minutes plus I go to all the road games. It is indeed an all day dog fight at my age. TV is a huge factor but our children don’t have the money or patience to replace us which makes it an even bigger factor down the road. Do the schools really care? It appears big donors will still give even if they don’t always show up.
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It pisses me off when we walk past the empty deck where we used to park.
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“What’s good for Mickey decidedly isn’t for college football.”
Yea, verily
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I blame Bobo.
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I blame Chaney.
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I can watch on my 70” and save lots of money. Allows me to spend the saved money on my Harley and Vette. It’s GREAT to be a DAWG!!!!!
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I miss the game day experience. But that ship sailed awhile ago. I went with a friend to the UNC-Pitt game in Chapel Hill. Stadium was half full. And we still had to park on the outskirts of town and take a bus to downtown. Most of the open spaces on campus were roped off for VIP pass events. Nonstop PA “energy music”. Poor value concessions.
Point being, it’s not like this nonsense is a function of overwhelming demand driven by an elite program operating at an elite level. They are all doing this. It’s SOP Best Practices Game Day Management. Even for the programs who clearly, obviously need to do more to attract butts to seats.
Crazy and stupid.
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