Let’s be real. Compared to the NFL, the on field product sucks. It’s no different, skill wise, than the G Leauge or AAA baseball. Maybe even worse. Yet we watch and love it. Why?
1 – It’s local. Traditionally, it was your school. Especially in places like SLC, Provo, Stillwater, etc. You didn’t have a professional team, but you had YOUR football team.
2 – The players were local. Traditionally the kids on the team were local kids. I have never watched high school football and never plan to. But I like to bag on Dalton Schultz for not going to Utah. I love seeing Barton get burned on the Commanders and going, “hey, look, it’s Barton. He’s from SLC.”
3 – It was affordable. NFL games are nuts. All my kids are from Philly. I was going to take my oldest to the Philly/Seattle game until they moved it to Monday night. For the same amount of money, we can go to the Vegas Bowl. You could get cheap seats and afford to take the family.
4 – You could dream of that special season. Even though it wasn’t reality, you could dream about your team having a 1984. You could see the national champion winners from the pre 1970’s and think, “hell if they could win a title, we could get lucky one time.”
5 – Bowl games were a huge deal and you got to play teams you never got to play anymore.
6 – Winning a conference championship gave you a sense of pride as you typically worked with/associated with people from teams in your conference because the game was so local. It gave you something to talk about.
All of that is gone now. All of it. It’s not local anymore. We will play in Orlando next year. That is about as non-local as you can get. I don’t think I’ll ever run into a UCF fan here on the west coast. That game will come and go and no one will care. I’ll watch it, but I won’t talk about. Here in Seattle, there are OSU, Oregon, UW, WSU, USC, UCLA grads everywhere. There is always someone that cares about the Utah game and visa versa. Not anymore.
The transfer portal and NIL have taken away the local aspect. Even the bigger conferences has as well. There is so much turnover on teams, how do you ever learn who was what? The days of having Marcus Williams play like absolute horse s**t his freshman year and get better then elite are gone. The days of Devin Lloyd sitting for two years, having the starter quit and Lloyd, who knows the system inside and out, step in and excel are gone. A game that already is worse than the NFL will get even sloppier.
And the money…you could relate to the college kids. We all have memories of college and the struggle and working hard to make something for yourself. A 19 year old backup QB making a million dollars at Utah who might not even be any good? How do you relate to that? How do you have patience with that? How do you root for them to get better? The expectation is that they are good and ready to go.
Take Wilson. He is a legacy kid. He should come in, sit behind Rising, maybe sit a year behind Rose and then push to start his JR year, take the job and be successful and we all love him and talk about him for decades. Instead, he will come in, make some money and if he doesn’t start in 2025, he’s gone. And he will probably transfer to another school and then another before starting as a RS JR at BYU. And if he struggles as all young players do, we will all bag on him. That sucks for a kid who grew up dreaming about playing for Utah. That amount of pressure isn’t realistic.
The games aren’t that affordable any more. Enough said. The bowl games suck now. FSU is in the Orange Bowl and there have been rumblings of them not even going. That’s insane.
And the emphasis on national titles has ruined conference championship games and with how Utah was treated in 2008 and how FSU was treated this year…there is no chance of a special season. You can win it all if you are a blue blood. Outside of that, if FSU can get left out, then Utah 100% will.
This isn’t college football and I’m not sure how long this version can last. Nothing that made it great is still there. And if I want to watch good football, I’ll just watch the NFL.
I think where college football has the NFL beat is the traditions we have. Trumpets in the Dome, drums at midnight at Notre Dame, the Colorado buffalo, our band playing at the tailgate, moment of loudness. Those are special things that at least for now, NIL hasn’t ruined.
That’s a great point. Thanks.
The NFL used to have traditions as well. Many of these were fan started/propagated traditions. Things like the Barrel-man in Denver, Raider Nation, or the Dawg Pound. All of these traditions either died or were hollowed out as the NFL was corporatized and as the blue-collar fans were priced out in exchange for more corporate boxes.
If college football continues down its current path, I imagine its traditions will be hollowed out. Even the moment of loudness won’t have nearly the weight 10 years from now when many of the players are 1- or 2-year rentals who have no allegiance to the program other than a paycheck.
The only structural advantage that college football has over NFL, as far as maintaining traditions, is the student body. As long as student tickets are cheap, some of the traditions will remain and remain meaningful. But, it seems the trend is to slowly increase the price of those student tickets too. Hopefully greed doesn’t kill college football, but at this point, I don’t see how it doesn’t.
Nice vent Utah. Lots of excellent points. Players got a free education and played for school pride. Look no further than the empty stadiums of G5 and low end P5. Deepest pockets wins.
Super league is inevitable. Let the big boys play each other. 16-24 teams two leagues.
Well Jim, I won’t watch that Super League, just like I don’t watch the XFL.
Man, Utah, I’m going to print this and show it to people when they wonder why I’ve checked out of college football. How many gut punches can these guys give the fans before they start dwindling off and finding something else to do? On a normal Saturday, I start watching games at 10am and don’t finish until midnight. I can see myself watching the Utes going forward then finding something else to do with my time the rest of the day.
Mismanagement on so many levels. It sucks.
College football is a great example of why you need regulations in capitalism. Capitalism’s job is to make money. That’s it. It’s not to provide a great product, it’s not to entertain, it’s not get repeat customers. It’s to turn a profit. There is no ethics in capitalism. It has one goal: Make as much money as you can, then move on to the next thing to make as much as you can.
You need some regulations…not too many, but you have to regulate capitalism to make it work. You need rules, like it’s not ok for a doctor to use dirty instruments on patients. Capitalism says to not clean the instruments because cleaners cost money, which cuts into the profits, so cleaning instruments is bad.
You gotta have some rules and regulations to protect the consumer and the product.
Same with college football. We are letting the number crunchers ruin the sport so Whitt and Saban and ESPN and stock owners can have a few extra million and the weight room can be repainted every other year.
I hope that the SEC and B1G split off and form a semi-pro league so we can go back to college football. I don’t know how you put the NIL back in the box, but let the big boys split off, let them have their unfettered money grabs and let’s give the NCAA actual power to set and enforce rules and reset college football.
Give me a localized conference with teams I like to not like and office ribbing and guys that might not make it to the NFL but they want a good education and to smack someone around for another year or two before real life sets in.
The problem is the consuming public. Everyone wants to follow the single best in the world rather than the local talent. That is why Taylor Swift makes so much more than local talent. I spent a month in Ireland and there was local Irish music in the smallest of towns that was simply amazing. I wonder if they even know who is the world’s best. The reason a few teams have most the money is everyone wants to follow the very best as opposed to the local team. TV delivers what most of us want, do we demand local exposure? In all walks of entertainment, if we most always follow the few best the result will be all the money and exposure to a few at the top and the vast majority will struggle. I don’t know if regulation will control our human culture and sense of value.
Yes…and no…
I don’t know if comparing music to a team is the same thing. We don’t have our “local” musicians on tv every week.
I think people want to follow their team. I think that is why college football has been so successful for so long. There never was a team that was out of it.
Think back to pre-BCS. Everyone was in a smaller conference. Everyone had a chance to win it all. Even UNLV and Wyoming. Now, they didn’t have a chance to win a national championship, but they could win their conference and go to a bowl game.
That was a HUGE deal. There weren’t a lot of bowls and going was more than enough reward. Having a MWC Championship over BYU then playing a P10 in a bowl game was an amazing season.
Then those bowls started making money off tv deals, so we oversaturated the bowls until now, they are more an annoyance than a good thing. I’m not pumped to see us lose to Northwestern. The overall experience will be fun, but it won’t be because we are playing Northwestern with a 3-5th string QB.
Bowls are a prime example of how capitalism bled them dry and made them irrelevant.
Now, all we every hear about is the SEC and winning a national title. And even when you are PAC-12 champion, you don’t have a shot to win it all. And you are just bagged on; “oh the PAC-12 is so weak, they aren’t the SEC, blah, blah, blah.”
It’s all BCS or playoffs or bust.
We will see who is right or not. Either CFB will consolidate and grow, or it will consolidate and drop off.
For me, I grew up in Ohio. Was always an Ohio State fan. Went to the University of Utah. I’m a Utah fan. I watch Ohio St…most weeks, but if something else needs to be done, I go and do it. Ohio St isn’t a priority.
And even Utah…5 years ago Utah football was an absolute priority. I used to go to spring practices, fall camp, write up reports, know every person on the team.
This year? I missed a game. Luckily the DVR recorded it so I could watch it later, but I hit 7:00pm and forgot Utah was on the team. I had to look up player’s names.
Something has changed. The 3.5 hours of football with all the commercials is definitely a part of it.
Growing up, I went to games all the time. The last game I went to in person was vs UW. It wasn’t a great experience. Watching the players standing on the field for 2 mins just waiting for commercials to end…sucked. It was rough.
I think the tv execs hope that seeing USC vs Ohio St will drive the ratings and that people like me will switch over to being a UW fan (since I’m near Seattle) but honestly…
College football as a product isn’t that good. It’s not great football. And why switch to UW? I have no connection to that school. Maybe my kids will go there, but they aren’t my school. Utah is. And with how long the games are, and how short the action is, and the amount of commercials that are present…
I’d probably just go for a walk or something than get involved with another team.
But that’s just me. And I bet ESPN thinks I’m not a normal person and my loyalty is to college football and not the University of Utah. We will see.
I think the tv execs hope that seeing USC vs Ohio St will drive the ratings and that people like me will switch over to being a UW fan (since I’m near Seattle)
If that’s what they think, then they’ve sorely misread the room and don’t have a good grasp of human psychology. As we’ve all said, people root for a particular university because A. They went there or B. They grew up in the area where that university is located. I’m not going to start rooting for Michigan or USC or Oregon or whatever just because that’s what on television. I just won’t watch their product because I don’t have a dog in the fight.
I have to completely agree. College football taps into our tribal instincts. Big time. I don’t think I’d be interested in trying to replicate that with another team. I worked hard at Utah. I stressed and cried and succeeded. There is history for me there.
And to try to replicate that somewhere else…I don’t see it happening.
Not to mention how you’d be viewed by individuals who actually went to those universities. I know it’s probably wrong, but even today I don’t fully get people who say that they are, say Miami Dolphins’ fans, but have zero connection to the city of Miami.
All of my allegiances were formed around 2nd grade. Growing up north of Seattle, it was natural to be a Husky fan by geography and family influence, and the Sonics were around so that took care of basketball. For other sports, it had to come through viewing. So I’ll always have an affinity for the Montreal Canadiens and the Cincinatti Reds, even though I’ve never been to either place, because they were the dominant teams at that time.
I totally get that. When I was growing up in Miami in the 70s, the Dolphins were the only game in town. However, I liked all sports. As a consequence of that, I became a big fan of the Washington Bullets, NY Yankees, and NY Islanders. Those allegiances remained well until adulthood but shifted once Miami got teams in all of the major sports.
It’s funny you bring the Miami Dolphins fan base. Growing up in the 60’s I became a die hard Packer and Yankee fan. Not because of affiliation to the cities. They won and were the only teams that played on TV. I bet you would find that true with each generation that didn’t have a local team. Kids want winners !! Except my brother who I shared a room with. Bears and Dodger fan. Half the room with different posters. Great memories.
You have to be a paid ESPN shill to downvote this comment.
I would say that college football, taken as a whole, doesn’t hold a candle to any of the professional minor leagues. On any given roster there might be a handful of guys that have the talent to become professionals while all the guys in minor league sports are professionals. To your comments, a lot of what’s happened is because college football is big money now and the media companies have the whip hand. He who pays the piper call the tune. And the tune that they’re calling is that they want a return on their investment which requires the most marketable teams, and opposed to the best teams, to be front and center. Seriously, if the media companies could have their way with the NFL like they do with college football, the AFC Championship Game every year would be the LA Chargers vs the NY Jets and the NFC Championship Game would be the New York Giants/Dallas Cowboys versus the LA Rams. They don’t care about the on field product or fairness, just what’s guaranteed to bring them the greatest profit.
Agreed. If I didn’t love my Utes so much, I would completely tune out college football.
I feel like the current trend is eliminating the possibility of upsets. The unpredictability of college football is going away as money concentrates in the top hands. If a smaller school finds a diamond in the rough that player will be going to a bigger school with NIL and won’t be staying at a small school for years. I heard a stat a few weeks ago that mentioned there were very few upsets of teams favored by 10 or more this year.
Yes. And to make the bowl games worse, many players are now sitting out. Look at Florida in the Vegas bowl last year. And USC in their bowl game last year.
Bowl games used to be awesome. Most (not all) are “meh”at best now.
Agree with so many of these posts. And with bowl games, eligibility meant you were eligible, not that you were going. Now, if you have 6 wins (or Jacksonville St, JMU, or highest APR), you are slotted somewhere. Kind of an entitlement now. ESPN made all these bowls to fill up space during Dec to do what? Sell ads. They don’t care about attendance, they just care about having something to put on the network.
For stars, there is no incentive to play and possibly get hurt in this exhibition. Heck, Penix might sit out CFP?! Made sense for stars to sit out ‘lesser’ bowls. I thought no one would sit out NY6, but that started in recent years. Now stars might not compete for a championship?
If some players sit out of the CFP that will be a major blow to college football. It was bad enough that some guys sat out the Rose Bowl.
7 – Unpredictability. The problem with the NFL (and NBA, and really all pro sports) is that the players are too good. Mistakes are rare (unless you’re the Jets). Every player is a freak athlete. Nobody has any weaknesses.
The thing I like about college sports is that the level is high, but you can still expect the unexpected. I guess I like my sports a bit unpredictable.
Great Posts!
One other HUGE negative influence of the unregulated NIL is the siphoning of community charitable funds (large donors) from the University (colleges, medical school, professors etc) to individuals. In the past when donors made large charitable contributions to the team it made sense. Grow the program, more sellouts, more TV money, more bowl games benefits everybody (think rising tide elevates all ships). But now that money is going to a few individuals who pocket most (so goes to agents now) at the detriment of the entire University. If donors pay or the new proposed change to allow the Universities to pay the end result is the same…Our kids education suffers.
I’ve traveled by plane, bus, car you name it to games all over the country for reasons you all mentioned above. I won’t spend a penny now as is…sad
Well said Idaho. We have kids that can’t afford college. Homeless people crowding our streets and we are paying 18-21 yr olds millions to play football that have full ride scholarships.
Break up these big conferences. When I started college we could drive to every school, Maryland to Georgia Tech. Now you cannot do that and we lost most of those regional features mentioned in the original post. I miss my 8 team conference.
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