Outrage over CFP expansion is warranted even if we’ll all still watch
People don’t like change. They hate it.
They especially don’t like sudden changes to things they love. College football is something a whole lot of people in this country love, and people have had enough of the constant changing to an unrecognizable version of its former self. It’s like a reverse Kardashian effect. This very flawed, yet beautiful thing, being reverse engineered into a version that’s unattractive on the inside as it is on the outside.
College football has always been flawed. That’s part of the charm. But, the problems being “fixed” right now by the people in charge aren’t actual problems, and fans are tired. More than tired, they’re becoming increasingly disgruntled and resentful. There are widespread issues with NIL disparity and lack of transparency in equitable roster construction. There are differences in scheduling strengths and efforts to find equity there. And now, the regular season has become devalued even more than it already was with the news of expansion.
Fans were begging for leadership to fix some of the glaring issues, and “leadership” somehow created more. It’s like if I went to my boss and said, “Hey my computer is broken, I need a new one” and his response was, “best I can do is give you less PTO.”
Huh?
The issue isn’t expansion. There’s a really good case that this may be actually good for the sport. The issue is the absence of consent from the consumer, and even worse the absence of care for the consumer in the slightest. No one wanted this. No one asked for this. Yet, once again college football is going to shove it down our throats.
Why? Because they know we aren’t going to stop consuming it. Interest in the regular season may wane a bit. Frustration and anger will be on the rise. But, spending those 14 fall Saturdays doing something else? Nah. That’s not going to happen. They know that, and that’s why they don’t care.
I hate the idea of expansion. I grew up in the 1990s watching college football when one loss could ruin an entire season. That was a terrible feeling, but it was also what made the sport so special. Growing up in Atlanta, I didn’t care for the NFL.
Not just because the Falcons sucked almost every year, but because I never understood why people cared so much about every game when going 10-6 still got you in the postseason. Watching grown ass men who were accountants in their day job paint their face for a meaningless Week 5 game seemed pretty stupid to me at 11. It seems pretty stupid to me now at 40.
Is that what is going to become of college football? I don’t know. I hope not. I want regular season games to matter. I want teams to care about regular season rivalry games. I also want teams and conferences to care about the product they’re putting on the field instead of spending such an exorbitant amount of time in a metaphorical pissing contest with each league about whose schedule is toughest. I’m tired of that.
I’m tired in general. I, like most college football fans, would like this spiral in the sport to stop at some point. Since 2021 we’ve been bombarded with NIL, transfer portal, conference realignment, playoff expansion, rev share, and Pat McAfee screaming at the top of his lungs. That’s a lot of change all at once. We’re overstimulated and underrepresented, and there’s a growing feeling that the people running the sport don’t actually care about the sport.
I think all of that is fair to feel and assume. The track record of leadership around college athletics would certainly echo those sentiments. But, there’s also something to be said about optimism which fans should have with this specific decision.
Once the anger subsides, and you look at what the playoff would actually look like, it’s actually not that bad. Again, I grew up in a time when college football had a national footprint. And, as much as we love to beat our chests in the SEC about being the best conference, I miss the good ol’ days of the Pac 10/12, the Rose Bowl having traditional matchups, Miami and Virginia Tech facing off in the Big East, and Colorado’s relevance not be because of a side show at head coach. I miss the inclusivity that the sport no longer has. That doesn’t mean I want participation trophies, and having 8-4 teams without a ranked win make the playoff.
However, look at this potential 24-team playoff and tell me you wouldn’t watch these games.
Hear me out. Does it water down the regular season? Probably. However, if you’re telling me that I get to watch a matchup between Tennessee and Southern Cal in the postseason for a chance to advance in the playoff, then I’m listening especially if it means it’s on campus and not in a meaningless bowl game where half the starters are out or in the transfer portal.
Sign me up for that. Sign me up for more teams being relevant longer each season, so we aren’t only talking about Ohio State, Alabama, Georgia, and Notre Dame each and every week.
There are positives here to expansion. It would’ve just been nice for anyone in charge to make those positives a priority over money and greed. That’s what I’m trying to say. That’s what everyone that loves the sport has been trying to say.
