Lucas Peltier-Imagn Images
By Chris Marler
The past two weeks of conference media days are typically a dream for content creators and college football media alike. Yes, it can be repetitive and packed with coach speak, not to mention the occasional stupid question from an eager 23-year-old beat writer at the Topeka Herald Daily Gazette.
However, after six months of dormant stories and countless rankings and lists that people hate, there’s at least some content. New quotes, fresh soundbites, and plenty of material to overanalyze. Plus, free cookies and unlimited Dr. Pepper don’t hurt either.
The week of media days is usually one of my favorite weeks of the year because, at the very least, it signifies the final stretch of the offseason.
This year was not that, at least not for me. Sure, the cookies were great as always, but the overarching theme was campaigning and complaining about the next changes for the sport. Changes that, for the most part, none of us asked for.
This year was worse because not only did we have to sit through the usual 30-minute filibusters from each commissioner just to get three minutes of substance, but we also got a parade of coaches-turned-spokespeople pitching a narrative of right vs. wrong, emotion over logic, and why the very conferences that shattered tradition and stability somehow deserve half the spots in the expanded College Football Playoff.
If either commissioner was senile and pushing 80, I would assume this was just another presidential election. Instead, the impasse and stalemate we are at has no end in sight.
The problem isn’t NIL. The problem isn’t the transfer portal. The problem isn’t media bias or FCS opponents in November.
The problem is the people in charge don’t care about you, don’t care about their consumer, and don’t care for the actual sport itself.
College football used to be a beautifully imperfect sport that had a lot of flaws, but even more charm, tradition, and unparalleled passion from its fans. At some point college football stopped being a sport and became an opportunity. To be specific, an opportunity for the smallest margins of its following, and in the blink of an eye was somehow overtaken by college football’s one percent.
I have no problem with pushing agendas and narratives to help your conference. That’s a commissioners job. I have a problem with the people holding that job title having the smallest interest imaginable for the actual fan and product itself, while having the most abundant amount of control over it.
Push your agenda. Lie to our faces about why it’s a good thing and why your solution is the right one. But at some point it would be nice to have a “leader” that actually cared, or dare I say, liked the sport.
College football isn’t the NFL. Fans don’t want it to be either.
I know that because I watched each product thrive and grow year after year for most of my life. There are a lot of people that like the NFL. Leave that for those fans. The ones geographically tied and tortured to whatever 1950’s industrial city their family raised them in and have spent a lifetime being okay with praying year after year that the Bears or Colts or Browns can set the world on fire with a 10-7 record and make the divisional round.
That sucks.
Tony Pettiti’s grand plan of having six Big Ten teams play a championship weekend where a conference title game would be joined with a 3 vs 6 and 4 vs 5 doesn’t sound that horrible. However, the reason behind that pipe dream taking place is to find out which four Big Ten teams get automatic bids into the playoffs.
That sucks, Tony.
“If you’re 6-3 in the Big Ten, I would argue that’s a great record, and if you stumbled in a non-conference game, I don’t know why that disqualifies you,” Petitti said earlier this week. “8-4 as a winning percentage, if you project that winning percentage in every other sport, I’m pretty sure you make the postseason.”
Yuck. Surely it can’t get worse? Wrong.
Pettiti went on to say that fans will “gravitate” to it.
I’ve watched college football for 35 years. And, I can’t speak for everyone, but I do feel pretty confident that one thing fans don’t want is to watch 8-4 Iowa play 9-3 Illinois in a 19-17 rock fight to see who gets to make the playoffs.
My question isn’t whether or not he’s right in his very misguided and ignorant assumption, it’s whether we as fans even have a choice.
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