Last of a Dying Breed
The 2023 CFB season is truly the last of a dying breed. As a hip-hop fan, I think about Hip-Hop in the early 2000’s, where prominent rappers such as Nas, Lil Wayne and Ludacris all were uncomfortable with where their cherished genre was headed. Nas’ album, “Hip-Hop is Dead”, paying homage to the roots of hip-hop is eerily similar to how many College Football Fans, including myself, are viewing this season… Others however are more embracive of the direction.
2023 marks the last year of the 4 team playoff, regional conference relevance and “The Power 5.” While NIL and the transfer portal have flipped the sport on it’s head, and are here to stay (truly only in it’s infancy), having a sport structured to have a regional bias, complimented with national importance will fade away with the last tick of the National Championship game in Houston this January.
No longer the days where there is a clear division of allegiance relative to geography. The Pac 12 can no longer claim West Coast football as we watch that conference implode, shooting shrapnel known as schools in all different directions like a t-shirt cannon. The ACC, is held together by a thread through it’s current Grant of Rights Deal with a last ditch effort to save itself by adding SMU, Cal and Stanford as the threat of departure from Clemson and Florida State loom over the head of the conference. With the sport heading to a model emulating the NFL, there seems to be a shift to the “Power 2”, which will leave behind a wake of so many storied and tradition rich programs yearning to claw their way back to national relevance, none more glaring than Oregon State and Washington State.
One of the best things about College Football was the individual quest to perfection for all teams. Even having just one loss on a season, doesn’t guarantee a playoff berth. The weight that was hanging in the balance of any given Saturday throughout the season, has now been lifted. It was slightly lifted when we expanded to the four team playoff and we have now compromised that integrity again with the expansion to twelve teams. We heard Ohio State Head Coach, Ryan Day, say that he will be approaching the season much differently now. They’re fortunate and blessed enough to be in a position littered with blue chippers at every position where he can take a more conservative approach to snaps similar to how current MLB managers handle their players. This is a longevity game now, rather than the life or death (of a season) feeling that you know is in the hands of the outcome of the game when you lace up your cleats on Saturdays. While this methodology is more pertinent to the select few schools at the top of the sport, I fear that these new rules and changes will ultimately tilt the balance of the sport more in the favor of the top tier schools rather than create this parity that really only corporate executives are craving.
The expansion, while there are elements I am going to enjoy such as home playoff games, will strip away at the fabric of what makes our sport so unique. It will give teams such as Alabama, Ohio State and Georgia “mulligans” during the regular season, whereas before, perfection was demanded for a shot at the title. When these teams are granted a 10 or 11 seed in the new playoff format, going up against a one loss 7 seed Big 12 champ, who is more likely to have the advantage? The school who has double digit potential draft picks on their roster or the Big 12 school who will be lucky to send their QB to the league? This notion of creating parity in the sport through expansion needs to be challenged. The TCU team of 2022 does not get to the National Championship in a 12 team format. The story that TCU had last year and that Cincinnati had in 2021 will no longer be repeatable in this new format. These opportunities die when that clock ticks at the end of the season this year.
How did we get here and what have we learned? Well, if it wasn’t already evident, the past 2 years have shown that without one centralized leader overseeing the sport of College Football, TV deals and executives are playing Tetris with the sport that we love, trying new ways to make pieces fit while overlooking the tradition, loyalty and passion that drives this sport and it’s fans.
College Football Fans must now embrace what lies ahead and relish in the wonderful moments we’ll get in 2023 as we close out a chapter in the CFB history books.
-Kevin Joy
