I hate this. I love that that players get paid but all sport is soulless bullshit now.
The actual games are inconsequential spectacles for morons like me.
I would say my interest in college football as a whole probably peaked about 2-3 years ago.
Granted, it's gone from 125% to maybe 123%.
But, definite peak.
I can't think of any reasons why I think college football has gotten better or more interesting to me. I mean, I would consume like 10+ hours of it over the course of a weekend? 40+, if you count YoutTube multiview. What more do you want of me?
I can think of several reasons why it's worse:
-Bowls are completely meaningless. Even in the past, the lesser bowl was another 2 months of practice for your team. I suppose you could argue it's practice for guys lower on the depth chart who might play next year. But the outcome is completely and 100% meaningless.
-The last few years I had to cheer my heart out for a guy who I rooted against for the previous couple seasons.
-This year, it's kinda like the MLB HOF thing. I mean, what if by some stroke of lightning in a bottle Gronowski went into "the HOF". Sure, I'd be thrilled. But, how am I gonna feel if he's wearing an SDSU helmet?
-The playoff and crowning a champion has nothing to do with crowning a champion. It's money. Otherwise, teams that did not win their conference wouldn't be involved. There's too many teams for wild cards.
-As a kid, who only partially paid attention to college sports, I was fascinated by all the tradition. Most of it originating from the conferences like the Big 10/8/SEC/ACC/etc. The holier-than-thou independent Notre Dame. The Army/Navy game. I longed to become part of what is now nostalgia. Now, it's all about money and winning.
All I can say is thank god for Caitlin Clark. And thank god she was born when she was. The day she actually committed to Iowa, even if she knew she was going to break records, there was no way of knowing she would have been making millions while still in college. If she had been born 2-3 years later (I like to think nothing would have happened any differently), what might have changed? Someone makes an offer too good to pass up? And she breaks the record at LSU or U-Conn? I would bet millions the impact on sports, women's sports, and the WNBA would have been far less. Probably never would have been able to break the record in that situation. That means no extra scheduled nationally televised games.
I have been worried about football for a long time. The paradigm shift due to CTE. Far fewer kids playing football than in 1990. Far fewer kids are even being born. I hope for a soft landing, but to get there, we are going to lose a lot of "D3" and "D2" programs. And it won't surprise me to eventually see it reach the 130 teams we know of as college football.