I do appreciate the perspective while most of the world is freaking out about “realignment.” as a Notre Dame fan I dislike that we may have to give up independence, that’s the first negative for me but it’s one shared by just a small portion college football fans. I just don’t like that such a significant change is happening without the fans necessarily wanting it. I realize that this is basically driven by consumer behavior over the last 20 years, as we’ve seen diminishing attendance across college football and people in general being perfectly comfortable spending almost all their leisure time in their living room in front of a television. Unfortunately, ticket pricing pretty much matches up with tuition increases, which is to say they will go up every year and never go down. I guess was the most disappointing is that the powers that be in college football seem comfortable with making a club of “halves“ and leaving the “have Nots“ to sort of figure their shit out on their own. I liked smaller, regional conferences with just a handful of dominant teams each produce more interesting results and implications week to week. A bunch of half decent teams that used to have shots at meaningful winds won’t have those opportunities anymore. I’ll finish by saying that I was never a fan of the playoff to begin with. BCS championship was fine with me, although I understood why it pisses people off, and I wouldn’t mind going back to the structure that existed before that game came about. And I wasn’t a college football fan until like 2012.
I also like the regional spice of football styles and the way that kind of defined conferences. More generally I also don’t mind the inconsistency of play in college relative to the NFL. I dunno, I realize I’m an outlier in a handful of ways and this isn’t the most coherent “argument“ but I just don’t think we need big box stores in college football.
It's not a problem for the created Power Conferences and the 3 dozenish schools therein.
The lower level conferences, like Big XII, PAC10, ACC, will adapt as there is still plenty of talent and regional competition.
Yes, the TV viewing habits are ultimately driving the changes, because that is where the Big Money come from.
I do appreciate the perspective while most of the world is freaking out about “realignment.” as a Notre Dame fan I dislike that we may have to give up independence, that’s the first negative for me but it’s one shared by just a small portion college football fans. I just don’t like that such a significant change is happening without the fans necessarily wanting it. I realize that this is basically driven by consumer behavior over the last 20 years, as we’ve seen diminishing attendance across college football and people in general being perfectly comfortable spending almost all their leisure time in their living room in front of a television. Unfortunately, ticket pricing pretty much matches up with tuition increases, which is to say they will go up every year and never go down. I guess was the most disappointing is that the powers that be in college football seem comfortable with making a club of “halves“ and leaving the “have Nots“ to sort of figure their shit out on their own. I liked smaller, regional conferences with just a handful of dominant teams each produce more interesting results and implications week to week. A bunch of half decent teams that used to have shots at meaningful winds won’t have those opportunities anymore. I’ll finish by saying that I was never a fan of the playoff to begin with. BCS championship was fine with me, although I understood why it pisses people off, and I wouldn’t mind going back to the structure that existed before that game came about. And I wasn’t a college football fan until like 2012.
I also like the regional spice of football styles and the way that kind of defined conferences. More generally I also don’t mind the inconsistency of play in college relative to the NFL. I dunno, I realize I’m an outlier in a handful of ways and this isn’t the most coherent “argument“ but I just don’t think we need big box stores in college football.