With all the talking heads on TV proclaiming that this season is unlike any other, I’m curious how the community feels. Totally new landscape of CFB or just more of the same? How do we all feel about:
- Helmet communication (for only 1 player on the field per team except on free kicks)
- Tablets on the sidelines (up to 18 per team)
- The 2 minute timeout
- Corporate logos on fields (no longer requires the stadium to be named after the sponsor)
- New homes for Arizona, ASU, Cal, CU, Oregon, ou, SMU, Stanford, Texas, UCLA, USC, Utah, Washington
- Expanded playoff (probably too early to tell on this one)
- New TV deals (SEC on ABC, B1G on CBS)
- Current season of Fansville (Ewers could be a Heisman candidate but he sure won’t be winning any Oscars)
For reference, here are the P4 vs P4 records so far:
- ACC: 6-8
- B1G: 5-5 (or 5-6 if counting ND)
- Big XII: 5-6
- SEC: 8-5 (or 8-6 if counting ND)
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The conference realignment is the hardest part for me to swallow.
Granted, I’m old enough that I was first paying attention to college football when the Southwest Conference was on its last legs. I miss having conferences that were based on regional rivalries and geographic proximity, instead of wringing every last dollar possible from TV contracts. In that aspect at least, it feels more like NFL-lite than a proper collegiate thing.
I’m all in favor of things that contribute toward player safety. I also don’t mind at all players having NIL rights and making money off that. I will admit to having concerns about direct player compensation and in effect making them employees of the university. Primarily, I’m worried that at schools which aren’t flush with athletics money, this could lead to non-revenue sports getting dropped, and could also risk Title IX implications in compensation parity among men’s & women’s athletics.
I went to a D3 school that didn’t have a football team, and in the context of the changing athletics landscape I’m glad I did. My alma mater does have an NIL policy for it’s athletes including timely disclosure of all details, and warnings about tax implications, but we aren’t ever going to be wealthy enough that we’ll pay direct compensation to student athletes.
Nothing seems all that different yet. There really hasn’t been big conference games yet to gauge much.
I think the playoffs have a chance to be interesting, but it’s way to early to tell. I think the non power 4 team is going to regularly get destroyed, but that’s on the transfer portal. There will be playoff drama by the 26/27 season when only one ACC or Big 12 team makes it.
I was already done with the expanded playoff in week 1 when people were still outlining FSU’s (then open) path to the playoff. Likewise I think that ND should be out of contention with the loss to NIU. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, in a sport as intrinsically unbalanced as cfb, any playoff (much less an expanded one) makes no sense.
A playoff is fine to pick the best team, a playoff with 4 spots and 5 major conferences was always dumb. 12 is also dumb, it should have just been 8.
One loss shouldn’t necessarily eliminate a team, there’s rarely even 4 undefeated teams. The tricky thing is going to be where they put conference championship losers.
ND deserves getting shafted for stubbornly staying independent, which is absurd for competitive sports.
If we’re doing a playoff at all, I’m glad it’s 12 to get the first round on campus. That at least appeals to the actual strengths of the sport.
The helmet communications are hilarious to me. You see the qb with his hands over his ears desperately trying to hear, and its like, didn’t we solve this problem already?
I think people assumed that helmet comms would be deployed and simply work like the NFL. But NFL stadiums generally don’t get as loud and crazy as several major CFB stadiums. Arrowhead and Lumen Field are the only two that come to mind as coming close, but how do they compare to a Penn State white out game? Or to a chorus of ringing cowbells in Starkville? Or the paddle people in Stillwater?
The silly guys on the sidelines with the signs are probably never really going to go away unless the NCAA expands the use of wearable tech like smart wristbands (some D3 schools are permitted to use them this season as a trial).
That’s unfortunately predominant with most changes to the sport. Playoffs, clock rules, coaching aids. But no one is taking the time to ask why these things hadn’t already come to the sport. CFB will generate it’s own innovation that is suitable for the sport. Heck, gatorade was invented because the gators are so bad and they were desperate to be competitive with foes from superior climates. Video review came to the sport just about when it came to the pros, because it’s suited for both versions of the game. College football had already put AC in practice helmets at LSU, yet no coach was lobbying for headsets though the tech had been officially adopted by the pros over a decade ago.
I would say that although a lot has changed, it feels less like a paradigm shift than when NIL or the transfer portal were introduced. Even the introduction of targeting as a rule or the clock no longer pausing on 1st down felt like bigger changes than some of these, at least to me.
Transfer portal is something I forgot about.
I’m unfamiliar with the details of how it operates but I think it’s a good idea in general. After all, if non-athletes can transfer whenever they want, and if coaches can take a new job elsewhere without having to sit out, athletes should be able to move around too.
I am concerned for the vast majority of athletes who aren’t good enough to go pro, because of issues with getting transfer credits to count toward your degree plan, that they may have trouble finishing in four scholarship years.
I’m also concerned about the potential for abuse of the portal by unscrupulous coaches & athletics administrators.
