College Football lunacy (conference mergers)

[DinahMoeHum]

"It's going to get worse" - Rick Reilly

Link to tweet

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/18/ucla-usc-college-football-lunacy/

And now, class, it’s time to catch you up on college football, the sport that brought you the TaxSlayer Gator Bowl. Please open your textbooks to “Madness.”

College football is slaying its history. It’s selling all its tradition and fans and rivalries down the river on an out-of-control steamboat with a drunk donkey at the wheel. The lunacy really kicked in on June 30 when USC and UCLA bolted the Pac-12 conference for the Big Ten (which now will have 16 teams, if that makes any sense).

That’s right. Starting in 2024, the Big Ten conference, longtime symbol of the hearty American Midwest, corn ice cream and 400-pound kickers, will now be playing teams full of surfers, lowriders and guys in hair buns.

Big Ten teams are now conveniently located near their banks, not each other. Take USC, which is near Hollywood, and their new conference foe Rutgers, which is somewhere near “The Sopranos.” This is going to be such an exciting new rivalry. One team has six Heisman Trophy winners, can claim 11 national championships and over the years has spent 91 weeks as the No. 1 team in the country. The other is Rutgers.

Etc.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/18/ucla-usc-college-football-lunacy/?commentID=fa30f44c-c967-4901-ae21-7f369f229be4

Rick Reilly is the author of Commander In Cheat: How Golf Explains Trump

[rurallib]

1. for many years people speculated about a 'super conference' of the elite of the elite

that would have teams like Ohio State, Michigan, USC, UCLA, Alabama, Texas, Oklahoma, Notre Dame, Florida and maybe a couple of others.

I somehow suspect that is now the ultimate goal. And teams like Arizona, Minnesota, Tennessee and Kansas can go suck eggs.

Rivalries built over a century have become meaningless. And there is no instant new rivalries.

I have been a Big Ten fan all my life. Now the old rivalries mean little. So much like pro football, pro baseball and pro basketball I will look elsewhere for sport fun. College is now fully professional for all practical purposes.

[Casady1]

2. end the charade

and not even have college football. make the NFL pay for a minor league system.

[walkingman]

3. Not a bad idea in theory but tying the team to a college is the real attraction for fans.

I think the merging of teams that is happening today along with NIL will destroy the game at some point. With even public universities becoming more and more about profit and then segregating the sports $$$ from the college general funds is just wrong. These "super teams" could and should be able to eliminate the student tuition costs but instead they build NFL type stadiums and pay mega salaries to coaches.

Leave it to capitalism to destroy everything in its path.

[Jilly_in_VA]

4. It's not about NIL

It'a all about TV money. That is the total package. The TV money it brings in. That money supports all the so-called "minor" sports...wrestling, women's basketball, soccer, lacrosse, track & field, etc. Don't think it doesn't.

[Sewa]

5. You can thank ESPN for this bullshit

ESPN has waged a campaign to undermine the PAC-12 at least 15 years. So USC and UCLA gave in.

For some reason ESPN only wants three major sports conferences, the SEC, ACC and the Big Ten.