I Can't Get Excited for the 2021 College Football Season

College football is supposed to be back “home” in 2021, but my fandom hasn’t recovered from 2020.

College football has been my favorite sport for as long as I’ve been watching sports. One of the first memories I have of watching sports was the fall of 1988, when I was six, and my Notre Dame alum Dad was celebrating their wins over Miami and then West Virginia in the Fiesta Bowl to win the national title.

Every August since has been spent reading preview magazines, going over the first week schedules, and counting down the minutes until it returned. But something changed in 2020, when COVID ripped apart any and all fantasies I had about why I loved college football so much.

College football had become a blatant money grab well before 2020, but the confluence of events caused by the pandemic crystallized the fact that, yes, college football was always that gross. I barely paid attention to the 2020 season. Too many games were canceled. Too many players got COVID. The bowl season was a farce. The title game was a joke. I just wanted it to end.

I wrongly assumed I’d be right back to my 2019 levels of excitement in 2021 when fans returned and COVID largely receded. Well, COVID has largely receded where I live, and I’ve been to baseball games and horse racing events since. Yet, that’s not the case across the South, as hospitals are pushed the brink because too many people are too stupid to get the vaccine.

Beyond that, the other idiots ruining my interest in the sport are the idiots running the sport. After watching years of attendance declines and then ratings fall off a cliff in 2020, the powers running the sport have made all the wrong moves in response.

This should be a year to celebrate that players, thanks to name, image, and likeness (NIL) deals, are finally making money. But it’s been obscured by leaders trying to make even more money.

Take your pick on which decisions have been worst for the sport. Maybe it’s Texas and Oklahoma joining the SEC and leaving the rest of the Big 12 in limbo. Maybe it’s the looming expansion of the playoff from four to 12 teams. Maybe it’s the Big Ten, ACC, Pac-12 alliance. Maybe it’s all of them.

College football is college football because it was different. The sport felt the closest to European soccer, where every game mattered during the regular season, the fans viewed their teams as their representatives, the pageantry and rituals were passed down through generations, and rivalries meant just as much, if not more, than titles.

College football is less popular – whether you look at attendance or TV ratings – in 2021 because it’s no longer different. It’s essentially become NFL Junior and we already have the NFL. College football leaders have squeezed out nearly all that made college football unique, in favor of a professional sports approach to the crowning a champion.

Too many games are played in NFL stadiums, which will be on full display on opening weekend. In 2013, one of the great opening weekend college football games of all time took place when Georgia played at Clemson. College Gameday was there for the primetime showdown, and the scene that night at Death Valley was indescribable. The matchup of top teams did a huge rating and set the tone for the final BCS season.

This year, Georgia and Clemson will again play in the biggest game of Labor Day weekend, and College Gameday will again be there. But it won’t be on-campus in Clemson or Athens, it’ll be in downtown Charlotte where the Carolina Panthers play. It’s another money grab in lieu of an on-campus showdown that we all really want to see.

Even two of the biggest games that weekend on-campus – the Big Ten games between Penn St/Wisconsin and Indiana/Iowa – are happening because the Big Ten is chasing TV money. It’s a brilliant move by the Big Ten, no doubt, but it’s not being done for any noble reason.

At the end of the day, that’s why I’m losing interest in college football. None of the decisions being made at any level are to make the sport better. They are being made to make the sport richer.

I think back to 1988 and how it made me a fan, or even as recently as years like 2007, which ensured I’d never stop being a fan. Those years were marked by indelible scenes of campus stadiums filled to the brim with fans and students for big games that mattered more than any other regular season games in any other sport.

In 2021, the spark in the sport is gone. So many people still laud college football for its traditions and differences as why they love the sport. Unfortunately, so many people are really clinging on to the past without realizing what we’ve lost, particularly through realignment.

I hope when Labor Day weekend hits, I’ll be stuck on my couch watching too much football and eating too many buffalo wings. It won’t be the same, and I don’t think it ever will be.

The worst part is that the people running college football don’t care what I think. Even with less people watching, they’ll make more money than ever before due to the fractured television landscape. They take me for granted. Frankly, maybe they should because I will still watch.

I’m worried about the future of college football because the future of college football is being determined by old men trying to line their pockets with money. It’s not going to go well.

You know what, maybe I should just enjoy the 2021 season. It’s likely only downhill from here. 

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