Any time college football hits on a successful formula, you can be sure they will ruin it.
I vividly remember Miami vs Notre Dame, the now immortal
“Catholics vs Convicts” game. At the time, I didn’t know all that. I only knew
that it felt like the biggest sporting event that had ever been played based on
my dad’s desire to watch that game, and all the talk and hype leading up to it.
We lived about an hour outside of New York City and got the New York papers, so
the sports sections that fall were full of Notre Dame stories for the Subway
alum.
The second game I’ll always remember is the Fiesta Bowl
where an undefeated Notre Dame took down undefeated West Virginia to win the
still-mythical National Championship. It felt like college football was a
perfect sport, unlike every other. The pageantry. The uniforms. The spectacle.
The sheer number of games every Saturday. The beautiful bowl games on New Year’s
Day. I was hooked.
I mention this because as a first grader, I didn’t understand that
the sport of college football was only a handful of years removed from the
landmark Supreme Court ruling that allowed more games to be aired on national
television. It was the beginning of the greed that would come to define,
improve, and maybe someday ruin, the sport.
The Fiesta Bowl trounced the Rose Bowl in the ratings, of
course. With the Big Ten in decline in the late 1980’s, and independents like
Miami, Penn State, and Notre Dame dominating the sport, the Rose Bowl was in a
position where many were worried about the game’s long-term future. The crown
jewel of the bowl season was the Orange Bowl, because the Big 8 champion vs the
top independent would usually determine the national champion.
As a six-year-old, I merely assumed that New Year’s Day was
always an overloaded feast of college football with multiple games going on all
day. But that wasn’t the case. For decades, it was only the big four - Cotton,
Sugar, Rose, and Orange - that were played on New Year’s Day. By 1988, that
number was up to 7. It would peak at 8 starting with the 1990 season, when ESPN
joined the New Year’s Day party. It was all downhill from there.
When I think about college football during my lifetime, I
think about peaks. Because every time the sport appears to have reached a new
peak for the sport, it’s quickly undermined, ruined, and replaced for a new
approach. And when that new approach hits its peak, the sport goes through the
same, stupid process.
Since 1988, the process for crowning a champion has remained
almost completely unchanged in every sport. The only difference has been an
increase in games or playoff teams. The NFL, for example, had 10 playoff teams
in 1988 and has 14 now. Not really that big of a difference. The NHL playoffs
has the exact same amount of playoff teams today as in 1988 with the same number
of games in each round. The NBA playoffs remained virtually unchanged until the
recent addition of the play-in tournament.
It’s not only pro sports, as college basketball has the
exact same tournament format it did 34 years ago. As with the NBA, the only
change has been the addition of a play-in First Four, bringing the total number
of teams from 64 to 68.
It’s not only postseasons, either. College football teams
played 11 games in 1988. Then conference championship games started in the
1990s, so some teams would play 12. Then in the 2000s, the number of regular
season games went up to 12, so some teams would play 13 or even 14. Then came
the playoffs in the 2010s.
In 1988, Notre Dame went 12-0 and won the National Title. In
2021, Georgia started 12-0 and still had three games to play. The NHL, NBA, and
MLB all play the same number of regular season games today as they did in 1988.
The NFL extended its season by one game, and that happened just last year.
In 1988, Kansas won the college basketball national title
after playing 38 games. In 2022, Kansas won the same national title after
playing 40 games - the difference coming from the 1988 Kansas team losing early
in its conference tournament.
Every other sport has identified a winning, consistent
formula. The players change, but the fundamental foundation of the sport
remains the same.
In college football, the opposite is true in every way. In
my lifetime, we’ve gone from polls deciding a champion to the BCS to the
playoff, with another massive playoff expansion looming in the future.
The 1988 college football season had 24 independent teams.
In 2022, there will be 7.
There are 10 conferences in college football in 2022. Only
five of them even existed in 1988, and none have the same membership.
You’re reading this assuming I’m going this piece by
explaining why I now hate college football. How can you hate something you love
so much?
College football in my lifetime has been defined by its
peaks, which quickly led to horrible valleys where the future of the sport is left in doubt. Every time, though, college football pulls through on the other
end as a stronger, more vibrant TV property making more money than anything not
named the NFL.
In my lifetime, 1988 was the first peak. I just didn’t
realize it at the time.
Over the next few years, the sport became increasingly
popular. New Year’s Day became oversaturated. Conferences started plucking
valuable independents. Notre Dame signed its own TV deal, and others followed
suit. The “mythical” national champion days of polls became a burden, so the
sport needed to change to follow suit.
Yes, college football in 1988 might have hit a peak, but it
was unsustainable.
In the end, that’s the biggest takeaway about college
football – nothing about it seems sustainable. Hundreds of teams across every
state and every time zone playing so many games for so many fans and trying to
please so many different audiences. It’s impossible, it seems, to find a system
that works.
College football is defined by its peaks.
1988 was the first one I can remember. 2022 may be the next one. But three other peaks – 1993, 2005, and 2014 – provide immense insight into why this sport has become so popular, and why the people in charge can’t stop messing around with the formula.
Comments
Post a Comment