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Can someone explain why CFB is worse now than before?
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Date: December 18th, 2025 11:07 AM Author: Nippon Professional Baseball Not a big CFBmo. As I understand it players can now profit off their likeness and transfer schools? Not looking to troll here, I watch like 1 or 2 games a season in the background, have no idea what's changed and why it's worse. (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5811667&forum_id=2#49519047) |
Date: December 18th, 2025 11:13 AM Author: Candy Ride Transfers and NIL suck but the main problem is the ever expanding playoff and format for crowning a champion.
Until the BCS ended, main drama of watching national college football games was that every regular season game mattered. If you lost 1 game, your chances of being a national champion were slim. If you lost 2, they were toast.
When the playoff moved to 4 teams, lots of that drama died. Now with 16 teams, it is mostly gone. Good teams like Georgia, Alabama, and Ohio State can drop games and they don't matter. They will still win enough to make the 16 team playoff.
College football used to be a regular season focused sport. Every regular season game would matter for the national contenders. Now it is shifting to a postseason sport like college basketball and it takes away from what was the greatest regular season in any sport. |
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Date: December 18th, 2025 11:15 AM Author: Nippon Professional Baseball Interesting. I always thought EPL and European soccer leagues were kinda boring because it's just whoever accumulates the most points in the regular season, whereas Americans seem to expect end of season playoffs. Didn't realize there was a large contingent of people that enjoyed CFB for this reason. (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5811667&forum_id=2#49519067) |
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Date: December 18th, 2025 11:18 AM Author: Scut Farkas Didn't see your poast-- but that is the comp I also used. The EPL. (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5811667&forum_id=2#49519081) |
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Date: December 18th, 2025 11:32 AM Author: Candy Ride My post above doesn't touch on NIL, transfers, and conference realignment which also all suck, especially on the level of caring about your own team. (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5811667&forum_id=2#49519125) |
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Date: December 18th, 2025 11:33 AM Author: Nippon Professional Baseball Expound on those pls (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5811667&forum_id=2#49519126) |
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Date: December 18th, 2025 12:08 PM Author: Candy Ride NIL and unlimited transferring favor the established powers and teams with money over the other teams. Usually those groups overlap, but there have been some new money teams like Texas Tech and Indiana which have benefitted from them tremendously.
Say you are a Cal fan, a mid tier program. Every time you develop a good player he transfers to a different school that can pay him more and put him on a bigger stage. They just lost their Heisman caliber QB to Indiana. Unless Cal comes up with big money to compete in this new environment, they are fucked. It didn't used to be this way. A good coach and nucleus of players could lead a mid tier school to overachieve while they were there. In 2007, Kansas and West Virginia were vying for a national championship based on this old model.
Transfers and NIL hit non-power conference teams even harder. They are just farm teams for the big boys now. The days of a great Boise State team knocking off a top 5 team are over. The expanded playoff will really exposure the disparity between top teams and the best non-power conference teams.
Conference realignment does hurt the little guys because it makes it exponentially harder to win a conference championship. In the old days, if conditions were right teams like Iowa or Illinois could occasionally win their conference if Ohio State and Michigan were having down years and things played out perfectly. Now the odds of a lower tier program having a historic season like that are even lower. Now Iowa and Illinois need to bet on Oregon and USC also being down.
Conference realignment hurts competition as stated above, but probably more it hurts the historic rivalries that are the backbone of the sport especially for the mid tier programs. 5-5 Minnesota and Iowa teams would get excited about trying to beat their historic rivals, but why should they care about playing a 4-6 Rutgers team? |
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Date: December 18th, 2025 12:09 PM Author: Nippon Professional Baseball Interesting, TY for the detailed analysis (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5811667&forum_id=2#49519260) |
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Date: December 18th, 2025 12:18 PM Author: Candy Ride The sad part is that all people with brains know the system is going to shit and it could all easily be fixed by Congress.
Transfers and NILs arose because the schools and NCAA are scared shitless about antitrust liability caused by their rules they had for decades. Congress just needs to pass a law exempting college sports from antitrust. The only people who would complain are gay liberals and they shouldn't matter.
While Congress is at it, it could pass a law putting all the FBS teams into conferences with 10 as a maximum size, etc. |
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Date: December 18th, 2025 12:21 PM Author: .....;;,,.........;.;.;.;.,;,;,;.;.;,; NIL arose because there was a literal SCOTUS case that required the NCAA to stop blocking it. (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5811667&forum_id=2#49519309) |
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Date: December 18th, 2025 12:21 PM Author: titus chicken Iowa, Illinois, Minnesota have no hope? Did you just see what Indiana did these season? These guys were doormats for decades. In the new era, everyone is just one coach away. Even Vandy was near the top of the SEC this year with a 10-2 record. This wasn’t possible in the old days when only Alabama and those schools were paying players. (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5811667&forum_id=2#49519306) |
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Date: December 18th, 2025 12:37 PM Author: Darnell yeah, i think candy ride is sharing a lot of accurate complaints that most long time college football fans have. but he and most prognosticators (myself included) have been wrong about conference second tier teams rising up. take washington for example. right now, they have a mediocre talent but decent to excellent coaching staff. if bill gates -- who has never put money in sports, but suppose he changed his tune -- decided to drop 40M a year on his hometown washington huskies, they could suddenly be big ten champs. it takes a financial resources and pro-style roster construction. (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5811667&forum_id=2#49519355) |
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Date: December 18th, 2025 1:14 PM Author: Candy Ride 2 years ago I never would have thought Indiana keeping Cignetti would have been possible. The idea of teams like Texas Tech spending a bunch of money to have better teams wasn't outside the realm of possibility.
Now rising up 100 percent depends on money.
In the past, a great coach and nucleus of players could do it and that was cooler. Jim Harbaugh built Stanford from nothing because he is a great coach. |
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Date: December 18th, 2025 1:39 PM Author: Barack Carcetti Nah, this isn't right at all.
Both NIL and the transfer portal are bad for established powers and good for everybody else.
Both effectively wipe out the depth that previously powers built up.
The really good teams aren't nearly as deep as they were 15-20 years ago.
While SEC schools have a lot of money floating around, they're money advantage isn't nearly what there recruiting advantage was.
18 years old are dumb and unrealistic about their ability.
Guys Alabama are interested in recruit have by and large never been anything other than the big man on campus. If you tell them that you think they are good enough to show up and be the star on campus, they're not realistically evaluating that against the risk that you're tell 4 other guys the exact same thing.
Historically Alabama, and LSU did a great job at getting they're top 4 guys relative to schools like Ole Miss and Vandy.
Historical if you look at near rivals this comes through very clearly. Michigan State getting a very small percentage of players that both they and Michigan offered, Texas Tech getting a tiny percentage of the players that both they and Texas offered.
Money communicates that reality much better.
Alabama might be able to outbid for choice number 1, their money advantage isn't such that they can outbid for choices 1-4. If they've spent what it took to get #1, smaller schools can outbid them for choice number #2.
Similarly for the portal, if you think your destine to win the job at Bama and you show up and don't, you used to be much more locked into that than you used to be. Your economic value is more at Pitt as a started than at Bama as a backup.
The portal lets players flow to where they have value.
Which isn't to say Cal or anywhere else is going to do a good job of using their] resources, that's a different issue. But schools that excel at evaluating talent and are discipline with their resources.
Have a much better opportunity to win now than they used to have.
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Date: December 18th, 2025 11:18 AM Author: Scut Farkas titcr I love college football -- more than the NFL -- but after January 1 it should be over. The bowl system was unique. There are no playoffs in English Premier League and nobody seems to mind. Why did we mind how it worked in college football? |
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Date: December 18th, 2025 12:24 PM Author: Nintendo Squanch In the premier league every team plays each other home and away lol (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5811667&forum_id=2#49519318) |
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Date: December 18th, 2025 12:20 PM Author: .....;;,,.........;.;.;.;.,;,;,;.;.;,; This is retarded bullshit. The BCS was fucking awful and got it wrong as often as not. The 4 team playoff was idiotic and codified SEC bias. When A&M loses this weekend it will further prove the value of the expanded playoff.
90% of the problems in CFB have been caused by conference realignment. If you re-sorted the conferences back to favor historical rivals and regional ties, ideally 8 10-team conferences with 9 game seasons and no conference championship games, and then took the 8 conference champs and 8 at large with a cap of 3 teams per conference that would fix 90% of the issues. Limiting transfer portal to once per 4 years of eligibility would fix most of the other 10%. |
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Date: December 18th, 2025 12:35 PM Author: Candy Ride The BCS only got it wrong in 2011 with Alabama's fraud title over LSU. (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5811667&forum_id=2#49519351) |
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Date: December 18th, 2025 12:40 PM Author: titus chicken CR. The SEC and the Big Ten (and the ACC before that) ruined the sport with the forced realignment to chase TV dollars. The playoff is just the next phase of that. The old major bowls make little sense anymore with 90% of the relevant teams in two conferences.
Maybe some more schools can grow a sack and try to go independent to fight back but I doubt it. |
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Date: December 18th, 2025 12:22 PM Author: Nintendo Squanch This was always a stupid system to determine the champion when nobody plays remotely similar schedules (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5811667&forum_id=2#49519310) |
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Date: December 18th, 2025 11:19 AM Author: Ozzie Canseco as a resident xo non-racist, i can definitively say that schools and conferences and ncaa administrators are sooooooo fucking terrified of saying no to black people that they have created a "wild west" of sports where contracts and obligations are only upheld by the schools and everyone else is held ransom to the whims and emotional outbreaks of 19yo idiots. (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5811667&forum_id=2#49519085) |
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Date: December 18th, 2025 11:25 AM Author: UhOh it's all about money now and some schools have a ton of it while most schools don't. it will eventually consolidate into a 15-20 team league and everyone else will become totally irrelevant, which is sad for most fans. there were a ton of regional rivalries that were a lot of fun for the underdog, who could occasionally pull off a win. also it was easy to travel a couple hours to road games. it's going to be like the nfl in a few years, having to fly cross country all the time.
also the transfer portal has obliterated the illusion that these kids were students just like you used to be. that was a big component of what made college football special. it's been a farce at top programs for awhile but now it's obvious none of these kids (at least the ones with options) have any allegiance to their school. |
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Date: December 18th, 2025 12:11 PM Author: titus chicken Throughout the late 2000s and the 2010s, the SEC and Clemson were the only teams paying players. Now that everyone can pay, the playing field is level, and the SEC has gone years without making the title game and Clemson has become a shit team. Many fans of these programs (who didn’t even go to these schools) are unhappy about this.
Seeing teams like Indiana, Texas Tech, Washington, etc. all become national title contenders at certain times drives these guys nuts. They prefer the old days when Alabama, Georgia and Clemson had rosters far beyond anyone besides Ohio State. The idea that a 5-star backup LB at Alabama might want to transfer to Texas Tech causes many unhinged pouting rants. |
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Date: December 18th, 2025 12:19 PM Author: Scut Farkas I prefer the old days of the 80s and 90s (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5811667&forum_id=2#49519300) |
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Date: December 18th, 2025 12:20 PM Author: gibberish (?) There's no tradition in it. I don't care as much about who can win some march madness bullshit. Who won the rose bowl and such used to matter. Seeing Oregon play Michigan or whatever the bigten is now is fun but it's like before interleague in MLB. The rarity is what made it special for the world series. (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5811667&forum_id=2#49519302) |
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Date: December 18th, 2025 12:26 PM Author: Heil Hitler (TT6) This. Plus transfers. A team had to build itself and it was nice watching it as this year impacted next year. Now, you can go buy yourself players and this season and next are less connected. (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5811667&forum_id=2#49519324) |
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Date: December 18th, 2025 12:43 PM Author: Darnell yes, the pac12 dissolving was a fucking tragedy. what a great conference with great rivalries. it's so sad
the old big 12 with ut, tamu, ou, etc was great too |
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Date: December 18th, 2025 12:46 PM Author: titus chicken It sucks man. The SEC and Big10 just had to have it all.
It’s in a transition phase right now but the next step is the Big 10 and SEC using their control of the playoff to force ND, FSU, Clemson and maybe UNC and UVA (only because SEC likes their geography) to join the big 2. After that, the final step, is to start to cut the dead weight at the bottom of the big 2. It’ll start with the Northwesterns and Miss States of the world getting 1/2 the TV money OSU does and will go on from there. |
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Date: December 18th, 2025 1:35 PM Author: gibberish (?) I really hope you're wrong (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5811667&forum_id=2#49519515) |
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Date: December 18th, 2025 12:27 PM Author: bigeastboy the focus on a "national champion" whatever the fuck that even means ruined the joy of all teams. it used to be if you were say, Washington and you went 10-2 and went to the Rose Bowl your season was a success. now it is a failure. and for teams that rarely have good seasons getting to 10 wins and winning a bowl game was a great season. (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5811667&forum_id=2#49519329) |
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Date: December 18th, 2025 12:30 PM Author: Ozzie Canseco people used to say that college bball was an inch deep and a mile wide. but really college football is an inch deep and a mile wide. college basketball is like a millimeter deep and 25 kilometers wide. (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5811667&forum_id=2#49519333) |
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Date: December 18th, 2025 12:32 PM Author: Heil Hitler (TT6) Good missing point. As an OU fan, beating Texas, winning the Big 12, and winning our bowl was a win. Now its not. (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5811667&forum_id=2#49519339) |
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Date: December 18th, 2025 1:39 PM Author: .,.,...,.,.;,.,,,:,.,.,::,....,:,..;,.., Last years 12-team playoff were amazing, especially the first two weekends
this year the first weekend is going to suck with Tulane and JMU in the fix but I think that will get fixed after this year. Both of those games are prime time Saturday night too and once the viewer ratings come in corrective action will be taken |
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Date: December 18th, 2025 1:42 PM Author: ........,,,,,,......,.,.,.,,,,,,,,,, I'll answer with a hypothetical. Let's suppose that college football dissolved next year, and instead, Alabama/OSU/Michigan/etc all licensed leased their stadiums and licensed their trademarks to XFL teams.
So the XFL keeps running, with the same league rules, but now the Seattle Sea Dragons are now the Buckeye and they play at the Horse Shoe. Their oponent is Michigan, which is really the remnants of the Arlington Renegades.
Does this really change anything from current college football? |