(03-25-2013 03:08 PM)stever20 Wrote:  The early season polls are a lot closer than folks think. Looked at the prediction at the end of the 2011 season from ESPN. Of the top 25 teams- 16 were in the end of year top 25. Of those 16, 8 were within 2 spots. I think 2011 season- 8/10 teams were in the preseason poll.

college game reminds me of the NFL 20 years ago when the NFC was on that dominating streak.

Actually, you can almost predict how the top 25 will end in most years. The college game is not as unpredictable as it used to be. I've expressed a fear about CFB turning into NFL lite. However, it may end up looking more like MLB when it comes to opportunity. What makes the NFL so appealing is that the big time losers last year can turn into playoff contenders next year. NFW would that happen in CFB.

(03-25-2013 08:32 PM)miko33 Wrote:  

(03-25-2013 03:08 PM)stever20 Wrote:  The early season polls are a lot closer than folks think. Looked at the prediction at the end of the 2011 season from ESPN. Of the top 25 teams- 16 were in the end of year top 25. Of those 16, 8 were within 2 spots. I think 2011 season- 8/10 teams were in the preseason poll.

college game reminds me of the NFL 20 years ago when the NFC was on that dominating streak.

Actually, you can almost predict how the top 25 will end in most years. The college game is not as unpredictable as it used to be. I've expressed a fear about CFB turning into NFL lite. However, it may end up looking more like MLB when it comes to opportunity. What makes the NFL so appealing is that the big time losers last year can turn into playoff contenders next year. NFW would that happen in CFB.

totally agree. Actually would say may be looking more like the NBA than MLB even(MLB if you look last 30 years has a lot more champions than one would think).

I think there's a reason the hoops ratings were up so much- hoops for whatever reason has gotten so much more unpredictable. Watched a lot of those early games and most were extremely competitive.

(03-25-2013 01:17 PM)CommuterBob Wrote:  Ratings for the NCAA tournament are up 5% over last year and are the best ratings in 23 years. People may be tuning out football more as ratings are down for that sport, but the NCAA tourney ratings this year are solid.

Ratings are up in the NCAA tournament as much for Florida Gulf Coast, etc. as the top dogs. That is the beauty of the NCAA basketball tournament. The Davids can get in there & beat Goliath every now & then.

That is why I agree that NCAA football needs to stop with the "Super 64" garbage, if it is even is a real plan. That will turn NCAA football in to NFL's "D-league" or MLB's "AAA Minor league". Either way, it will be a fail.

Besides, I don't think the Delaney's of the world can get around losing tax-exempt status if they turn it in to a closed club. That alone may keep him & his cronies from completely ruining college football.

Keep college football with a system where the Boise States of the nation can rise up & compete for a national championship & you will keep college football alive & growing.

4 team playoff and Contract bowls pretty much mean the Boises will never play for a title or BCS bowl ever again.

(03-25-2013 09:26 PM)10thMountain Wrote:  4 team playoff and Contract bowls pretty much mean the Boises will never play for a title or BCS bowl ever again.

um, a team like a Boise or Northern Illinois is playing in a BCS Bowl EVERY year GUARANTEED starting next year.

And if it's a year like 2009- lets see the committee leave out a #3 Boise St type team(I know in 2009 it was TCU- but still the point still stands).

Didn't realize they threw the midmajors a bone by making one of them fall on the ratings sword each year (did the RB weasel out of having to take one?)

As for the playoff...yeah no. Its just not gonna happen.

I think people in general have a hard time with change. I think what is coming will be better than what there is now. With change comes fear. People fear what will be lost but if anything, what is lost will be no where near equal in measure to what is gained.

Rivalries will mean more and new rivalries will sprout up that mean more than old rivalries which people will begin to realize were just held upon them for marketing purposes.

Rivalries like Alabama and Tennessee? It is old and outdated. Football has moved beyond that and it is no longer that great of a game. Alabama loves it because their followers flock to the game and make it a huge deal which means it is protected and Alabama knows it is an easy win for them.

Old, outdated Rivalries will fall to the wayside. New rivalries that make much more sense will arise. Some folks won't be able to handle it but the Networks know that the loss of a few will be more than accomodated by the gain of many new viewers. The new viewers wont have come because college football makes less sense and is "NFL Lite", they will come because it makes more sense and the way the NFL is set up makes more sense.

The college game will still be the college game and I for one will still prefer watching college football more than professional football. For one, I know that one team's star players aren't going to be hot commodities on the Free Agency Market the next year. I hate that aspect of Pro Football. There is no such thing as teams anymore, just groups of mercenary football players that are playing on the same side of the ball for a couple of years. Likely many of them will be standing on opposing sides of the field at some point in the near future.

College Football will not be lost in it's new future, it's just changing to meet the times and to stop being held back by a few who simply fear change.

(03-25-2013 09:26 PM)10thMountain Wrote:  4 team playoff and Contract bowls pretty much mean the Boises will never play for a title or BCS bowl ever again.

It's not going to stay 4 teams for long, in my opinion.

(03-25-2013 11:24 PM)He1nousOne Wrote:  I think people in general have a hard time with change. I think what is coming will be better than what there is now. With change comes fear. People fear what will be lost but if anything, what is lost will be no where near equal in measure to what is gained.

Rivalries will mean more and new rivalries will sprout up that mean more than old rivalries which people will begin to realize were just held upon them for marketing purposes.

Rivalries like Alabama and Tennessee? It is old and outdated. Football has moved beyond that and it is no longer that great of a game. Alabama loves it because their followers flock to the game and make it a huge deal which means it is protected and Alabama knows it is an easy win for them.

Old, outdated Rivalries will fall to the wayside. New rivalries that make much more sense will arise. Some folks won't be able to handle it but the Networks know that the loss of a few will be more than accomodated by the gain of many new viewers. The new viewers wont have come because college football makes less sense and is "NFL Lite", they will come because it makes more sense and the way the NFL is set up makes more sense.

The college game will still be the college game and I for one will still prefer watching college football more than professional football. For one, I know that one team's star players aren't going to be hot commodities on the Free Agency Market the next year. I hate that aspect of Pro Football. There is no such thing as teams anymore, just groups of mercenary football players that are playing on the same side of the ball for a couple of years. Likely many of them will be standing on opposing sides of the field at some point in the near future.

College Football will not be lost in it's new future, it's just changing to meet the times and to stop being held back by a few who simply fear change.

Maybe so Hen1ous, but some of these rivalries are priceless. Alabama had some .500 years too. Records mean nothing in a game like this. Is Michigan-Ohio State an old outdated rivalry? I hope you are right, but I have my 60" HD if you are wrong...

(03-25-2013 01:40 PM)miko33 Wrote:  I agree. CFB cannot compete with the NFL head to head if you are looking at pure performance. It's one of the reasons I always chuckled when people talked about "dream conferences" and putting all these power schools under one umbrella. It doesn't work because it will always be inferior to the NFL. Thursday nights proved that out week after week throughout the 2012 FB season.

There is a desire for football beyond the 32 largest metropolitan areas of the country.

As a person from an NFL market, college is only one of the options you have to follow locally. In a very significant part of the nation following the NFL isn't a local option.

(03-26-2013 12:08 AM)ULdave Wrote:  

(03-25-2013 01:40 PM)miko33 Wrote:  I agree. CFB cannot compete with the NFL head to head if you are looking at pure performance. It's one of the reasons I always chuckled when people talked about "dream conferences" and putting all these power schools under one umbrella. It doesn't work because it will always be inferior to the NFL. Thursday nights proved that out week after week throughout the 2012 FB season.

There is a desire for football beyond the 32 largest metropolitan areas of the country.

As a person from an NFL market, college is only one of the options you have to follow locally. In a very significant part of the nation following the NFL isn't a local option.

The reason I love the NFL so much is because my team, I'm a shareholder of the Packers can play for and have won a title. Fresno St. will never have that chance, they sure as hell won't have that chance most years like the Packers do. I love the level playing field, college doesn't have that if you're in the bottom 5, we don't have the money to keep up w/ Alabama. Sure we get 85 schollys like Bama but they get a top 5 guy in the country at every position, while we might get a top 50 guy at every position. In the NFL if you suck, you get a chance to draft the best guy, when the best team has to wait until 32. That's why you get a 2-14 Colts that make the playoffs the next year. America agrees w/ me if you look at the ratings. College fb is still #2, it's the minor leagues for the NFL. The 2 seem to be pulling away from the pack. March Madness is a nice little exciting month but there's not much reason to watch the regular season.

(03-25-2013 01:14 PM)miko33 Wrote:  College sports used to be about the rivalries, the tradition, the sense that these are amateurs who are there playing for their school pride - not for payoffs.

I think that for many schools, this started to go away when recruiting became nationalized. College sports are always better when there is a sense that these are OUR kids out there competing.

Some programs like Nebraska, USC, WVU, and Iowa have lost this over the years. But local recruiting is still a huge part of programs like UC, Ohio State, Texas, Penn State, Florida, and LSU. Miko, even Pitt has 57 Pennsylvanians on the roster. The same thing applies to basketball. Programs like Purdue, Illinois, Indiana, UNC, NC State, and Memphis are still built on local recruits. But Kentucky, Kansas, UC, and Louisville only have a handful of local recruits, and it's detrimental for the sport.

IMO there still is plenty of reason to like the college game over the NFL. This is especially true if you root for one of the teams that is built on local recruits.

(03-25-2013 11:24 PM)He1nousOne Wrote:  I think people in general have a hard time with change. I think what is coming will be better than what there is now. With change comes fear. People fear what will be lost but if anything, what is lost will be no where near equal in measure to what is gained.

Rivalries will mean more and new rivalries will sprout up that mean more than old rivalries which people will begin to realize were just held upon them for marketing purposes.

Rivalries like Alabama and Tennessee? It is old and outdated. Football has moved beyond that and it is no longer that great of a game. Alabama loves it because their followers flock to the game and make it a huge deal which means it is protected and Alabama knows it is an easy win for them.

Old, outdated Rivalries will fall to the wayside. New rivalries that make much more sense will arise. Some folks won't be able to handle it but the Networks know that the loss of a few will be more than accomodated by the gain of many new viewers. The new viewers wont have come because college football makes less sense and is "NFL Lite", they will come because it makes more sense and the way the NFL is set up makes more sense.

The college game will still be the college game and I for one will still prefer watching college football more than professional football. For one, I know that one team's star players aren't going to be hot commodities on the Free Agency Market the next year. I hate that aspect of Pro Football. There is no such thing as teams anymore, just groups of mercenary football players that are playing on the same side of the ball for a couple of years. Likely many of them will be standing on opposing sides of the field at some point in the near future.

College Football will not be lost in it's new future, it's just changing to meet the times and to stop being held back by a few who simply fear change.

You make it sound like the main reason these rivalries sprouted up was because two college teams happened to be good at the same time way back when, and people decided to "lock" in the rivalries because of their past performance. No doubt some degree of parity had to have existed back then or the rivalries would not have taken off. But equally important is the fact that these rivalries mean a lot more than what developed on the FB field. Take the most cherished rivalry in your own conference: OSU - Mich. That rivalry didn't develop just because Hayes and Schembechler were both great coaches and were with their respective teams at the same time. It contributed to the rivalry - no doubt about it - but the rivalry is much older than that. You can say its genesis occurred when the state of OH and the Mich territory were fighting over the port of Toledo.

For that matter then, you probably believe that rivalries like Pitt/PSU, GT/UGA, Iowa/ISU should be shelved because they no longer play in the same conference anymore. In Pitt/PSU case, that rivalry has been dormant for awhile. It makes no sense to manufacture rivalries simply because two college FB franchises happen to both be good at the same time. That's the risk you run, and it's what you want to see. If Alabama is at the top of the pile for awhile, let's manufacture a new rival for Alabama to make a more exciting year over year matchup. How about pairing them up with ND at the end of every year? ND was beat handily by Alabama last year; however, ND has the capability to recruit nationally - probably better than Bama can - so that could eventually equalize since Saban is so great of a coach. Screw ND/USC or ND/Stanford - both are outdated. Set up Bama/ND during rivalry week...

I don't think it's going to work out the way you think it will. It will become NFL lite. The play on the field is an inferior product when compared to the NFL, and when you kick away the naturally formed rivalries in favor of "new" ones for the sake of the matchups alone, it will fail. You already have this going on right now in the NFL. If CFB copies it, it will become an inferior copy of a superior original.

You dislike the idea of the NFL being a mercenary league - players for hire. You don't think this isn't happening in the college game? Of course it is. Why do you think Saban gets a 5 star recruit at practically every position? It's because the CFB game today is set up to reward those programs that strive to push the programs as conduits to the NFL. There is no team concept in the CFB game anymore than there is in the pros if you want to apply the same line of thinking. There isn't a whole lot of team pride on the gridiron in the college game. It's also the reason why a large percentage of the kids playing FB today have no business being at a college in the first place. It's equally as mercenary as the NFL - except instead of money changing hands it's access to the NFL. Many of the CFB players today don't care about picking a school that will give them and education that matches up with their career aspirations - it's all about how well a coach can prep them for the NFL.

Honestly, I do not believe that CFB will be able to be saved as we know it in the future. I personally do not believe that it will bode well for the appeal of the product in the long term.

Actually, I think you see the same local bias in pro leagues. The best pro franchises try to build themselves around local heroes. Derek Jeter, Barry Larkin, Joe Mauer, Pete Rose, Cal Ripken, Lebron James (pre-Heat), Albert Pujols. If they didn't grow up there, at least sign them to a long enough contract that people can claim them as one of their own (Magic Johnson, Larry Bird, Michael Jordan, Kobe Bryant, Joey Votto, Mariano Rivera, Tom Brady).

There's a reason that all-time greats like Shaq and A-Rod never really helped build a franchise. Guns-for-hire will never be heroes. People don't like players who are treated like cattle. The more that college sports avoids that perception, the better.

Nope, rivalries can happen for many reasons, schools dont have to be in the same conference for them. Competition makes for a great rivalry. You can have a rivalry, you can have great fan following for it but if it is clearly a one sided rivalry then it is not a competitive rivalry.

You can stop trying to attribute ideas to me. That is called creating a strawman. Argue against what I do say not what you are trying to attribute to me. It is a sign of weakness to falsely attribute a stance to me and then to argue against that stance for half of your damn post.

I am not even going to go into anymore individual rivalries. Feel free to disagree with me about my example but the downward spiral that is the Tennessee football program is proof enough that they need new, competitive rivalries.

My main point wasnt about going on a diatribe about rivalries, it was that college football is not going to be harmed. It's viewership will rise even with the loss of viewership of the "old guard" that says they will supposedly stop watching. Go ahead, stop watching then. That isn't going to stop what is coming. I will enjoy college football in whatever form it is brought to us in because I like college football better than pro football for a multitude of reasons.

With the new set up that is coming, more people will begin to get into it.

(03-26-2013 06:20 AM)Captain Bearcat Wrote:  Actually, I think you see the same local bias in pro leagues. The best pro franchises try to build themselves around local heroes. Derek Jeter, Barry Larkin, Joe Mauer, Pete Rose, Cal Ripken, Lebron James (pre-Heat), Albert Pujols. If they didn't grow up there, at least sign them to a long enough contract that people can claim them as one of their own (Magic Johnson, Larry Bird, Michael Jordan, Kobe Bryant, Joey Votto, Mariano Rivera, Tom Brady).

There's a reason that all-time greats like Shaq and A-Rod never really helped build a franchise. Guns-for-hire will never be heroes. People don't like players who are treated like cattle. The more that college sports avoids that perception, the better.

You will never see college stars playing for a different college team unless they are taking a serious step up in competition through transfer and if that is the case then most college fans likely didn't know who they were until talk of the transfer brought them into the light.

That is one major reason why I like college football better. The teams have more identity than pro teams. Pro teams are now basically just mercenary outfits. There isn't much loyalty out there except at places such as New England.

(03-26-2013 04:34 AM)Fresno St. Alum Wrote:  

(03-26-2013 12:08 AM)ULdave Wrote:  

(03-25-2013 01:40 PM)miko33 Wrote:  I agree. CFB cannot compete with the NFL head to head if you are looking at pure performance. It's one of the reasons I always chuckled when people talked about "dream conferences" and putting all these power schools under one umbrella. It doesn't work because it will always be inferior to the NFL. Thursday nights proved that out week after week throughout the 2012 FB season.

There is a desire for football beyond the 32 largest metropolitan areas of the country.

As a person from an NFL market, college is only one of the options you have to follow locally. In a very significant part of the nation following the NFL isn't a local option.

The reason I love the NFL so much is because my team, I'm a shareholder of the Packers can play for and have won a title. Fresno St. will never have that chance, they sure as hell won't have that chance most years like the Packers do. I love the level playing field, college doesn't have that if you're in the bottom 5, we don't have the money to keep up w/ Alabama. Sure we get 85 schollys like Bama but they get a top 5 guy in the country at every position, while we might get a top 50 guy at every position. In the NFL if you suck, you get a chance to draft the best guy, when the best team has to wait until 32. That's why you get a 2-14 Colts that make the playoffs the next year. America agrees w/ me if you look at the ratings. College fb is still #2, it's the minor leagues for the NFL. The 2 seem to be pulling away from the pack. March Madness is a nice little exciting month but there's not much reason to watch the regular season.

I'm not saying people don't like the NFL, but the NFL is not "reachable" for the average person in Fresno. People in Fresno want a team to follow, want a place to tailgate, and football game to go to. Flying to Green Bay every other Sunday isn't an option for 99.99% of the people in Fresno. The NFL doesn't meet the football needs in that area.

College football provides the highest level football for the Fresno area. So I found miko's opinion to be spoiled. He is upset that college football is becoming similar to the NFL and more "professional". Because he has multiple LOCAL football options that makes sense, but for most of the country college football is the only "professional" sport option that meets local needs.

(03-25-2013 01:50 PM)arkstfan Wrote:  

(03-25-2013 01:40 PM)miko33 Wrote:  

(03-25-2013 01:26 PM)USAFMEDIC Wrote:  I also fear that money makers will eventually kill the goose that lays the golden egg we know as CFB. They are forgetting what made it such a great game. Soon they will price the everyday people out of the game...

I agree. CFB cannot compete with the NFL head to head if you are looking at pure performance. It's one of the reasons I always chuckled when people talked about "dream conferences" and putting all these power schools under one umbrella. It doesn't work because it will always be inferior to the NFL. Thursday nights proved that out week after week throughout the 2012 FB season.

When you lose the rivalries and the school pride, then it morphs into something not so appealing.

No one except a few deluded SEC fans watches college football to see the best football played. It is an inferior product between the white lines compared to the NFL. From time to time people will declare college X could beat whatever NFL team is tragic that year but it ignores something. That great college team of 105 players, has fewer NFL caliber players than the worst NFL team.

No one except some economists and lawyers really believe that people watch college football to see the star players. Put 22 kids who couldn't start in high school in white helmets with a red N on the side and send them out of the tunnel to face 22 kids who couldn't start in high school and stick black helmets with a gold hawk on the side and the place will be full and hanging on the outcome of every play.

It is about my team, my school vs. the low-down cheating, poor academic scumbags from the other school. It is about the scarlet and black vs. the maroon and silver or whatever color combinations.

Guess I'm one of the few, deluded SEC fans then because I hardly ever watch the NFL. Honestly, I'm just not into it at all. I used to really be into the NFL when I was younger, and pre-massive franchise moving (franchises have been moving for years, but back in the '90s the NFL had a lot of teams relocat), but when several franchises decided to relocate, and the NFL showed it was all about the benjamin$, I just stopped watching. I'm not really into the NBA either, but I'll confess I didn't watch March Madness either. The NBA was another league I used to follow, until Ron Francis really showed me what the NBA was all about when he pitched a fit about being drafted by Vancouver and demanded to be traded to the Houston Rockets. (I'm surprised he didn't demand a trade to the Bulls or the Lakers, so that way he could have got an instant NBA championship ring. Woohoo. :rolleyes: To put it in a football perspective, what if Peyton Manning demanded that the Colts trade him to the Dallas Cowboys ASAP after selecting him as their draft choice, and the Cowboys and Colts actually doing this trade? How would you feel about the NFL then??) I ceased to follow the NBA then. Come to think of it, I believe I did a high school report on Mr. Ron Francis' tirade against Vancouver, and I put my opinion on how I felt about it, siding with Vancouver, of course, because of the way Mr. Francis chose to handle the situation.

(03-26-2013 06:17 AM)miko33 Wrote:  

(03-25-2013 11:24 PM)He1nousOne Wrote:  I think people in general have a hard time with change. I think what is coming will be better than what there is now. With change comes fear. People fear what will be lost but if anything, what is lost will be no where near equal in measure to what is gained.

Rivalries will mean more and new rivalries will sprout up that mean more than old rivalries which people will begin to realize were just held upon them for marketing purposes.

Rivalries like Alabama and Tennessee? It is old and outdated. Football has moved beyond that and it is no longer that great of a game. Alabama loves it because their followers flock to the game and make it a huge deal which means it is protected and Alabama knows it is an easy win for them.

Old, outdated Rivalries will fall to the wayside. New rivalries that make much more sense will arise. Some folks won't be able to handle it but the Networks know that the loss of a few will be more than accomodated by the gain of many new viewers. The new viewers wont have come because college football makes less sense and is "NFL Lite", they will come because it makes more sense and the way the NFL is set up makes more sense.

The college game will still be the college game and I for one will still prefer watching college football more than professional football. For one, I know that one team's star players aren't going to be hot commodities on the Free Agency Market the next year. I hate that aspect of Pro Football. There is no such thing as teams anymore, just groups of mercenary football players that are playing on the same side of the ball for a couple of years. Likely many of them will be standing on opposing sides of the field at some point in the near future.

College Football will not be lost in it's new future, it's just changing to meet the times and to stop being held back by a few who simply fear change.

You make it sound like the main reason these rivalries sprouted up was because two college teams happened to be good at the same time way back when, and people decided to "lock" in the rivalries because of their past performance. No doubt some degree of parity had to have existed back then or the rivalries would not have taken off. But equally important is the fact that these rivalries mean a lot more than what developed on the FB field. Take the most cherished rivalry in your own conference: OSU - Mich. That rivalry didn't develop just because Hayes and Schembechler were both great coaches and were with their respective teams at the same time. It contributed to the rivalry - no doubt about it - but the rivalry is much older than that. You can say its genesis occurred when the state of OH and the Mich territory were fighting over the port of Toledo.

For that matter then, you probably believe that rivalries like Pitt/PSU, GT/UGA, Iowa/ISU should be shelved because they no longer play in the same conference anymore. In Pitt/PSU case, that rivalry has been dormant for awhile. It makes no sense to manufacture rivalries simply because two college FB franchises happen to both be good at the same time. That's the risk you run, and it's what you want to see. If Alabama is at the top of the pile for awhile, let's manufacture a new rival for Alabama to make a more exciting year over year matchup. How about pairing them up with ND at the end of every year? ND was beat handily by Alabama last year; however, ND has the capability to recruit nationally - probably better than Bama can - so that could eventually equalize since Saban is so great of a coach. Screw ND/USC or ND/Stanford - both are outdated. Set up Bama/ND during rivalry week...

I don't think it's going to work out the way you think it will. It will become NFL lite. The play on the field is an inferior product when compared to the NFL, and when you kick away the naturally formed rivalries in favor of "new" ones for the sake of the matchups alone, it will fail. You already have this going on right now in the NFL. If CFB copies it, it will become an inferior copy of a superior original.

You dislike the idea of the NFL being a mercenary league - players for hire. You don't think this isn't happening in the college game? Of course it is. Why do you think Saban gets a 5 star recruit at practically every position? It's because the CFB game today is set up to reward those programs that strive to push the programs as conduits to the NFL. There is no team concept in the CFB game anymore than there is in the pros if you want to apply the same line of thinking. There isn't a whole lot of team pride on the gridiron in the college game. It's also the reason why a large percentage of the kids playing FB today have no business being at a college in the first place. It's equally as mercenary as the NFL - except instead of money changing hands it's access to the NFL. Many of the CFB players today don't care about picking a school that will give them and education that matches up with their career aspirations - it's all about how well a coach can prep them for the NFL.

Honestly, I do not believe that CFB will be able to be saved as we know it in the future. I personally do not believe that it will bode well for the appeal of the product in the long term.

Sadly Miko, I believe you may be correct. Unless the presidents of these "power 5" conferences don't wake up and realize they're killing the golden goose and creating "NFL-lite", college football as we know it will cease to exist. It's already begun to occur with the BE, CUSA, B12, and now the ACC being poached. :(

(03-25-2013 02:15 PM)bitcruncher Wrote:  I disagree with you guys. I actually prefer college football, mainly due to its unpredictability. I find pro football to be predictable and dull, whereas college football always has the possibility of something big happening at any moment...

As for putting anyone in a certain college jersey, and expecting the fans to show up and cheer them on regardless, that's ludicrous. If the university puts out a poor product on a continual basis, it shows at the box office eventually...

Wrong --- and correct, both at the same time. The "poor product" is a relative term; completely. Placing those non high school starters in UF unis and pitting them against the 2012 Alabama team then certainly the UF fans will eventually stop coming.....but if BOTH teams drop off in speed, strength and versatility then the average fan won't see much difference at all and even the fan who is a student of the game won't see enough difference in the game to stop attending. Of course the drop off won't be as bad as "current" players who couldn't even start in high school.......more like receivers going from 4.35-4.45 forty times to receivers with 4.65 forty times. The actual difference in those two times is about the difference in a "lean for the tape" and not leaning for the tape in a 40 yard race.

I personally think once the break off is made and the Go5 are a separate division from the 64 +/- "haves" the television guys are going to be real sorry when 35-40% of the market stops watching on television since those 35-40% of the fans teams will then have officially been completely excluded.

I USED to go to the home games (and special and/or close away games) and watch other games before and after. If I wasn't going to attend I'd watch games from 10 am central to past midnight if Hawai'i was playing at home and on TV. NOW, I go to the same games but I MIGHT watch one or two games that don't involve MY team, max, during the whole year. I didn't watch a single bowl game this year with the exception of about 20 minutes of the mythical national championship game.

(03-26-2013 06:30 AM)He1nousOne Wrote:  Nope, rivalries can happen for many reasons, schools dont have to be in the same conference for them. Competition makes for a great rivalry. You can have a rivalry, you can have great fan following for it but if it is clearly a one sided rivalry then it is not a competitive rivalry.

You can stop trying to attribute ideas to me. That is called creating a strawman. Argue against what I do say not what you are trying to attribute to me. It is a sign of weakness to falsely attribute a stance to me and then to argue against that stance for half of your damn post.

I am not even going to go into anymore individual rivalries. Feel free to disagree with me about my example but the downward spiral that is the Tennessee football program is proof enough that they need new, competitive rivalries.

My main point wasnt about going on a diatribe about rivalries, it was that college football is not going to be harmed. It's viewership will rise even with the loss of viewership of the "old guard" that says they will supposedly stop watching. Go ahead, stop watching then. That isn't going to stop what is coming. I will enjoy college football in whatever form it is brought to us in because I like college football better than pro football for a multitude of reasons.

With the new set up that is coming, more people will begin to get into it.

That is your hope, wish and desire. That may be the networks hope, wish and desire. That does not make it a fact.

Who are these new fans? Why would they tune into college football just because it may have intra-conference playoffs?

Some guy in New Jersey who follows the Jets and the Islanders and ignores college football is now going to watch Wisconsin play Michigan State in a Big Ten intra-conference playoff?

He is going to suddenly get all excited and interested in college football because of this when he could care less previously?

Why? I don't see it. I think that NFL fans in the Northeast, for instance, will continue to favor the NFL and have little interest in big 16 or 20 school conferences creating "new rivalries" and playing each other in intra-conference playoffs.

I think ripping up the fabric of college football and killing old rivalries built up over a century will turn out to be detrimental to the game.

But, that is my opinion. You have yours. Time will tell.