Has college football basically slowly killed itself since Nebraska bolted for the Big Ten?

Feels to me like the end game has always been 4, 16-team conference and this UT/OU news is just the next step in that direction? So I say no.

You're not completely wrong, but

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I feel like if OU and UT come to the SEC it will be exciting for a few years and then quickly grow old because it just doesn’t have the historical roots in terms of rivalries a

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Adding UT to the SEC immediately reboots one of the most-played rivalry games in college football.

UT and TAMU have played more games against each other than any two other teams in the SEC, and that's without having played in 10 years.

It's slowly morphing into a sport that will consist of 30-40 'power teams' that will only play each other. This is what happens when you're only concerned about the playoff. You start trimming the fat to maximize profits. Why should ESPN be satisfied with 3 (that's a stretch) decent Alabama games on their network in a regular season when the Tide could be playing Oklahoma and Texas instead cupcake 1 and cupcake 2?

Raise a glass to the BCS era, the true golden age.

Essentially everything that has happened makes sense if you assume that the people making the decisions care only about money, and everything else they say is BS.

Yep, but many on this board wanted that, begged for it and when the NIL kicks in and you see a wholesale money grab and, yes agents, oozing throughout the game with 3 rd year players sitting out waiting to go pro....you'll see this board high fiving itself because some LSU players get paid....and these posters think that somehow it will be good for LSU in the long run. Like maybe these players will kick into the TAF or Endowment instead of blowing it on hookers, blow, houses and cars

Pretty much. There’s several big issues that I see destroying the sport:
1. Loss of traditional rivalries: conference realignment has been cool for allowing a lot of teams to get to play others that they weren’t used to seeing, but many lost historical rivalries in the process. College football, more than almost any other sports league, is defined by its rivalries. That’s the big draw, and the following annual rivalries are all no more as a result of last decade’s realignment:
Nebraska vs Mizzou
Kansas vs Mizzou
Kansas vs Nebraska
Stanford vs USC
Texas vs Texas A&M
Pitt vs West Virginia
Notre Dame vs Michigan St
Michigan vs Michigan St

2. Rules changes meant to combat CTE Lawsuits. While many like the high flying offenses, recent versions for rules like targeting, pass interference, defensive holding, crackback blocks, etc have changed the way the game is played significantly, allowing more games to be decided based on how officials call certain penalties. Many rules create a so-called “strike zone” for where defensive players can hit a ball carrier, and the rules change year to year. Are low hits good or bad this year? What about the mid section? Leading with the shoulders? Let’s ask the refs! They’ll probably have a different answer each game.

3. Unlimited transfers without sitting out. This is just dumb. CFB now has free-agency with talent having zero patience to sit behind veteran players and learn. Was the previous rule so unfair?

4. Name image and likeness is pandora’s box and could ruin the sport. All of the corruption in college sports basically just became legal and able to happen right in the open. Program boosters essential engage in bidding wars with endorsements for legitimate products. It’s like if the NFL paid all their players $40k/year and expected everyone to make up the rest in ad deals. With unlimited transfers and the ability to cash out with endorsements, players can legally and openly be bought away from competing.

5. Cost increases. Facilities and bribes cost money. Recruitment is expensive. To make the numbers work, major CFB programs have drastically raised prices, and in doing so, made their stadium environments far more tame and corporate. See, loud, angry, passionate a-holes just don’t have as much money as corporations do to “donate” money to a university or “business expense” tickets for entertaining clients. It’s essentially money laundering and tax fraud and it’s causing a bubble in college sports ticket prices which seems to be bursting.

6. PC Cancel Culture is destroying college traditions, and not just the ones that probably needed to die like hazing and panty raids. Mascot names, school songs, live mascots, nicknames, championship winning coaches, traditions that have existed for many decades, some over a century, are being called into question by folks who DGAF about college sports to begin with. It’s why Texas won’t play “The Eyes of Texas are Upon You”, Ole Miss no longer has Colonel Reb, LSU’s live bengal Tiger no longer comes to games to glare at the opposing team coming out of their locker room, Stanford’s band is banned from nearly every stadium (often including their own), etc. This kind of silliness takes away the pageantry of the game and tends to replace it with bland corporate nothingness until every program is essentially indistinguishable from every other team. This also has the added issue of absolutely hacking off major boosters and sponsors who care about the team, while putting programs in a bind between wealthy multinational advertisers who want one thing and local large donors who want something completely different. In the end, the fans nearly always lose.

7. Championship or bust mentality. This actually goes hand-in-hand with the corporatization of the sport. The more money someone spends on something, the more they begin to look at it like an investment requiring an ROI. Paying $30/ticket might be fine for .500 ball, but if you’re paying $230/ticket, suddenly, 7-5 just ain’t cutting it. Premium prices demand premium results. As the media has focused exclusively on the playoff race, so have fans, boosters, sponsors, and players. Bowls have become almost completely meaningless, and they were already exhibition games, so that says a lot.

8. Lack of parity. It becomes abundantly clear, early on, that fewer than 20 teams have any shot at a playoff appearance in a given year, and usually no more than 3 or 4 look capable of actually winning it all. Those numbers wouldn’t be bad in a 32 team league, but there’s over 120 FBS teams. There’s just not enough attention or parity in the current system to make it interesting for the overwhelming majority of teams. People get fatigued seeing Ohio St, Clemson, and Alabama in the playoffs every year. While there’s an obvious argument to be made that other teams need to “try getting good”, CFB really does have a serious issue here of haves vs have-nots. The rules actually are against the mid-majors, who have no chance at a title even if they win all of their games for 2 years in a row. It’s blatantly unfair, and everyone can see it. Hopefully, some of the proposed post-season changes happen, and it will help to chip away at the parity issues by allowing more teams to get the attention of the post season for recruiting purposes, and spread the talent in college football out more across the board.

Our system now is better than the BCS was.

2003 LSU vs USC never happened but would've with a playoff.

2004 Auburn got robbed

several USC teams from 2006-2008 would've given the SEC champs much better games than Ohio State and Oklahoma.

2007 Georgia was probably the hottest team in the country and was left out. They would've won a 4 team playoff.

2013 Alabama lost one top 5 road game on a miracle play and was forced to sit out

2014 Ohio State would've been completely out of the picture and the title would've been FSU vs Bama. Neither team even made it to the natty.

One of the big and undervalued reasons why the SEC has completely taken over college football has been its ability to maintain traditional rivalries and conference intrigue while still expanding and accommodating the realities of the modern game. You still have all the camaraderie and passion from back before CFB went corporate and national.