re: Does Anyone Actually Like College Football More with NIL and Unlimited Portal?

No, but I still watch CFB and pretty much watch NO NFL due to that product being so blatantly rigged.

It's professional football played in college stadiums now. It always was to some extent, but now all pretense and illusion is off. It is not college football. It will lead to more parity, more sports columns, and more advertising. The spirit of the sport is gone, though.

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Does Anyone Actually Like College Football More with NIL and Unlimited Portal?

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I "like" it and always will because I've followed it extremely closely for my whole entire life. It's not a switch that can just be turned off in an instnat. But the powers that be sure have sucked as much fun as they can out of it, beginning with the NIL/portal and we're rapidly going downhill from there.

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it just feels like another soul less corporate product now

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becuase that's exactly what it's becoming. The people in charge for some reason want it to just be NFL-lite, not realizing that everyone that loved CFB loved it becuase it was NOT the nfl but it's own separate thing. Now we ahve:

-free agents that cna leave schools for any reason they choose whenever they want with essentially no repercussions
-7 figure salaries to college players, managing a roster full of salaried players, payments to HS recruits to come to your shcool. All above board and with very little in the way of regulation
-due to both of the above you now have a team made up of mercenary hired guns that often don't GAS about your alma mater and are jus tthere to cash a check for 12 months ,before deciding if they want to stay or take the highest bid and go elsewhere
-Way more neutral site games for no reason other than payouts
-corporate naming rights on fields
-corporate logos on jerseys, can' tremember if that's already happened or just approved but it's gonna happen soon if not already
-tripling the size of the playoffs which were already perfectly fine. I don' care how long you argue or how many links you want to provide, there is *literally* not one season ever where a team ranked 12th after 13 weeks deserves to be the national champion. None. Ever. If you want to be the best team in all of college football you should not be ranked 12th in early December.
-spending money out the arse for everying. Contributions just for the opportunity to buy season tickets, the season tickets themselves, ridiculously high face values on said tickets, travel and lodging, expensive parking, expensive concessions, etc. I go solo to games and stay or park cheap (most of the time) but it's virtually impossible to take a family fo 3/4 to more than a handful of games unless you live close.

This whole digression didn' even start THAT long ago. It was only like 10 years ago that the government meddled into "amateur student athletics" and decided that they know best (lol) and that these amateur student athletes deserved to be paid. It was all over at that point.

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What most of you really mean when you say you enjoyed watching your freshmen grown into seniors is this - “I’m glad our bagman was able to get this 4 star LB to sign because we’ll need him in 2 years when our other paid for 5 star gets drafted”.

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you don't enjoy watching player development? You seem to be looking specifically through the lens of a loser program that is now able to get an extra guy or two you wouldn't otherwise and see it as a wonderful thing, instead of looking at it from a "college football as a sport" perspective.

There used to be great joy in signing a guy (idc what his star rating was or how good he was) and watching his progress. He may have redshirted as a freshman bc he was so raw. Maybe saw some mop up duty or special teams work as a redhisrt freshman. As a RSo maybe he's 2/3 string and spelling a guy in the second half. Maybe he's solidly in the rotation as a Junior and by the time he's a 5th year senior he's starting and you can see not only the fruits of all his hard work, but how the coahces have brought him up from a raw prospect to a bonafide football player.

THAT is one of the things that made cfb absolutely wonderful and it's all but gone now becuase no one in their right mind is going to stay 4-5 years as a backup in one place.

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Dawg, come on now. Player development? Really. That’s what you guys are hanging on to?

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Uh, yeah? From the time I was in diapers all the way through into adulthood up until like 3 years ago. Are you claiming you DIDN'T like seeing guys progress through the years at your school? Kind of an odd thing to not believe. It's one of the things that truly separated college from the pros.

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The sport had become a 10 team sport because of cheating.

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No, it had become a 1 team sport becuase of bama. NOBODY was whining and crying about transfers, payments, playoffs, etc until it was clear that bama was simply better than everyone else and was going to be so every single year. And let's not pretend the rest of CFB was some utopia of a new team being great each season with everyone getting a turn. The 90s was the FSU/nebraska show with UF and UT beating up on poeple 95% of the time as well. The early 00s it was USC/OU/Miami mostly doing the same. Oh sure there were years where a team popped up to win it all, ya know scrappy underdogs like Texas or Ohio state. The little guy. Teh fact is that the top ~10 programs throughout the history of the sport have genreeally always, and generally always will, be at the top of the pile at the end of the year. That's life.

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The money guys realized it which is why these changes have been made all with the playoff expansion. It’s because money is made when all fanbases have a fair chance and not just a few.

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Money is made when the people that are making the money decide that's how it's gonna be. Tech is getting a $10M check to move a home game down the street to the benz. Does that scream "college football" to you? A playoff of 4 teams that was perfectly fine tripled in size for no reason other than that it makes more money for a lot of different entities. Do you think "hey, how can we best figure out who the best team in america is?" ever factored in? Of course not. Do you really think that UCLA playing a conference game in New Jersey is what CFB should be about?

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But, step outside your bubble and realize plenty of fan bases love this new era.

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I'm not looking at it from UGA's perspective, I'm looking at it from an "AMATEUR STUDENT ATHLETE" perspective, which is what I grew to lvoe about the sport in the first place. I'm sure you were loving hamilton, friedgen, and the rest of the gang having great seasons in the late 90s. It's almost like....your team winning and being good makes things more enjoyagble. IT's not mine or anyone else's fault that tech hasn't been a great program regularly since the 60s. And tha'ts not an insult, it's just pointing out that you seem to think massively and fundamentally changing the foundation of the sport is a good thing, simply becuase it makes your team win 2 extra games a year. That's ridiculous.

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Coaches now have to be honest year to year and sell their school if they want players to stay. They just can’t rely on a bag of cash given in their junior year of high school

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These 2 things don't go together. Now if you want to keep a good player, that you have recruited and is already on your roster and already on your team, you have to pay him a bag of cash every year to keep him from leaving for hte highest bidder.


We are approaching thsi from 2 VERY different angles. You are looking at it purely as entertainemnt. This is no differnet than a movie or a video game for you. Whatever is coolest, and leads to the neatest outcomes with crazy twists is what you're all about. I'm looking at it wtih the memory of 18-21 year olds that committed to a school they like for 4 years and stayed and played for the logo on their jersey (when not attending class) agaisnt other kids doing the same. If I wanted to watch highly paid professionals earn a check by going on the field once a week then not giving a shite about it immeidately after it was over I'd watch the NFL. But I don't want that which is why I've alwasy been drawn to college. But those days are long gone.

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Isaiah Bond betrayal (not really he did what he needed to do for himself) but I really liked him at bama and for him to leave just made me feel betrayed.

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Should an average 5th year senior from Tuscaloosa feel betrayed if the Tide brings in a better player from the portal and puts his arse on the bench?

Fans aren’t loyal to players. They are loyal to winning. Fans and coaches want the players to make all these sacrifices but sure as shite wouldn’t make any sacrifices for a player who is a liability to winning.

I didn't realize I made the transfer portal or NIL legal. I'm pretty sure the US Supreme Court made those rulings.

Its a shite show how it is now, I would rather it be structured at the very least.

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Some guardrails need to be put in place for sure.