re: Kirk Herbstreit worried for college football: "What the hell is happening to our sport?"

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Once you created a national championship game it was only going to be a matter of time before people focused squarely on that. By creating a title game, while it finally crowned a "true champion," it began to take away from the other bowls on the slate.

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I suppose this is true, that it was inevitable. What's funny it about it to me, it's one sport where more than one team will win their last game. Just making the Final Four or the Elite Eight Sweet 16 or even just the tourney can be seen as a good season but you will lose the last game unless you win it, but winning the Orange Bowl is not unless it advances the winner to another game, but that system just wasn't sustainable in the sports culture. The problem with the old system was naming a champion at all, just having poll at the end just doesn't fly.

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While the vast majority of high profile juniors and seniors opted out of the season due to Covid, I fear you are going to be seeing more and more of these players opting out of their junior and senior years out of concern of injury.

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I guess we can't rule this out, but i don't think it will be as widespread as players leaving early or even bailing on the bowls. Its yet to be seen how spending a full season just not playing will affect guys. That's over a year and half since those guys like Chase and Sewell have played a game and the # of true superstar sure fire picks as sophomores is relatively low. While we've seen Jrs (especially at LSU) leave that were later picks, there's more upside for soph and many will not have played very much.

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It's all a business now and the sport, as we know it, has changed for the absolute worst.

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it's always been a business. The bowls were created as a way to attract tourist to mild climates and during the winter more or less as promotional events.

Why don't you cry about it Kirk?

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It flew for decades.

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they also use to name the National Champion BEFORE the bowls. The UPI (Coaches poll) did that up to 1973. Bonus points if you can name the team the split the title with Notre Dame because they "won" the UPI title despite losing to the Irish in the Sugar Bowl in 73, the last pre bowl champs

Think that would still fly?

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There was controversy, there was frustration, but there was also excitement. Under the old system, two or more bowl games could have national title implications.

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Also people didn't care as much about the National Title. in the Big 10 winning the conference and going to the Rose Bowl as the #1 goal, "winning" aka being named NC was nice but winning the Rose Bowl was the main achievement. You mentioned before about the sport being more regional that's true, but that was also a limitation of the times. Travel was more difficult and expensive, the bowls were on NYD in part because it took teams several days to get to the location. There wasn't instant news or mediums to discuss. The bowls happened a couple of days later the polls came out and that was it. Fans of a team that thought they got jobbed might gripe but it was limited to that area, not a national discussion really until 1983. It's hard to explain but Championships in general weren't as big deal as now. Up the early 80's the NBA finals were shown on tape delay . But by the 80's the Super Bowl was in prime time and had become the biggest TV event of the year. The NCAA basketball tourney was becoming "MARCH MADNESS" sports were just bigger. There's just no way the "old system" was going to last in CFB. The turning point imo was 1986 with Miami and Penn State. The Fiesta Bowl at that time was a 2nd tier bowl like the Cap One Bowl was a few years back if you remember. A good bowl but a step below the "majors" Rose Sugar Orange and Cotton. It paid about $1M per team vs $2.5M-3M per team for the big 4. When it was apparent Miami and PSU would both finish unbeaten and ranked 1-2, the Fiesta Bowl, NBC and Sunkist (the sponsor) upped the payout to match the others and moved the game to prime time Jan 2. There was really no looking back after that, the bowl alliance started in 92 and the BCS in 98.

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There were also fewer bowl games in those days,

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i think this is a very under appreciated factor. The explosion of bowls games had at least 2 disastrous effects 1 it cheapened the bowl experience and 2 it lead to the proliferation of horrible non-conference games when a team can make a bowl at 6-6, they can go 2-6 in conference, play 4 scrubs ooc and make a bowl.

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The explosion of bowls games had at least 2 disastrous effects 1 it cheapened the bowl experience and 2 it lead to the proliferation of horrible non-conference games when a team can make a bowl at 6-6, they can go 2-6 in conference, play 4 scrubs ooc and make a bowl.

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This shite right here. I don't care to see 6-6 Wake Forest play 7-5 Miami of Ohio in the Little Caesars Bowl, nor do I care about the 7-6 UTSA Roadrunners epic clash with the 6-7 Utah St Aggies in the Las Vegas Hotels Miami City Bowl from New Mexico.

I want to see marquee names and G5 teams with no more than 3 losses playing games in nice stadiums in front of good crowds in an interesting location. Also, instead of having 6 bowls where the SEC plays the Big 10, could we have one or two games against the PAC 12? Is that so much to ask for?

I want fewer bowls, more conference crossover, and better matchups.

In addition, I want an end to FCS teams playing FBS teams, and relegation of at least 30 or more FBS programs down to FCS. I want some standardization regarding the number of teams in conferences, conference championship games, and numbers of conference games. I want more marquee home/@home OOC regular season games.

I believe these reforms will lead to better regular seasons, more parity, fewer questions of what teams are/are not legitimate, and better, more meaningful bowl games.

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Bonus points if you can name the team the split the title with Notre Dame because they "won" the UPI title despite losing to the Irish in the Sugar Bowl in 73

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No idea but sounds like something Bama would do.

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I want fewer bowls

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Not often I see someone complain about too many CFB games.

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simple solution is to put ALL conference winners in the playoffs.

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Really Is. Always thought an 8 team playoff was ideal. 5 power conference winners and 3 at larges for the other deserving independents and lower conference teams. Plus you can incorporate the bowls to this

I was thinking 8 conferences of 12 teams (96), 6 conferences of 14 teams (84), 6 conferences of 12 teams (72), or 4 conferences of 16 teams (64).

I think 8 of 12 is the easiest from a schedule perspective but will likely result in one or two conferences that appear clearly weaker than the others, 6 of 14 is probably the best for striking a balance between culling weak g5 programs while maintaining a lot of under dogs and geographic diversity. 6 of 12 is easy to schedule and gives you the best g5 programs, but not much else. 4 of 16 is unweildly to schedule in the regular season but is essentially a p5 only split.

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Not often I see someone complain about too many CFB games.

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I’ve never liked this argument or the companion “you don’t have to watch”. Over saturation dilutes anything. The only people that care about a bowl with a 6-6 MAC team vs 7-5 Sun Belt team are gamblers and parents of those players. Part of what makes football special is it’s limited, once a week only in the fall. 20 bowl games is plenty

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I’ve never liked this argument or the companion “you don’t have to watch”. Over saturation dilutes anything. The only people that care about a bowl with a 6-6 MAC team vs 7-5 Sun Belt team are gamblers and parents of those players. Part of what makes football special is it’s limited, once a week only in the fall. 20 bowl games is plenty

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I do agree with this. No stadium/location should host more than one bowl in a year. Tickets should be cheap as hell for the non majors (Rose/Orange/Cotton/Sugar/Fiesta) and playoff games. No ticket for the Gator Bowl or Holiday Bowl should be more than $25. Get asses in seats. Making trash games cost $75 a head and having only 1 or 2k people in the stands is laughable.

Someone also mentioned that the playoff games shouldn’t use the Major Bowl game names and I absolutely agree. The semi finals and NCG can be played in Miami or Pasadena or New Orleans, but don’t let it be called or replace the Orange/Rose/Sugar/etc.

And throw ESPN’s arse out of any influence or input on the playoff committee. Actually just do away with the committee. Use the old BCS formula with some tweaks.