re: Objectively, is college football a hell of a lot more entertaining now?

I'm probably like you, except that the NBA doesn't appeal to me. I have very much increased my interest in MLB, including non-Braves MLB, which is new for me.

NFL playoffs are the absolute best IMO, but I still favor the college game week-to-week. I just can't attribute as much significance to an Atlanta-Carolina game as I do to something like Auburn-LSU. Of course, part of that is seeing your division rivals x2 a year.

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I think Alabama having made the playoffs every year and Clemson going 4x kind of clouds the fact that there have been participants outside of the usual suspects.

Washington
Georgia
Oregon
Florida State
Michigan State
Notre Dame

All have been to the CFP

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there's 4 teams so "making teh playoffs" isn't really the same as "having a title shot". And yes I know that in the black and white sense they technically "have a shot", but I mean everyone in the world knew that those notre dame/michigan state/washington squads had zero chance.

You mentiont he participants but let's look at the actual winners over the last 10 yeras:

clemson/bama/clemson/bama/OSU/FSU/bama/bama/AU/bama

bama and clemson make up 7 of the last 10 title winners. The ACC is riduculously weak so clemson is practically a lock to be in the top 3 for a while. Bama is king of the SEC until someone can prove otherwise. penn state and UM seem to show some promise occasionally but nobody is regularly challenging OSU in the big 10. The big 12 is OU/TX and everyone else, and TX hasn't even really challeneged until last year. There just seems to be an extreme lack of parity these days.


It was different in the 90s, even though FSU/UF/Nebraska basically ran the decade.

The big 10 was typically a war between OSU/PSU/UM
The big 12 was OU/TX/Nebraska
The SEC had UF and UT as typically elite and bama had several elite years as well
The pac had AzSt/Arizona/UCLA/OSU all make noise

Even if at the national level it seemed like it was the same 4 or 5 teams, each conference still had intrigue, IMO. We don't have that now.

I've never been a fan of offensive shootouts

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think when it's all said and done the BCS era will be college football at its zenith. It still had most of its regional charm but was getting nationalized so all the big games plus some were available to people like they hadn't necessarily been before and the conferences/rivalries hadn't been blown/bloated to hell for TV money.

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I agree

CFB has become over-marketed and water-down. The Playoff is a prime example. It’s become big business, and all about $$. Facilities getting bigger.

Not to say all that is bad. But some of the charm of CFB has gone

I think the sport is still wildly entertaining, but it's on the verge of becoming too Southeastern- and (specifically) SEC-centric and has a major risk of being regionalized like a bigger version of hockey or lacrosse. High-end talent isn't as evenly distributed as it was twenty or forty years ago, and it's becoming ever-more regionalized for two reasons:
1. Continued demographic changes and populations shifts
2. (Especially on the West Coast and in the Northeastern corridor) Concern that little Brayden and Kaden are going to get CTE from playing contact football in middle school.

How many non-Southern programs can truly compete year-in and year-out with the big SEC schools? Ohio State, USC, Texas, Oklahoma, maybe Notre Dame, maybe Michigan, maybe Penn State. That's about it. Television contracts are making the sport even more uneven.

I don't think these bode well for the health of the sport in the long term, and the super conferences aren't helping things, either. It was more interesting when there were 6 - 7 smaller conferences of importance.

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he definitely did not get 100 less yards on 100 more carries

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Touches and total yards. Yeah he did. I misspoke.

I miss watching Nebraska run the option to perfection 80’s/90s is my favorite era of college football

Miss having Miami embrace being the villain

Abu summed it up nicely. For the health of the sport, we need to pull for one or more Pac 12 and Big West teams to emerge as powerhouses to spread the wealth a bit for the health of the sport.

Otherwise, college football will evolve into a regional sport.

I think ESPN climbing in bed with the SEC has ruined college football. They started becoming very biased towards the SEC when this happened. Kids, recruits see this and wanted to play there because we were told, by the ESPN talking heads, that the SEC was the best conference. Killed the other leagues IMO. Look at the Pac 12. They've gotten no love from ESPN, as of late, and it shows.
They also pushed for a collapse of the Big East and rise of Mega Conferences. Mega conferences were fine during BCS years but don't make sense in the playoff era.
They do the exact same thing with ACC basketball.
ESPN's bread and butter is college sports so they will push the narrative. You see it with the Heisman every year. They get behind one player (push the narrative) and you can almost guarantee that player will win. It's basically state run TV for SEC football and ACC basketball.