nelsonmuntz
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- Aug 27, 2011
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4 games so far, 4 blowouts. And let's not blame the selection committee, because that argument implies that different teams would have had different outcomes. Alabama's best lost was to Tennessee. How did Tennessee do last night? Do we really think that Alabama's absence was the reason there were 4 non-competitive games in the first round of the CFP? Who should have the committee picked to replace the other 3 tomato cans that got smashed this weekend? Should Alabama have played in those games too?
The blowouts have always been a problem in the sport. I didn't watch much college football before UConn went FBS because of all the blowouts, and I kind of ignored this issue for a while because A) I wanted to watch UConn football, and B) there was maybe a decade or 15 years when the rules worked in a way that distributed talent more equitably. With scholarship caps, greater enforcement against cheating by the NCAA, and revenue differentials between the conferences that were manageable, college football had a stretch between the late 90's and early 2010's where there was at least a semblance of competitive balance. Since then, the mega-programs have started to pull away, slowly at first so fans didn't get that concerned by what was happening to the sport. But even during the 2000's, there was a pretty significant competitive imbalance and a lot of blowouts. NIL briefly moved the game pieces around, giving a team like TCU a chance to make the CFP, but the House decision is moving the entire sport where there will be a huge disparity, not just between leagues, but within leagues.
The sport got a big help from ESPN and Fox's deceptive marketing to hide the fact that millions of fans were tuning in for 4+ hours of TV to watch blowouts week after week. ESPN mastered spinning a game between Alabama and whichever SEC victim was coming up next as a David vs. Goliath where David actually had a chance. ESPN and Warner Discovery, desperate for live football product, spun up the CFP because they knew ratings would be huge at first. But by putting all of these games back to back, ESPN also highlighted college football's competitive balance problem It was easier to only talk about the one or two close New Year's Day games when no one was paying attention to the other 5 blowouts. That is a lot harder when there is a bracket that contains game scores. And if the CFP games are not close, fans may start paying attention to the fact that most regular season games are not that close.
Other leagues have faced this problem, and they responded with salary caps. I don't know if that works for college football, but the alternative is increasingly non-competitive games, not just between the teams at the very top and everyone else, but all the way down the list. Maybe college football fans won't care that they are investing dozens of hours every fall into a sport where most of the outcomes are known before the game is played, but it would seem like college football has a problem.
The blowouts have always been a problem in the sport. I didn't watch much college football before UConn went FBS because of all the blowouts, and I kind of ignored this issue for a while because A) I wanted to watch UConn football, and B) there was maybe a decade or 15 years when the rules worked in a way that distributed talent more equitably. With scholarship caps, greater enforcement against cheating by the NCAA, and revenue differentials between the conferences that were manageable, college football had a stretch between the late 90's and early 2010's where there was at least a semblance of competitive balance. Since then, the mega-programs have started to pull away, slowly at first so fans didn't get that concerned by what was happening to the sport. But even during the 2000's, there was a pretty significant competitive imbalance and a lot of blowouts. NIL briefly moved the game pieces around, giving a team like TCU a chance to make the CFP, but the House decision is moving the entire sport where there will be a huge disparity, not just between leagues, but within leagues.
The sport got a big help from ESPN and Fox's deceptive marketing to hide the fact that millions of fans were tuning in for 4+ hours of TV to watch blowouts week after week. ESPN mastered spinning a game between Alabama and whichever SEC victim was coming up next as a David vs. Goliath where David actually had a chance. ESPN and Warner Discovery, desperate for live football product, spun up the CFP because they knew ratings would be huge at first. But by putting all of these games back to back, ESPN also highlighted college football's competitive balance problem It was easier to only talk about the one or two close New Year's Day games when no one was paying attention to the other 5 blowouts. That is a lot harder when there is a bracket that contains game scores. And if the CFP games are not close, fans may start paying attention to the fact that most regular season games are not that close.
Other leagues have faced this problem, and they responded with salary caps. I don't know if that works for college football, but the alternative is increasingly non-competitive games, not just between the teams at the very top and everyone else, but all the way down the list. Maybe college football fans won't care that they are investing dozens of hours every fall into a sport where most of the outcomes are known before the game is played, but it would seem like college football has a problem.
