Maybe it is the game itself?
So I like many of you was incredibly disappointed with the results of our game yesterday. My wife asked why does a Michigan loss mean so much to me while other sporting results are just a passing frustration. As I went for run to try to sweat out the awfulness of the display in Madison I came up with something, although not overly profound and discussed at some point I came up with the following:
the nature of college football.
We are in week 3-4 and all but maybe 10 teams seasons are basically over. Maybe this is why some like the game, but honestly what other sport demands this level of perfection.
Would our feelings about the loss yesterday change if we knew there was still a chance for to make say a 16 team playoff?
Michigan was bad yesterday and things have to get better, but college football only really awards those teams that are essentially prefect from start to finish. There is no room for the Cinderella team, no room for the team that started slow and gradually got better throughout the year and are playing their best in December.
Attendance is down all across college football, could this be due to the fact that there is really no reason to watch your team once they have lost 1 or 2 games because the best they can hope for is a meaningless bowl game?
At the highest levels of the sport the best teams still lose 3-4 games..
If this has been discussed at length feel free to blast me, maybe this is just a form of therapy for me.
September 22nd, 2019 at 1:29 PM ^
You should go for longer runs.
September 22nd, 2019 at 1:29 PM ^
Perspective. Everyone's favorite.
September 22nd, 2019 at 4:43 PM ^
Has it ever worked where somebody who thinks they know more than everyone else lectures the fanbase to "have perspective"?
I suspect that people who don't have perspective in the first place aren't going to get it with a simple scolding.
So there it is. That's my "have perspective" lecture on "have perspective". I should probably be lectured for this lecture.
September 22nd, 2019 at 1:29 PM ^
It looks like we have officially moved into the "Bargaining" stage of grief as a fan base.
September 22nd, 2019 at 1:40 PM ^
I've already moved on to "Acceptance."
September 22nd, 2019 at 3:05 PM ^
Sure, weeks one and two addressed shock, denial, and anger thoroughly enough. Not too much left to cover.
September 22nd, 2019 at 1:35 PM ^
Michigan doesn't look like a well coached competent team. That's on Harbaugh 1000%. Win or lose he's failing.
September 22nd, 2019 at 1:39 PM ^
We wouldn't make a 64-team playoff.
September 22nd, 2019 at 1:43 PM ^
I think it is a good observation. Michigan college football has taken kind of an “addiction” form for me over the years. I need it. Would not say I derive much pleasure from it.
September 22nd, 2019 at 2:11 PM ^
Addiction is a great analogy. We need more and more to get the same high. Going back to Bo and through Lloyd a 9-3 season was a mild disappointment but the season was OK. Now not being in the B1G championship and playoffs is a failed season. I'm worried the high I will get from being in the playoffs won't be enough of we don't win it all.
September 22nd, 2019 at 1:44 PM ^
OSU has lost more than 2 games once in over a decade, and that was an aberration with Fickel.
September 22nd, 2019 at 1:46 PM ^
Harbaugh has lost two games once in his entire P5 coaching career. We all hoped that he'd trend up after turning Michigan around, but it hasn't happened.
September 22nd, 2019 at 1:53 PM ^
Did you run into a wall ?
September 22nd, 2019 at 1:54 PM ^
I will take this seriously.
I won't presume it's true for everyone, although I do think it's common.
My sports fandom was very intense and critical to my well being starting at around age 8. It increased to a crescendo maybe around age 22. With each passing year and life milestone, I've come to more and more look at sports as the diversion that it is. I've learned to enjoy the wins and not take the losses so hard.
Not sure of your age, OP, but it might just be a matter of time.
September 22nd, 2019 at 2:04 PM ^
Same here, although at slightly different ages.
Although I will admit to being fucked up pretty badly for several days after the OSU game last year.
I'm already pretty much over yesterday's debacle.
September 23rd, 2019 at 1:22 AM ^
Yesterday was my wedding shower. I didn't even watch the game.
I've struggled with mental health throughout my life, but reading some of these threads and knowing that these games don't really impact me at all anymore makes me feel like I'm relatively stable compared to other people for the first time ever.
September 22nd, 2019 at 2:10 PM ^
Pushing 40 agree I don't take it nearly as serious as I used too.
Still, considering that I am a Lions and Tigers fan, losing has never been rare. I take those in stride easily but Michigan football losing...that is another level.
September 22nd, 2019 at 1:55 PM ^
I'll weigh in on the attendance part of things. For starters, Michigan's "better" games are now $175 per ticket plus the 700 cost of the seat license for every season ticket, so that's now about $275 per ticket. Look at the product on the field which at the moment is not very good. If you look at the cost for a family of four, you can buy two LG OLED 77 inch 4K sets for close to one season's worth of tickets
Then there are the interminable media timeouts that Brian bitches about periodically and he's spot on and the costs of food and drink in the Stadium as well as everywhere else.
Add lousy weather on occasion and it gets a bit hard to justify for most fan bases.
September 22nd, 2019 at 6:55 PM ^
Sorry I didn't see your reply when I posted mine. I forgot about the weather part. Good on you.
September 22nd, 2019 at 1:59 PM ^
Is college football live attendance down more vs other sports? Or less?
I think this foundation to your argument might provide some insight. Maybe sports attendance is down overall because the tv option has become so great.
I know, total hot take there.
Cheers.
September 22nd, 2019 at 2:21 PM ^
Or is attendance down because it costs TOO MUCH MONEY to go to a game?
September 23rd, 2019 at 1:25 AM ^
I think attendance is down for a number of reasons. I think people like sports less, I think a number of prominent programs like Tennessee and especially USC have severe attendance problems. I think ticket prices are high and the TV experience is decent. I think people are much less invested due to Alabama's sustained dominance which the playoff has inadvertently exacerbated.
September 22nd, 2019 at 2:20 PM ^
I look at it this way:
13 Saturdays a year, 3 hours on that day, to break away and watch a game. I have always done it, and always will. It's not too much to ask, I am a grown man and can do whatever the fuck I want and don't have to explain it to anyone, not even some nagging wife who would want to drag me to a mall to look at shit we don't need and can't afford anyway.
THIRTEEN Saturdays to be left the FUCK alone and don SOMETHING I like, win, lose, or 5 overtimes.
FUCK anyone who doesn't get it, and fuck anyone who either stages a wedding or a funeral on fall Saturdays.
September 22nd, 2019 at 2:55 PM ^
I hope your wife isn't on this blog. Or, was that a hypothetical "nagging wife"?
September 22nd, 2019 at 2:23 PM ^
Attendance is even down at Alabama. Regardless of the on-field product, it's cost, the endless (and way too long) TV timeouts, video reviews, and slowdowns due to injuries that make buying a ticket to a game a horrible investment.
September 22nd, 2019 at 2:25 PM ^
Uhhh... only 5 of the 20 CFP participants didn't have 1 loss.
It's not the game it's you.
September 22nd, 2019 at 2:41 PM ^
Uhhh...I guess that is my point would it be better if they opened it up a bit?
September 22nd, 2019 at 2:31 PM ^
A 16 team playoff would establish a much more reasonable benchmark for a successful season for P5 teams than the current one, but we're a decade from that.
I agree with your premise though. The bar is filthy high, and changing coaches every three or four years in a reactionary way perpetuates inconsistency, identity issues, so on. In the past you could win a national championship by beating a 9-3 Pac-10 team in the Rose Bowl. Now half the players who have sure money futures sit out all but the biggest bowl games.
Fan bases demand better, as they should. For college students today I think it can be hard to fully comprehend just how long it took for the BCS to come into fruition and how much resistance there was to it.
September 22nd, 2019 at 2:33 PM ^
After watching the Notre Dame vs Georgia game last night. Seeing that insane atmosphere in the Georgia stadium. How elite both teams looked and the energy they played with. The suspense all the way to the last snap.
This is a beautiful game...
So I disagree, the game is great, but it's just downright heart breaking many times. And our program is a dysfunctional mess all across the board which makes watching the other games less enjoyable.
September 22nd, 2019 at 2:48 PM ^
It was awesome and maybe the title of the thread leaves something to be desired...the game is actually better than ever, but the scheduling and post season system seems outdated.
The question is simple is Notre Dame's season basically over now after the loss? If the answer is even maybe then the whole system needs could use some adjustments.
September 22nd, 2019 at 3:00 PM ^
The game has changed in that there is more money in the SEC than ever, and thus the concentration of talent and coaching, which has combined to make it the best conference.
Outside the SEC, it is a different game. Sure, OSU is good - a big ten team willing to push at the boundaries of what is legal. Same with Clemson.
Most of the other teams aren't playing for the title.
Not sure how to fix it to get a little more parity.
September 22nd, 2019 at 4:32 PM ^
Pay the players. Michigan can match anybody there.
September 22nd, 2019 at 3:30 PM ^
Good therapy session.
Please pay on the way out while scheduling your next session.
September 22nd, 2019 at 4:29 PM ^
It's actually better now than it ever was.
Four teams get to compete for the NC in a playoff. It used to be just just one team that was crowned by a vote, with no playoff. Sometimes you would get a team voted #1 that never even played team #2 or #3. It was just a beauty contest.
It's not perfect right now (it should be 8 teams: the five P5 champions, two At-Larges, and the G5 "champion"). And it eventually will be. But there is more reason to watch than ever. A team like ND that lost at GA in a close game still has a legit shot. Back in the day, their season would be essentially over with a September loss.
September 22nd, 2019 at 4:53 PM ^
True, and the spirit of this thread is that right now it feels like the season is over, whereas if you had a 16-team playoff, as several others alluded to, you would have that one game (at the very least) at the end of the season that had all of the drama and heightened excitement that UGA-ND had last night.
The point is that right now, for all but a few teams, the end of the season results in an exhibition game. This sucks in a lot of ways. For one, our fan base is considered one that "travels." You could put a game on the moon and Maize and Blue would want to be in the stands, and certainly some would.
But right now, you have bowl games that change names every other year because of sponsorships and marketing, in which for all but a few, you get more of a Pro Bowl effort than something like what you got at the end of Carr's tenure against Tebow and Florida, let alone days of yore when bowl games really meant something.
So for now it is disproportionate. I don't mean to turn this into a 16-team vs 8-team idea, but more to express the idea that the icing on the cake isn't very sweet at the end of the season when it's the Belk Bowl and everyone is sitting out.
September 22nd, 2019 at 6:13 PM ^
Agree that is is better now then what it used to be. But again I ask what % of teams are now essentially playing exhibition games for the rest of the season going into week 5. I quick look says 107 of the roughly 130 teams already have a loss.
I would argue that no other sport would basically eliminate 80% of their participants a third of the way into the season.
September 22nd, 2019 at 6:49 PM ^
Attendance has nothing to do with 1 loss hurts your chances immeasurably for the playoffs. Attendance is down because it's simply easier, cheaper and far more enjoyable to watch the game on TV. The stadium atmosphere at any college in football is not a ton of fun nor is it cheap. Until they try to make the atmosphere more enjoyable, the attendance issues will continue. Whether that's scheduling better teams in the non-conference instead of cupcakes or stop pumping in music during breaks in play or making ticket, food and/or parking prices more affordable.
While I do agree the playoff field should be expanded (8 teams. We don't even include all power 5 conference teams to get in), that isn't the issue with attendance.