College football kinda sucks now

I watched into the 3rd quarter of the Michigan game and otherwise didn't watch more than 1 drive of another bowl game and won't be watching the NC for the 3rd year in a row.

I just don't care about Alabama or Clemson. It's redundant and stale.

Amend the Constitution: broadcast can no longer abridge college football with commercial interruption.

End this shit real quick.

CFB will be fine.  Larger playoff with conference champs getting in. A few at large teams to give the non power 5 some hope and set up the potential for fun upsets. Sure less kids might play or maybe the rules or new helmets will help, but CFB will ne fine.  There have been no iconic or polarizing players like Tebow, or Vince Young, Bush, Newton, Woodson, or crazy games like Auburn beating Bama on that missed Field Goal or Boise State with the statue of Liberty to beat Oklahoma etc.  Its been boring, but good Bama and aww shucks Dabo Swinney for so long its suckef some of the life out. 

And pretty much every one of the "main" non-playoff bowl games feature only one team that actually cares about winning the game because the other team is just disappointed it isn't in the playoff. It isn't even entertaining to watch.

Ticket prices and commercials are ruining just about every American sport. 

As for you being tired of Clemson and Alabama, if it was Michigan in that situation I don’t think you’d be complaining about college football being boring. You’re just not a fan of those teams. 

Watching the playoffs I enjoyed the greatness and noticed how much more enjoyable it was to watch those two teams compared to Michigan’s offense. 

I agree. The simple answers are to ditch the playoff and pay and/or heavily insure the players. But I don’t see any of that happening soon.

The assumptions that teams don't care is getting out of control.  If a team could just "try hard" to a victory the same two teams wouldn't play in a title each year.  Alabama doesn't play harder, they are better.  UF was better. 

Is the next step guys sitting out against WMU and SMU to avoid injury in a bodybag game?

No.  Because I would imagine he might lose his spot if he just decided to sit out a game when healthy.  But, teams do hold guys out all the time who are a little dinged up in body bag games.  UM has done it with Gary if I recall correctly. 

need More commercials.

More is More

NOt

Nothing has changed about the bowls. It's such nonsense that a playoff has made the bowls less meaningful. They were always meaningless. They've always been meaningless, outside of a handful of top bowls. The Corporate Entity Gator Bowl has always been meaningless, outside of it being just another game. 

Fixing the playoff is easy: add 6 with a rule that at least one top 10 non-power must be in the field and a top 6 Power Five champ cannot be jumped by a non-champ. This year would have seen OSU going to Norman and UCF going to ND. It would have been great. 

1 and 2 get byes, 3 and 4 get home games on campus. The losers play a consolation bowl game. 

I no longer think that college football has the best regular season, which people think is sacred to the sport. With so many body bag games in the season, success vs failure comes down to the results of only 2-4 games a year. It’s hard to enjoy games against Rutgers, Maryland, Middle Tenn St, Amry, etc because there is nothing to be gained by winning. But losing ruins your whole season. There’s also the fact that the quality of teams change so much each year, you may never really end up knowing how good or bad your team really is...

In the NFL, a W is a W. Every game matters in a different way, because beating doormats is hugely important to making the playoffs, and a loss can ultimately cripple your season (see: Steelers losing to Raiders). But, a loss doesn’t automatically ruin your whole season (see: Pats losing to Dolphins).

There is no realistic way to save the bowl games.

FCS, D2, and D3 all have playoffs that feature between 24 and 32 teams.

The FCS 24 team playoff format does not weaken their regular season.

#1 The top 8 teams get a 1st round bye, which is a huge deal.  Losing a game and falling out of the top 8 is a big deal.

#2 Teams ranked 9th - 16th all get a home game for the 1st round.  I would love to see a southern team play in the Big House in December.

#3 Every game except for the championship game (neutral location) is played at the higher seeds home stadium.  The difference between being ranked #2 and #3 is that if both teams win out to the semi-final...the #3 team has to go on the road to the #2 team's home stadium.  So there is potentially a big deal between being ranked #2 or #3...as of right now in a 4 team playoff all it means is who wears their home jerseys.

#4 As of right now if you can't make the top 4...there is little to play for. 

#5 An undefeated mid-major team has a chance. 

#6 This wouldn't penalize teams for a tough OOC schedule.  Why schedule a tough opponent when you are already in a competitive conference if only 4 teams make the playoffs?

If the FCS can have such a system for years why can't the FBS?

What really changed though? Most of the bowl games are feelingsball games anyway. Did the Fiesta Bowl really get that much more bland or was it always fairly bland? I don't remember the equivalent 'NY6' bowls being so much better 10 years ago in the BCS. It was still a glorified participation trophy for teams being very good, but not national title contenders.

I think part of the issue with the CFP is that FBS is resistant to just copying every other football league because of the heavy influence of TV and bowl money. Conference title games kinda suck and these gigantic 16 team leagues suck. The playoff should probably be more than 4 teams and the semis (or quarters) should be at the home stadium of the higher seed just like every other football league does. We have this dumb basterdized bowl-CFP format going on because the big bowl games are never going to let that sweet, sweet bowl money out of their grubby hands.

The fact that Alabama and Clemson are in it every year contributes because it's boring and the parity in CFB has never felt worse to me. Feels like there are <5 teams with any realistic shot of winning it all in any given year. Boring.

It does suck. More and more players will begin sitting the bowls in anticipation of their NFL stock. The ONLY was to change it is to instill a playoff system just like DI AA. Unfortunately, corporate America will never let that happen with the big boy programs and even if it is instilled then there would still be no guarantee of a player refusing to play in the playoffs. If the NFL was to put in place a clause saying a future prospect must complete his obligations with his supporting university then it would work but the corporate scum running professional sports would never do that. I think that the players sitting out at Michigan really stinks and don't give me that crap about their possibilities of being hurt. Playing football comes with a risk and they know that. Are Gary, Bush and Higdon going to stop driving and being drove places before the combine? There is a huge risk driving a car too. Ridiculous and selfish. if the rumors about Harbaugh ripping Bushs' ass over his decision are true then good for Coach Harbaugh who also gave Bush Sr. a job. How many more teams had as many players taking their bowl game off? 

I have been checking out of football for the last couple of years and I used to spend a good part of each Saturday watching games, often just as background noise though I paid some attention. Yesterday I didn't even turn on the Rose Bowl and missed the second half of the Peach Bowl. It's not an indictment on the team or football in general, but it certainly lacks the entertainment aspect that I once got from it. I don't consider it a waste of somebody's time, but I just don't think I can carve out that time in my life anymore without other things being much more attractive.

what a bunch of whiners!

CFB has had mostly meaningless bowl games for decades.

The CFB playoff was designed to have the best teams play for the Championship, not to give anyone with a gripe a chance. If your team wants to play for all the marbles, don't lose to Purdue. 

Dynasties have existed in CFB going back to Yost and hasn't hurt the game's popularity. 

"Dynasty rivalries" are also popular in all sports ...and Clemson and Bama will not rule the roost for eternity. Miami, FSU, USC and Nebraska were going to ruin the game not that long ago because they "cheated and were unbeatable".

When attendance goes down at the power 5 conferences and TV viewship is down I'll buy some of these other points...

until then enjoy Beilein's team. 

Ive lost all in terest in the bowl games..used to watch every single one when they actually meant something..the CFP is a Scam Sham and is heavily in favor of the Corrupt SEC...Players sitting games out is making it worse and angers me...Basketball is my new favorite sport/team

Why even have a playoff? Are we better off now than pre-BCS? Back then, the Bowls meant something and with conference tie-ins, there was history... Now we get at least 1 crappy team (ND, MSU...) in the top 4 (so 1 of the 3 games sucks) and a bunch of watered down Bowl Games, where the teams just left out of the playoffs don't care and lose to mediocre teams.

This goes against what I usually think for multiple reasons, but there is a lack of parity issue in CFB that makes it more dull.  Everyone knew back in August that Bama and Clemson were going to be in the playoff and the other 2 teams didn't matter.  Sure it would have been nice to be in, but getting pasted by Bama or Clemson wouldn't make me feel any better.

The NFL has 7 new playoff teams this season (HOU, BAL, LAC, IND, CHI, DAL, SEA) and we've seen 6 seeds win playoff games.  That kind of parity makes the game more interesting to a broader set of people. 

I don't what the NCAA can do to have more parity in college football (not that they care) other than actually investigating and enforcing its own rules, but CFB has become "same thing, different year" for a couple seasons now, and I will mark down a Bama/Clemson final for 2020 too.

Ticket prices are low for Bama and Clemson because it is in Santa Clara California. Not because people are sick of them.

I am honesty more intrigued with this Clemson matchup than any of the previous ones. I personally enjoy dynasties

This season worked out perfect for a 6-team playoff. Ohio State @ Notre Dame; Georgia @Oklahoma; Bama and Clemson with a first round bye. 

Early bowl games have always been the scrub teams. Once in awhile it is a good matchup.

Later bowl games have always been the better teams. Some games are good - some are not. Always been that way.

OOC games should be against each different conf. Example - Bama plays against B10, ACC & B12 on each of their 3 games. No FCS bs games.

 8 team playoff based off committee. Keeps a half ass conf champ out. Make strength of schedule one of the most important factors - so we get good regular season matchups.

Bowl games are 9 vs 10 ... 11 vs 12 etc. OSU playing Georgia would have been a much better game. Although Georgia  

Some teams will have a chance to compete with the Clemsons & Bama's. UCS could have in their day. Texas will be soon IMO. Oklahoma will soon also since they are getting some studs in their on D now.

The ticket prices for Clemson/Alabama have less to do with "grrr I don't want to see this" and more to do with "nobody should ever hold a major event in Santa Clara." It's in the middle of nowhere, flights to the area are insanely expensive, and the stadium is poor quality. 

The bowls have kinda come full circle. At the dawn of the bowl games and for a long time after, nobody gave a shit who won a bowl game and half the schools that were eligible to play in one didn't even bother trying to book one. The schools that went treated it as a glorified exhibition and had barely any practices. Then TV sorta changed that by putting more eyeballs on the games. Now TV/playoff/ESD have things back the way they used to be. It's nothing new though.

There's two big things things that have to be fixed: 

1) conference divisions. We have to move to a pod format. Static divisions just don't work and we've had decades of proof showing the only place it has worked is the SEC, which has a lucky fluke of having powerful teams distributed on both sides of the conference geographically.  

2) Support staffs. There's got to be a uniform rule everyone has to follow on support staffs, or they're just going to continue warping competitive balance. We have scholarship caps and coaching staff caps, it's high time we capped support staff at something reasonable like 5-10 guys. Clemson/Alabama have an army of support staff and most schools can't afford to do that. Even power schools like Michigan have trouble paying for that much football support staff because unlike Alabama/Clemson, they have other sports on campus the AD supports.

A bigger playoff field would mean more games (and more rounds to play), and rather than be more meaningful, it could create more reasons for NFL-bound players to skip these games.

I would rather just see the CFP go away and go back to the BCS format, or just do away with "national championship" games altogether and return to the old bowl system. You can never really determine one champion amongst 130 FBS and 129 FCS teams that only play 11-12 games each.

College football would mean more to more fans if there were more "winners" and talent spread out amongst all the schools rather than concentrated at the very top, as it's going to be if this continues.

Young man yells at cloud?

I agree with the OP on all points. The game has lost most of its majesty and mystique. And it will probably never come back. 

Say what you will about the NCAA as a whole, but they have managed to preserve that "majesty and mystique" for the most part with March Madness. They've survived Kobe and LeBron going straight to the NBA from high school and then one-and-dones and scandals to still put on a super-tight operation with the tourney. 

I'm not saying I have any idea how the NCAA could take over the football postseason, or even how it would work. But currently it is indeed a shit show. Add to the OP's list the fact that ND is a half-ACC team that made the playoff only to get matched up with another ACC team that will be on their schedule 8 of the next 15 years; and there should be a Group of Five playoff too but no one cares. The whole year-long "Who's In" and treating the championship game like the Super Bowl is nauseating. Alabama and Clemson are the only teams that ever make the final because they're the only ones with enough NFL-ready athletes to survive 14 games. Total, complete shit show. 

There's no team that's more mentally messed up than Michigan - from the head coach to the fan base. We're in our own heads so bad.

Funny, I was just thinking mgoblog kinda sucks now

I hate Alabama. 

It 100% sucks now. I was going to write a long, angsty post about it  but you beat me to it. Well done.

I'll add a few points: the corruption. The money in college football continues to grow, enriching universities, coaches, NCAA execs, networks and even crooked bowl officials, but the players get none of it. There is also little to no accountability for any of the grown-ups involved. Programs are plagued by their lack of leadership and poor decision-making and often times coaches skate with little to no punishment but with a massive buy out to boot. Major programs like Penn State, Michigan State, Ohio State, Florida State, Maryland and Baylor have suffered truly disturbing scandals in the last few years, almost all of which were the result of adults putting winning before doing what's right.

The cheating: its widely believed that the top programs, especially the southern teams, engage in illicit activities to win recruits, illegally pay players and help them skirt academic requirements. Again, the NCAA does nothing and is likely afraid of doing something about it (also the networks are incredibly powerful and likely don't want these dynasties to break up). Alabama seems impossibly, suspiciously good and I would be shocked to learn if they do everything by the book (I think Saban = early 2000s Bellichick, undoutedly a superior coach but his past teams were never this good)

Rival success. Between them, Michigan's two biggest rivals lost one game in the regular season, and M played awful against them, including what might be the worst game in program history. ND finishes undefeated with a trip to the Playoff and Crooked Ass Urban Meyer ends his career with a B1G championship and Ohio State wins the goddamn Rose Bowl. [BARF] Someone kill me.

I love college football more than anything and have been following it since I was 10 years old. But, this is definitely the worst and least interesting season I can remember.

College football has gotten too predictable, too top-heavy and not really compelling.  But things do change.  It just takes time and we are all really impatient for a sport / season that only lasts about 3 months of the year on the field. 

Yes, Clemson and Alabama will be there next season, again in the mix but I think we'll see some surprises next year.  Really do.  Might not be Michigan's season (when is it ever?!) but I think something new comes out of PAC12, ACC, maybe even SEC. 

I also don't buy the "football is done in the future" argument I see here: football is a great sport and is amazing on TV, even if we don't have "body bag" games and vicious blows to the head like "good ol' days".  Guess what?  This spring we'll have football on TV in the new league, the Alliance of American Football league, and I'd much rather watch that league then game 33 of 162 in MLB.  Baseball is long, boring and sloooow.  Basketball is long, boring, and meaningless until a playoff where 1/2 of all teams get into the dance (professional basketball).  

And there are plans for about 2-3 more football leagues in the works, including the Freedom Football league, which I think could be amazing lol.  

Football is the best sport to watch on TV, provides the most drama and most unforgettable finishes, and is actually compelling reality TV.  When the NBA loses Lebron, those ratings will shrink further.  There is no other sport that holds a match to what football provides as far as compelling entertainment on TV. 

Most teams and players care immensely about bowl wins. 

Not sure why Michigan hasn’t seemed to the last 2 years 

I watched a bunch of bowl games. Only a few teams looked flat and unmotivated, starting w/ Michigan. 

Completely agree, and add in widespread cheating/paying players and coaches who get away with pretending to now know about horrific things going on in their programs.

And yeah, my fandom is waning a bit more every year now. I soldiered through the RR years without much regression, but the last few have taken a toll.

The conference 'championship' games are a joke.

Adding Maryland and Rutgers to the Big 10 is a joke.

Players quitting the team before bowl games and even mid-season while getting full-ride scholarships is a joke.

Teams reporting sold tickets as actual attendance while camera-persons struggle to frame shots that don't show half the stadium empty is a joke.

Watching Clemson and Alabama play again is a joke. Let's remember the last time we had a 'dynasty' like Alabama it turned out that all of the best players on the team (USC) were getting paid. That scumbag coach jumped ship to the NFL right before it sank.

MAC and other second tier conferences teams playing most of their later season games on weeknights when kids should be studying for tests and getting some sleep just to get TV revenue is a joke.

The root cause, as far as I'm concerned, is that there is too much money in college football. Follow every one of the dumb decisions to its real motivation and you find "more revenue".

My son is a recent UM grad.  He watched the first half of the Peach Bowl and then went to workout ... saying "this isn't going to go well as the players look listless".

He and his buddies have turned into NFL guys.  Their view is college ball is too lopsided and all the elite teams just pay recruits.  Games are rarely competitive and not worth suffering the 4 hours of commercials.  Bottom-line is the product isn't what it used to be.

I have never been a huge NFL fan, finding it a bit boring if not the playoffs.  However, he turned my on to RedZone and I see what he means. The football is way more competitive than college and RedZone is an awesome way to experience the entire league in critical games. 

The issue is college football has no balance and lacks competitiveness. The 4-team CFP is only making that concentration of power worse plus rendering the rest of the bowl season meaningless.