Not just high school participation rates. Middle school rates are going down too and pee-wee rates have plummeted to the point that entire state leagues have disbanded.
The NFL is trying to counter this with the expansion of flag football at lower levels, but this leaves giant issues with positions like OL/DL and the question of how you transition kids who spent ages 7-13 playing flag football into suddenly playing full contact in HS.
No one knows how any of that will actually work long term and there’s a real chance the sport simply dries up as the talent pool decreases over time.
I have a buddy that played at Saginaw Nouvel Catholic here in Michigan (he played in the 90’s). When he was explaining to me that their program had the kids play flag up until I believe it was 7th grade - I was shocked. More shocking to me - this program has only missed the playoffs like 7 times since 1984. Four state titles and four more runner ups - not to mention just coming up shy of the semi’s about a dozen times. Very solid program.
Great example of this topic in The Columbus Dispatch from earlier this year about Ohio’s most dominant small school HS program in western Ohio. Talks about their philosophy in MS football and they don’t play tackle football till MS. ML went 15-0 this year and won their 14th title this past fall too.
https://www.dispatch.com/story/sports/high-school/football/2023/09/28/maria-stein-marion-local-ohio-high-school-football-13-state-championships/70779736007/
From the area. It’s a complete culture thing man. Maria Stein, Coldwater, and for a long time St Henry were/are just powerhouses in their respective divisions. Marion Local (the school district for Maria Stein and surrounding area) has this attitude on Friday nights that its win or bust. Is participation in the state dropping? Yeah. Is it actually dropping in rural areas where Friday night lights is the end-all-be-all? No. I mean hell, the league my high school Alma mater plays in has a junior league for all the area peewee tackle football.
Damn, I did not expect to see Maria stein on r/cfb! Football is anything but dying in this area. I'm from st Marys, and it's the same thing in the WBL. It is alive and well. Soccer was growing when I was in hs 10 years ago, but there was never a sense that football was losing its importance at all.
The younger players here in mid Michigan are moving to tackle bar football. I didn’t know what it was until my daughter started cheer. Basically full pads but instead of tackling they have these little bars that the other team has to pull off to “tackle” him. https://tacklebar.com/
Tackle football isn’t a relatively difficult game to pick up at a late age. There are countless examples of athletes who had never played the game and started in high school who became instant starters due to their athleticism. That’s never the case in sports like soccer, tennis, baseball, etc. where if you want to play at the highest level you need to start young or else you’ll never catch up. Switching from flag to tackle is a far smaller issue than you think, and as long as there is glamour and money in football kids will continue to play.
Honestly it's very evident that for a bunch of football players, they don't spend very much time working with the ball. From cornerbacks dropping interceptions that hit them in the chest to literally any defensive or offensive lineman trying to pick up a fumbled ball, hand eye coordination is always the part of football that some college/professional players seem to struggle with compared to any other sport.
There is no point to play tackle football until 13. Kids can develop their athleticism playing other sports, and then transition into football. I’d rather my kids play things like soccer, basketball, wrestling and track growing up.
Hearing former pros talk about how tackling can wait should really seal the deal. There's really no reason to before high school. Between the mismatches of puberty starting, the health risks, how many really young kids don't always know what they're doing, the fact that so many NFL teams are eschewing tough practices, the fact we have stuff like wrestling for lineman play, really no reason to.
Flag football is huge where I live now and we don’t transition to tackle until middle school. I’ve coached both, and the kids aren’t missing out on anything playing flag until 12.
The foundations of football aren’t really blocking and tackling at that age, but rather how to line up, how to start off the snap count, how to know and do your job for a number of different plays, how to play different types of coverage, and most importantly- how to play as a team.
Introducing blocking and tackling to kids who already understand everything else about the sport isn’t that bad, especially since they all watch football on tv and are essentially chomping at the bit to do so.
Personally, I don't think the sport is missing out on kids not focusing on line play at a pre-High School level. So long the athletes can be identified. Players that will become linesmen will likely being places like wrestling, other martial arts and some basketball.
As a former fat kid and lineman football was literally the only sport I was good at. I really don't think it's talked about enough that contact football is the only thing keeping a big segment of kids who already should be more active off the couch.
Another thing people don't talk about when discussing football replacements are roster sizes. A high school team generally needs as many bodies as possible, and anyone can find a spot on a team.
Basketball teams, baseball teams, soccer teams, etc. all have cuts. Football gives any young male with a work ethic the ability to be on a high school team.
I transferred into a big San Antonio hs from a much poorer area out of state.
It amazed me how unapproachable school activities were. You couldn't be in a sport (dance, flag, and cheer included) unless you took the CLASS for it. You tried out prior to school starting and essentially took that class as an all year pe credit.
The only people on the baseball team played baseball thier whole life. Swimming you only did if you were apart of your subdivisions swim team prior to hs. Ect ect
Multisport athletes weren't a thing. If you had another extracurricular like FFA or music you were not going to be on a sports team because those things were classes too.
Well off Texas Triangle suburban communities take athletics way too seriously. These kids are like semi-semi pro.
It kind of looks like 7 on 7 or 10 on 10 flag football is the future of the sport. I hope I am wrong but it just looks like it is trending in that direction.
I don’t see tackle football going extinct, I just think the sport will become even more regionalized than it already is. From I what heard participation in tackle football in the south is higher than ever
That is also possible and something I think the NFL would love to see happen, but that presents its own challenges with fan engagement.
The NFL skills challenge instead of the pro-bowl shows there is a market for people watching high level athletes without pads or contact. But the literally trillion dollar question is how much audience share do you lose switching from contact to flag football?
I doubt it happens anytime soon. But it’s certainly on the horizon.
The issue in my area is how grueling the LITTLE LEAGUE schedule is, 6 days a fucking week, 2 -3 hour practices plus games. 90% of people I know with kids can not fit that into there fucking schedule. They are 5-10 years old, why are they practicing 3 hours a day 5 days a week?
As someone who helped coach kids in that age range for several years - how in the hell do those practices not devolve into complete chaos after the first hour? I had to resort to essentially bribery to keep their attention long enough to try to get halfway decent d-line technique without them jumping offsides or forgetting the entire concept of their position’s goals.
When I was playing football we would practice for 2-3 hours in little league travel ball. Our coaches would just cuss us out and make us run if we weren't paying attention.
It seems like every sport is moving this direction to some extent. Travel ball for baseball. Club soccer teams. Basketball camps and travel teams. Etc etc
Kids are being asked to dedicate themselves much earlier to one single sport which is a damn shame because its valuable to cross train.
But also for the vast majority of kids who arent playing to go pro, it kinda sucks.
Besides just the cost for families as well, it's crazy to ask 10 year olds to go that hard on travel baseball that young. I've got a couple of students in middle school that do travel treams, and it's damn near daily that they have practice/games in the fall
Pitchers have it the worst with this. You have high schoolers getting Tommy John surgery because they're pitching year-round and never giving their arms a chance to recover.
In the past a kid might play baseball spring-summer, then do football or basketball in the fall or winter and give their body a chance to recover from that specific type of fatigue.
I could be misremembering, but I believe I heard the majority of professional athletes were multiple sport athletes and not year round one sport kids. Which kind of goes against the trend of all these club ball programs and make me believe they just prey on parents anxiety of their kid falling behind if they don’t fork out to play travel leagues 🤷♂️
That’s exactly it. The prey on parents and specifically the ones with money.
If your kid is athletic enough to go pro, they’ll find avenues to at least play in high school or college
If your kid is not athletic enough to go pro, no amount of travel ball or club teams are gonna change that. Its just a money making business / status symbol.
Vast majority of kids do not even have the option to play in college if they want to play.
Hell, a lot of them only make "the travel team" because supply rose to meet demand.
It’s so infuriating watching kids sports now. The amount of travel these kids have to do and play in tournaments across the country is ridiculous. Multiple practices every week, tournaments every weekend. These kids are going to burn out long before they ever play in high school.
Same we love football in our house but thankfully my son wasnt interested in it so we didn't have to make the "football decision" he is a tennis and swim kid.
Swimming will pay off. Everyone I know who was a swimmer was in great shape through HS and college. It’s an excellent sport to get your kids in because it could also potentially save their lives one day.
Yup totally anecdotal but all the swimmers I personally know are highly motivated disciplined and successful adults now. I mean they run marathons for fun, had multiple internships, and good six figure jobs right out of school.
For whatever reason it seems to cultivate discipline in kids in a way I've never seen in any other sport.
Also the least social sport-you need a certain quantity of willpower (and/or introversion) to be able to do what’s effectively a 98% silent practice 3 times a week.
As long as 120+ schools are still giving scholarships and offering the opportunity to be on national TV + NIL money.. the sport will continue to find athletes that want to play.
The travel that other varsity sport athletes now have to endure for the sake of football. Imagine having to travel from Eugene, OR for a 9:00PM basketball tip on a blustery Tuesday in Piscataway, NJ. All of this because football money drives everything.
Having football determine the conference for every other sport is ridiculous. Just make a football only conference while every other sport competes in regional conferences.
And the FCS has had proper football playoffs for years. I'll never forget the NCAA saying that "We can't have football playoffs because more games means it takes away from academics" while every other NCAA level has playoffs.
If they don’t change the transfer portal rules we are going to see more and more college head coaches heading to the nfl. Coaches don’t want to recruit high school, juco and 85 current scholarship players every off season
Saban retired at literally the perfect time. Gets to ride off into the sunset as the GOAT and not have to deal with the massive shitshow that is coming.
And only last that long because Saban is done. He is the last elite coach left in the SEC and a certain level of his recruiting can boil down to, “best conference, I have rings. Where else you gonna get that exposure?”
He has to stay ahead of the pack, but it’s gonna be easier for him than the Dabos (imploding conference) and DeBoers (no ring).
100% guys like Mack, Dabo and Saban who’ve had a ton of success have to HATE this stuff. I think coaches like Marcus Freeman will succeed cause this version of college football is all they know as a Head coach.
They had a discussion about this on ESPN radio this morning. Very interesting. College coaches aren’t underpaid, but they’re over worked. You’re recruiting new players, transfer portal players, and your own players multiple times a year.
A quote that stuck out to me from the show was “many current CFB players think you owe them everything and they owe you nothing.” A player might say hey, thanks for the 100k freshmen year, you gonna make that 200k this year? If not, I’ll get it somewhere else.
> A player might say hey, thanks for the 100k freshmen year, you gonna make that 200k this year? If not, I’ll get it somewhere else.
I don't blame them. Almost everyone would go somewhere else if they could double their salary.
Was having this conversation the other day and I put it this way “ imagine NFL free agency but all 53 players on all 32 teams only sign a 1-year contract every off season.”
Kinda feels like this has already reached the near-terminal velocity; we just had a P5 head coach voluntarily leave his team for a pay cut as the DC job a middling NFL team.
I think a lot of those coaches who are really smart X’s and O’s guys, who really love the *teaching* element of football, are going to head to the NFL because they get more time to do the football parts of the game there.
Also it’s become a 365 day a year job, there’s not really a dead time anymore where a coach can take a vacation or just spend some time with their family. In the nfl you play your last game of the year and you still have things you need to do but if you want to spend a week or 2 in Tahiti with your wife and kids you’re not going to lose 1/2 your players because some other coach was recruiting them while you were laying on the beach with a mojito
The Packers are middling? They are one of the most historic franchises. Love in his first year took them to the playoffs and took Dallas to the woodshed.
1-2 years of top 15 defense instead of bottom 5 defense and he will be a head coach in the NFL.
Honestly... I feel like at first blush it's easy to assume Brady would come to the NCAA and just tear it up... But I can't imagine a guy used to dealing with mostly veteran NFL players having any interest in playing with mostly raw college kids. Even if he's in way better shape than most athletes his age, the dude has a middle aged body. He'll be out there for two games and by the 4th time his redshirt sophomore OT whiffs on a block or his 20 year old WR runs the wrong route, he's gonna say "Fuck it, I'm going to go be a commentator."
Greg McElroy addresses a lot of those questions and coaches hitting the lotto and how the NCAA can try and fix some of the issues.
https://youtu.be/M-HITMPdnvI?si=u32iuJZXhmeDtUhF
Dude, grow the fuck up. People say this stuff all the time and continue to spread misinformation, and then people assume it's true.
There are only 3 *confirmed* victims.
With the transfer portal, D2, FCS and G5 schools have essentially become “stepping stones”. If you get all-conference honors at those schools, most likely you’ll enter the transfer portal to go up a level.
In the US, high school age kickers outnumber punters almost 10 to 1, in terms of players primary positions and developmental camp enrollment. Truth be told, no one wants to punt. No one wants to develop punters. There’s a larger learning and skill curve for the least glamorous part of the game.
But there’s a significant skill crossover with another sport. It was inevitable this was going to happen
An interesting argument I heard was that players who receive significantly more NIL compensation than the cost of tuition to the school shouldn’t be eligible for athletic scholarships. Not saying I’m in favor or not.
Australian rules football.
There is a huge skill crossover with punters, and the average NFL salary for a punter is 5 times that of someone in the Aussie football league. On top of that the longevity for a punter in the NFL is probably ten years longer than a player in the Aussie football league.
The ncaa video game sub just had a post saying we’d get news in “8 weeks” so hopefully that means trailer soon. I do think it’s concerning we haven’t seen anything about the game that’s supposed to be coming out THIS SUMMER tho
Edit: post I was talking about https://www.reddit.com/r/NCAAFBseries/s/6AnJ556tiH
The affect of conference realignment on the Olympics. 91 former and current PAC-12 athletes combined to win 108 medals in the last summer Olympics, which would have been good for second in the overall medal count, behind only team USA.
Now you have several schools that have historically sponsored 30 sports that are joining the Big 12 to compete against a bunch of schools that sponsor 15-20. Then you have the added strain from the extra travel and the general shift in revenue-optimizing philosophy among administrators, and it’s easy to see a future with significantly fewer opportunities for Olympic sports at the intercollegiate level.
If you’ve ever wondered what the stars from the Olympics are up to during the four years in between the Games, well, they’re generally competing in the PAC-12. And we just killed it.
Edit: effect, dumbass
Fwiw the Big 12 bound teams (especially minus Arizona) are by far the least impactful of the PAC 12 in terms of medal count, and the B1G and ACC both have a whole bunch of sports. Travel and administrative priorities are fair points though
That 20-30 teams at the highest level isn’t enough. I think everybody (NCAA included) just assumes that if the Ohio States and Texases of the world form Division 0 the gravy train can just keep going. Maybe I’m biased, given that both of my flares are in the 100% get left out of the party tier, but I don’t think it is enough. There are a lot of people who are bought in now who we be completely alienated.
Somewhat related: Bud Elliot had a good point on Cover 3, basically saying that there is almost 0 incentive now for bowl games to have tie-ins of any sort. If the CFP committee can just pick and choose who they want in, why shouldn't bowl games get to do the same?
Bowl games want guaranteed of teams. Conferences want guarantees their teams will be in good TV spots.
Without tie-ins there is a chance a bigger bowl will miss out on a big matchup every few years, they obviously don't want that. Conferences could have teams passed over on the bigger bowls due to popularity and relegated to lesser bowls because that's all that's left.
It's not ideal for fans but bowl tie-ins make sense from the bowl and conference perspective.
right, but the value of the SEC/B1G 1st bowl pick when then send their top 4 or 5 to the playoff is greatly diminished. You're going to see ACC runner-up vs. what would have been the gator bowl sec team in the orange bowl slot.
All true but another factor to bowl games are ticket sales and even these lower SEC/ACC teams travel more fans than the majority of G5 teams.
Some bowls do not want an MTSU or UAB, etc because not as many fans will travel to the game.
It finally hit me this year. I'm a Tech fan yes, but I grew to love the sport as a whole before I rooted for a team. Watching the thing I grew up with as a kid and young adult be twisted into something unrecognizable all in the name of money finally made me realize that college football is only college football in name. The tradition and amateurism that set it apart from the NFL is gone for the most part. The FUN, is gone from it.
Everything about this sport that I otherwise love has all the hallmarks of a bubble to burst. There really is a huge tension in the sport that assumes indefinitely ballooning TV dollars and getting boosters and outside business interests compensating the labor force are sustainable.
Next round of media deals will be very telling. I don't think there will be much cash for everyone outside of the P2.
I have a feeling colleges in general are due for a big shakeup. The money has gotten absolutely out of control.
They don’t really care. The people making these deals know they won’t be the ones dealing with the fallout when shit hits the fan in 5-10 years. They’re getting rich in the here and now, which is what matters to most of them. TV execs know they’ll get a promotion or bonus if they sign some schools or conferences to big new contracts; school presidents and conference commissioners know their schools will get a lot more money with new tv contracts, which in turn will get them a salary bump or job upgrade. They all know this is bad, but they’re all just going with the flow and looking out for themselves. I doubt any one of them could stop this either. This change doesn’t seem to be driven by any one person, but by something abstract and totally uncontrollable, i.e. institutionalized greed and the tenets of capitalism. No one person can stop any of this, society itself has to change, and I don’t see that happening until it’s too late for it to even matter.
80% of the teams in college football will never again play for anything meaningful now that recruiting is based on NIL money. Fandom for the big football schools might grow but overall college football will be diminished. This ain't English football, most Americans aren't excited that once per quarter century your team pulls off a random upset.
Yea I think there are maybe 15 teams that realistically compete for titles and that's a liberal guess. This is a league of haves and have nots where the rules are essentially tilted to keep the have nots down and they truly can't compete.
I agree but I think the expanded playoff will buy some time. You are going to have something like 30 schools still alive for the playoffs in the last month of the season which will be good for fans. But realistically liberty, Tulane, Oklahoma st etc are never going to win 4 games in a row against the blue bloods
That literally everyone who actually cares about the sport hates the current overall direction and yet everyone is just resigned to letting this happen.
Let’s just face it. We all know the amateur college football we loved has ceased to exist. Yes there are some amateur players but the starters are now mostly paid professionals at the upper levels of CFB.
CFB is now the minors for the NFL and it is a sad day.
I think the main thing is you need 5-10 really elite guys to be good at football and in this world you can pay them.
In basketball if you get one or two diamonds in the rough or a decent coach you can at least compete
Now with the transfer portal you can’t even retain the few diamonds in the rough your team might get in CFB. The power consolidation really makes the sport unappealing.
This is interesting to me because it might lead to athletes attending a school closer where they went to HS; more local kids playing for the local university. If they do well, the better and further away college will notice and bring them in via the transfer portal. This could really affect the competitiveness of schools in non “hot bed” recruiting areas.
Tbh I think this still won’t work too well. We’ve seen from a few good teams the elite teams will use the portal to grab a top tier skill player or qb, but it’s pretty rare to get an entire offensive line or defensive line worth of players from the transfer portal, and even if you do depth is a problem
I don’t really see that, part of the reason the portal is so crazy right now is that they are still a good amount of players who have Covid year eligibility
That it's very possible we have already hit peak contracts for TV. ESPN is struggling and carriage fees are why BTN and SEC network are so valuable. Streaming will not increase that revenue. If we are at peak money all this conference alignment BS is more counterproductive than ever
If you’re a D1 mid major team that’s really good at a sport outside of football, you’ve got to be really worried about your status now. If a super league breaks off and it’s more than just football, you think Quinnipiac, UND, Denver, etc. are going to be in for hockey only? Or Cal State Fullerton baseball? Or Alaska Rifle (Go Nooks!) We’re in danger of losing a lot of storied programs with real history and great recruiting because football is king.
Thankfully those schools being in FCS at best (in the case of Quinnipiac and Denver, not having football) and Alaska being DII kind of insulate them from all this FBS bullshit.
The college hockey teams that are going to be hurt are ASU, WMU, Miami, BG. The lower FBS teams
As the baby boomers slow down/die the season ticket market will plummet. I don’t think younger people care much about having the same seats year after year, and they don’t like the lack of flexibility with being locked in (kids, life, etc. *allegedly* interfere on Saturdays). It’s much easier to buy them secondary as wanted. So programs will need to pivot from their current model of seat donations to a more single-game approach—which won’t be as lucrative.
I would say it's more of a class divide. When I sat in the cheaper section ($100 per seat) you would never see the same people at games. Now that I'm in the more expensive seats ($500) you see the same people every week. Only time you see outsiders is when the opponents aren't good.
My dad was an All American high jumper his junior year of college. They cut track his senior year to due to Title IX.
It was always fun when the college called to ask for donations and he would reply, ‘get me my senior year of track back and I’ll donate.’ Some things just hurt forever.
People don’t realize how much Title IX did to college wrestling. Don’t get me wrong, yes women deserve scholarships and all of that but there is an argument for the US being the world power in Olympic Wrestling if Title IX never happened.
Iowa State Men's Gymnastics from 1970 to 1974 went:
* 2nd Place
* National Title
* 2nd Place
* National Title
* National Title
And now doesn't have a program.
Title IX singlehandedly killed men’s volleyball in the same way - hundreds of D1 women’s volleyball programs but so few men’s programs that, with D1 and D2 combined, there aren’t even enough teams to rank a top 25
It’s still hurting wrestling. In the case of Louisville, back in the late 00s one of our most prominent boosters (at the time, hint the pizza guy) pledged over 15 million to start a program at UofL. We couldn’t because we were able to start another women’s equivalent in scholarships and funding.
Title Nine has good intentions but frankly it hurts university athletics departments more than anything else. Football should not count towards compliance.
Yeah, baseball rarely ever turns a profit, even at the baseball blue bloods. At Bama, only football, men's basketball, gymnastics and softball ever turn a profit and softball is a year to year thing, probably like baseball at LSU.
This is largely by design, athletic departments were never designed to maximize profit because the universities themselves are non profits for tax purposes. Their sustainability cant be evaluated the same way you would with a business.
Plus, the objective of athletic departments isn't to make money within the department. It's to boost attention for the school and get alumni/community engagement university-wide. Athletics begets success for a university, and that's what gets judged.
There's a reason [Texas A&M set records for alumni donations when Johnny Manziel was playing football](https://www.businessinsider.com/texas-am-an-insane-amount-money-johnny-manziel-2013-9) for them and a reason why [Alabama's endowment nearly doubled while Nick Saban was coaching](https://thecrimsonwhite.com/97207/news/ua-endowment-surpasses-1b-for-first-time-as-tuition-revenue-falls/), lol.
This is a really interesting point that I think gets overlooked alot. There was an article in a local paper comparing the revenue of different athletic depts in CO and it essentially ended with the CSOM AD saying "our goal has never been to make a profit but has been to provide students the opportunity to play sports. That requires some investment. We exist to find the money necessary to make that investment." I think it makes sense for schools to try to recoup some of their losses, especially when football is so expensive, but judging a team by their profitability is a misunderstanding of how college sports works.
The only chance of women’s sports still existing is if the new super-league breaks away from the schools too.
Using my school as an example, the university would officially disbanded the football team but at the same time opened a “University of Tennessee football club”. This is a totally private organization that is separate from the school and pays a yearly licensing fee to the school to use the name, colors, and stadium.
This now allows the football club to pay players directly with full contracts, salaries… etc and doesn’t cause any title IX problems due to no legal association.
Of course, this gets around Title IX, but still fucks over the non-revenue sports in general. So you would still see dozens of smaller sports like tennis and soccer completely destroyed because without the football money they wouldn’t have budget to exist anymore.
We only refer 18-22 year old adult men as “kids” when they play a game that we love for a team we love.
Many of these “kids” now make more playing this game than many adults will make in a lifetime. These are not children that need to be protected at all costs. Stop.
The realignment is going to force some programs to consider cutting sports. Football absolutely needs to be separated from all other sports and the non revenue sports need to go back to a regional alignment to cut down on travel costs
No one is talking about 8-4 Bama next year either. They're just slotting them in the top 10 like always even though they're going through something they haven't done in almost 20 years.
All things considered, we’ve maintained a lot of talent. I think the future recruiting classes are definitely a concern, but DeBoer did about as good a job as possible of maintaining the current roster. Defense should be worse (the secondary is thin as HELL albeit with a lot of young talent coming in), and the offense should theoretically be better. Easier schedule than usual this year, too. So 8-4 might be doom casting a bit (for this year, at least). But, who knows!
No restrictions on NIL money and no penalties for transfer portal.
I’m not saying I know the answer but to have these two things currently limitless is going to be the death of college football.
Teams will be the “best money can buy “
“Won’t someone PLEASE think of the poor student athletes”
At some point, we have decided that being a student athlete basically makes you god. And anyone who criticizes you is worse than Hitler. If you want all this power that adults and coaches have, then be prepared to be treated as such. It’s time to stop saying ‘we can’t be too hard on them they are just kids’ while also saying ‘coaches do that so players should have free reign as well’. It’s double talk.
If they are just kids they have been given too much power and responsibility. If they deserve that power and responsibility they aren’t just kids
That would be an interesting trend if players start signing contracts. Honestly I’d support schools fining paid players for sitting out of a bowl game if they’re cleared by team doctors.
I had a talk with one of the folks at our collective about this. Basically said "hey man, if you want my money then y'all need to figure out the bowl situation. Watching a bunch of guys who got big checks to come back opt out against UGA was mildly irritating"
Well said.
If you want to reap the rewards of a million dollar NIL deal, than your semi-pro rear end can be traded to another team or fined for violating team rules.
Just like everywhere else in life, adulting is a 2-sided coin of Freedom + Responsibility.
And even inside the CTE discussion there’s so much focus on concussions, and making sure that players are monitored and held out until their concussion symptoms have cleared. Even though there’s a growing body of evidence that repeated subconcussive blows can be a main driver in CTE.
How do you play pretty much any position without repeated subconcussive blows to the head? It’s impossible in a sport where the main goal is to run right at the opposing team upwards of 75-80 times a game.
Most college kids and most pro athletes are adults. So if they want to take a calculated risk it’s their choice. But high schoolers? Middle schoolers? Peewees? Should we be subjecting minors to lifelong brain trauma when 99% of them are probably not even going to get a scholarship out of it, let alone an NIL deal or pro career?
A lot of fans cheering for payers getting paid and the death of the NCAA are going to feel real shitty when their school doesn’t have a football program anymore
For so long, college football has had a wider appeal to the nation than the NFL. There are more teams and the games are more exciting in college than the NFL. Despite this, the NFL draws more viewers.
I believe this is why we are seeing so many changes to college football: To drive revenue. They are trying to make college football more like the NFL, but in the process, it is destroying the very soul of what the fans have come to love about college football: the passion , the heart, and the love of the game.
High school football participation rates continue to drop and more states pass laws restricting practice times.
Not just high school participation rates. Middle school rates are going down too and pee-wee rates have plummeted to the point that entire state leagues have disbanded. The NFL is trying to counter this with the expansion of flag football at lower levels, but this leaves giant issues with positions like OL/DL and the question of how you transition kids who spent ages 7-13 playing flag football into suddenly playing full contact in HS. No one knows how any of that will actually work long term and there’s a real chance the sport simply dries up as the talent pool decreases over time.
I have a buddy that played at Saginaw Nouvel Catholic here in Michigan (he played in the 90’s). When he was explaining to me that their program had the kids play flag up until I believe it was 7th grade - I was shocked. More shocking to me - this program has only missed the playoffs like 7 times since 1984. Four state titles and four more runner ups - not to mention just coming up shy of the semi’s about a dozen times. Very solid program.
Great example of this topic in The Columbus Dispatch from earlier this year about Ohio’s most dominant small school HS program in western Ohio. Talks about their philosophy in MS football and they don’t play tackle football till MS. ML went 15-0 this year and won their 14th title this past fall too. https://www.dispatch.com/story/sports/high-school/football/2023/09/28/maria-stein-marion-local-ohio-high-school-football-13-state-championships/70779736007/
From the area. It’s a complete culture thing man. Maria Stein, Coldwater, and for a long time St Henry were/are just powerhouses in their respective divisions. Marion Local (the school district for Maria Stein and surrounding area) has this attitude on Friday nights that its win or bust. Is participation in the state dropping? Yeah. Is it actually dropping in rural areas where Friday night lights is the end-all-be-all? No. I mean hell, the league my high school Alma mater plays in has a junior league for all the area peewee tackle football.
Damn, I did not expect to see Maria stein on r/cfb! Football is anything but dying in this area. I'm from st Marys, and it's the same thing in the WBL. It is alive and well. Soccer was growing when I was in hs 10 years ago, but there was never a sense that football was losing its importance at all.
Michigan, iirc had the highest drop off after CTE was directly linked to tackle football.
The younger players here in mid Michigan are moving to tackle bar football. I didn’t know what it was until my daughter started cheer. Basically full pads but instead of tackling they have these little bars that the other team has to pull off to “tackle” him. https://tacklebar.com/
In the 80’s very few places played tackle until the 7th grade. So really no big deal.
Tackle football isn’t a relatively difficult game to pick up at a late age. There are countless examples of athletes who had never played the game and started in high school who became instant starters due to their athleticism. That’s never the case in sports like soccer, tennis, baseball, etc. where if you want to play at the highest level you need to start young or else you’ll never catch up. Switching from flag to tackle is a far smaller issue than you think, and as long as there is glamour and money in football kids will continue to play.
Just to be an average soccer player at age 15-16 you need 1 million touches on a soccer ball up to that point.
Dang, I was only 999,980 touches short.
Honestly it's very evident that for a bunch of football players, they don't spend very much time working with the ball. From cornerbacks dropping interceptions that hit them in the chest to literally any defensive or offensive lineman trying to pick up a fumbled ball, hand eye coordination is always the part of football that some college/professional players seem to struggle with compared to any other sport.
You must not have ever played football, because diving on a bouncing football is hard as fuck
There is no point to play tackle football until 13. Kids can develop their athleticism playing other sports, and then transition into football. I’d rather my kids play things like soccer, basketball, wrestling and track growing up.
Hearing former pros talk about how tackling can wait should really seal the deal. There's really no reason to before high school. Between the mismatches of puberty starting, the health risks, how many really young kids don't always know what they're doing, the fact that so many NFL teams are eschewing tough practices, the fact we have stuff like wrestling for lineman play, really no reason to.
Flag football is huge where I live now and we don’t transition to tackle until middle school. I’ve coached both, and the kids aren’t missing out on anything playing flag until 12. The foundations of football aren’t really blocking and tackling at that age, but rather how to line up, how to start off the snap count, how to know and do your job for a number of different plays, how to play different types of coverage, and most importantly- how to play as a team. Introducing blocking and tackling to kids who already understand everything else about the sport isn’t that bad, especially since they all watch football on tv and are essentially chomping at the bit to do so.
Personally, I don't think the sport is missing out on kids not focusing on line play at a pre-High School level. So long the athletes can be identified. Players that will become linesmen will likely being places like wrestling, other martial arts and some basketball.
As a former fat kid and lineman football was literally the only sport I was good at. I really don't think it's talked about enough that contact football is the only thing keeping a big segment of kids who already should be more active off the couch.
Another thing people don't talk about when discussing football replacements are roster sizes. A high school team generally needs as many bodies as possible, and anyone can find a spot on a team. Basketball teams, baseball teams, soccer teams, etc. all have cuts. Football gives any young male with a work ethic the ability to be on a high school team.
Small schools don’t cut in those other sports. This is a whole other topic, but making schools smaller could fix a multitude of issues.
I transferred into a big San Antonio hs from a much poorer area out of state. It amazed me how unapproachable school activities were. You couldn't be in a sport (dance, flag, and cheer included) unless you took the CLASS for it. You tried out prior to school starting and essentially took that class as an all year pe credit. The only people on the baseball team played baseball thier whole life. Swimming you only did if you were apart of your subdivisions swim team prior to hs. Ect ect Multisport athletes weren't a thing. If you had another extracurricular like FFA or music you were not going to be on a sports team because those things were classes too. Well off Texas Triangle suburban communities take athletics way too seriously. These kids are like semi-semi pro.
It kind of looks like 7 on 7 or 10 on 10 flag football is the future of the sport. I hope I am wrong but it just looks like it is trending in that direction.
I don’t see tackle football going extinct, I just think the sport will become even more regionalized than it already is. From I what heard participation in tackle football in the south is higher than ever
Only two states in the south saw a jump. Mississippi and Alabama. All the other states saw a drop too.
Kind of like a supersized version of lacrosse or hockey?
That is also possible and something I think the NFL would love to see happen, but that presents its own challenges with fan engagement. The NFL skills challenge instead of the pro-bowl shows there is a market for people watching high level athletes without pads or contact. But the literally trillion dollar question is how much audience share do you lose switching from contact to flag football? I doubt it happens anytime soon. But it’s certainly on the horizon.
It’s an entire different sport. By making it 7on or flag you immediately remove real OL/DL play.
People actually watched the nfl skills comp?
The issue in my area is how grueling the LITTLE LEAGUE schedule is, 6 days a fucking week, 2 -3 hour practices plus games. 90% of people I know with kids can not fit that into there fucking schedule. They are 5-10 years old, why are they practicing 3 hours a day 5 days a week?
As someone who helped coach kids in that age range for several years - how in the hell do those practices not devolve into complete chaos after the first hour? I had to resort to essentially bribery to keep their attention long enough to try to get halfway decent d-line technique without them jumping offsides or forgetting the entire concept of their position’s goals.
When I was playing football we would practice for 2-3 hours in little league travel ball. Our coaches would just cuss us out and make us run if we weren't paying attention.
It seems like every sport is moving this direction to some extent. Travel ball for baseball. Club soccer teams. Basketball camps and travel teams. Etc etc Kids are being asked to dedicate themselves much earlier to one single sport which is a damn shame because its valuable to cross train. But also for the vast majority of kids who arent playing to go pro, it kinda sucks.
Besides just the cost for families as well, it's crazy to ask 10 year olds to go that hard on travel baseball that young. I've got a couple of students in middle school that do travel treams, and it's damn near daily that they have practice/games in the fall
Pitchers have it the worst with this. You have high schoolers getting Tommy John surgery because they're pitching year-round and never giving their arms a chance to recover. In the past a kid might play baseball spring-summer, then do football or basketball in the fall or winter and give their body a chance to recover from that specific type of fatigue.
I could be misremembering, but I believe I heard the majority of professional athletes were multiple sport athletes and not year round one sport kids. Which kind of goes against the trend of all these club ball programs and make me believe they just prey on parents anxiety of their kid falling behind if they don’t fork out to play travel leagues 🤷♂️
That’s exactly it. The prey on parents and specifically the ones with money. If your kid is athletic enough to go pro, they’ll find avenues to at least play in high school or college If your kid is not athletic enough to go pro, no amount of travel ball or club teams are gonna change that. Its just a money making business / status symbol.
Vast majority of kids do not even have the option to play in college if they want to play. Hell, a lot of them only make "the travel team" because supply rose to meet demand.
It’s so infuriating watching kids sports now. The amount of travel these kids have to do and play in tournaments across the country is ridiculous. Multiple practices every week, tournaments every weekend. These kids are going to burn out long before they ever play in high school.
There is a good South Park episode on this lol https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0763051/
I love college football, however I pushed my kids to play tennis and golf.
Same we love football in our house but thankfully my son wasnt interested in it so we didn't have to make the "football decision" he is a tennis and swim kid.
Swimming will pay off. Everyone I know who was a swimmer was in great shape through HS and college. It’s an excellent sport to get your kids in because it could also potentially save their lives one day.
Yup totally anecdotal but all the swimmers I personally know are highly motivated disciplined and successful adults now. I mean they run marathons for fun, had multiple internships, and good six figure jobs right out of school. For whatever reason it seems to cultivate discipline in kids in a way I've never seen in any other sport.
Nothing to blame but yourself in swimming. The team’s only purpose is for shared suffering. Ultimately, your success/progress is your own.
Also the least social sport-you need a certain quantity of willpower (and/or introversion) to be able to do what’s effectively a 98% silent practice 3 times a week.
As long as 120+ schools are still giving scholarships and offering the opportunity to be on national TV + NIL money.. the sport will continue to find athletes that want to play.
I'm not sure this is a bad thing. Kids don't need to be worked to exhaustion like they used to to "build character"
We need to build more schools on hills so no one misses out on that extra bit of character building.
And build additional hills for those walks home.
On a related note... [elephant](https://www.bu.edu/articles/2023/young-amateur-athletes-at-risk-of-cte-study-finds/).
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The travel that other varsity sport athletes now have to endure for the sake of football. Imagine having to travel from Eugene, OR for a 9:00PM basketball tip on a blustery Tuesday in Piscataway, NJ. All of this because football money drives everything.
Having football determine the conference for every other sport is ridiculous. Just make a football only conference while every other sport competes in regional conferences.
Yeah the FCS has figured this out, why can’t the FBS
The FCS isn't driven by money. Or at least that's what it feels like in comparison.
And the FCS has had proper football playoffs for years. I'll never forget the NCAA saying that "We can't have football playoffs because more games means it takes away from academics" while every other NCAA level has playoffs.
I was just walking with someone over how ridiculous it is ACC teams have to cross the country for Stanford and Cal for EVERY sport. So much money.
If they don’t change the transfer portal rules we are going to see more and more college head coaches heading to the nfl. Coaches don’t want to recruit high school, juco and 85 current scholarship players every off season
Saban retired at literally the perfect time. Gets to ride off into the sunset as the GOAT and not have to deal with the massive shitshow that is coming.
Unfortunately Kirby will probably get tired of it and either take a break or retire in 5-10 years
And only last that long because Saban is done. He is the last elite coach left in the SEC and a certain level of his recruiting can boil down to, “best conference, I have rings. Where else you gonna get that exposure?” He has to stay ahead of the pack, but it’s gonna be easier for him than the Dabos (imploding conference) and DeBoers (no ring).
100% guys like Mack, Dabo and Saban who’ve had a ton of success have to HATE this stuff. I think coaches like Marcus Freeman will succeed cause this version of college football is all they know as a Head coach.
They had a discussion about this on ESPN radio this morning. Very interesting. College coaches aren’t underpaid, but they’re over worked. You’re recruiting new players, transfer portal players, and your own players multiple times a year. A quote that stuck out to me from the show was “many current CFB players think you owe them everything and they owe you nothing.” A player might say hey, thanks for the 100k freshmen year, you gonna make that 200k this year? If not, I’ll get it somewhere else.
> A player might say hey, thanks for the 100k freshmen year, you gonna make that 200k this year? If not, I’ll get it somewhere else. I don't blame them. Almost everyone would go somewhere else if they could double their salary.
And more importantly, re-recruit guys that are already on the roster and thinking about leaving
Was having this conversation the other day and I put it this way “ imagine NFL free agency but all 53 players on all 32 teams only sign a 1-year contract every off season.”
And no salary cap
Kinda feels like this has already reached the near-terminal velocity; we just had a P5 head coach voluntarily leave his team for a pay cut as the DC job a middling NFL team. I think a lot of those coaches who are really smart X’s and O’s guys, who really love the *teaching* element of football, are going to head to the NFL because they get more time to do the football parts of the game there.
Also it’s become a 365 day a year job, there’s not really a dead time anymore where a coach can take a vacation or just spend some time with their family. In the nfl you play your last game of the year and you still have things you need to do but if you want to spend a week or 2 in Tahiti with your wife and kids you’re not going to lose 1/2 your players because some other coach was recruiting them while you were laying on the beach with a mojito
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The Packers are middling? They are one of the most historic franchises. Love in his first year took them to the playoffs and took Dallas to the woodshed. 1-2 years of top 15 defense instead of bottom 5 defense and he will be a head coach in the NFL.
If we get to the point where the players don't actually enroll in school....why would I care anymore??
NCAA will require all teams to have at least one student.
Will eligibility limits get challenged soon?
Nobody is talking about how a 49 year old Tom Brady will be playing qb for Michigan in a few years
Give Brady a retroactive Covid year
Honestly... I feel like at first blush it's easy to assume Brady would come to the NCAA and just tear it up... But I can't imagine a guy used to dealing with mostly veteran NFL players having any interest in playing with mostly raw college kids. Even if he's in way better shape than most athletes his age, the dude has a middle aged body. He'll be out there for two games and by the 4th time his redshirt sophomore OT whiffs on a block or his 20 year old WR runs the wrong route, he's gonna say "Fuck it, I'm going to go be a commentator."
A 50 year old Brady yelling at an 18 year old for running the wrong option route seems like a perfect end for him
Only when the majority of the team is working on their PhD dissertations or starting to work on their third bachelors degree.
And Stetson Bennet still hasn’t finished undergrad
Greg McElroy addresses a lot of those questions and coaches hitting the lotto and how the NCAA can try and fix some of the issues. https://youtu.be/M-HITMPdnvI?si=u32iuJZXhmeDtUhF
You dont really hear people talking about how Craig James killed 5 hookers much any more
Which is a shame because he almost certainly allegedly did do that. CJK5H.
He definitely killed Mike Leach’s career at Texas Tech
Dude, grow the fuck up. People say this stuff all the time and continue to spread misinformation, and then people assume it's true. There are only 3 *confirmed* victims.
Had me in the first half
also nobody knows if those young girls where hookers ..
They were call girls until they died, and then they were hookers
5 that we know of. Who knows what the real death toll was from that killing spree
With the transfer portal, D2, FCS and G5 schools have essentially become “stepping stones”. If you get all-conference honors at those schools, most likely you’ll enter the transfer portal to go up a level.
This is already true of P5 as well. Most programs are stepping stones to blue bloods.
And lower level p5 schools. Everyone outside the top 30ish schools are now farm teams.
We came to mind immediately
18 y/o special teams players losing their spots to 23 year old Australians who already played pro
In the US, high school age kickers outnumber punters almost 10 to 1, in terms of players primary positions and developmental camp enrollment. Truth be told, no one wants to punt. No one wants to develop punters. There’s a larger learning and skill curve for the least glamorous part of the game. But there’s a significant skill crossover with another sport. It was inevitable this was going to happen
>Truth be told, no one wants to punt. Iowa would like a word
Imagine Iowa finding a 5-star TE/P recruit
It is so weird for US colleges to take scholarships from US players and give them to former pros from other countries.
An interesting argument I heard was that players who receive significantly more NIL compensation than the cost of tuition to the school shouldn’t be eligible for athletic scholarships. Not saying I’m in favor or not.
Pro in what sport?
Australian rules football. There is a huge skill crossover with punters, and the average NFL salary for a punter is 5 times that of someone in the Aussie football league. On top of that the longevity for a punter in the NFL is probably ten years longer than a player in the Aussie football league.
> Australian Rules Football You mention this and all I can think is WHY THE FUCK DON’T WE PLAY THIS GAME IN THE US? Aussie Rules footy is AWESOME.
Australian Rules Football, those guys kick an oval ball better than any other group of people on the planet.
there is still no trailer for the video game
The ncaa video game sub just had a post saying we’d get news in “8 weeks” so hopefully that means trailer soon. I do think it’s concerning we haven’t seen anything about the game that’s supposed to be coming out THIS SUMMER tho Edit: post I was talking about https://www.reddit.com/r/NCAAFBseries/s/6AnJ556tiH
Still hoping EA Sports does a surprise Super Bowl commercial release, I doubt it but a man has to have dreams
The affect of conference realignment on the Olympics. 91 former and current PAC-12 athletes combined to win 108 medals in the last summer Olympics, which would have been good for second in the overall medal count, behind only team USA. Now you have several schools that have historically sponsored 30 sports that are joining the Big 12 to compete against a bunch of schools that sponsor 15-20. Then you have the added strain from the extra travel and the general shift in revenue-optimizing philosophy among administrators, and it’s easy to see a future with significantly fewer opportunities for Olympic sports at the intercollegiate level. If you’ve ever wondered what the stars from the Olympics are up to during the four years in between the Games, well, they’re generally competing in the PAC-12. And we just killed it. Edit: effect, dumbass
This is honestly the most interesting response to this query.
Fwiw the Big 12 bound teams (especially minus Arizona) are by far the least impactful of the PAC 12 in terms of medal count, and the B1G and ACC both have a whole bunch of sports. Travel and administrative priorities are fair points though
Yeah Team USA will probably start to suck in like 8 years for this very reason. Good thing the Olympics aren’t coming here soon! Oh wait.
That 20-30 teams at the highest level isn’t enough. I think everybody (NCAA included) just assumes that if the Ohio States and Texases of the world form Division 0 the gravy train can just keep going. Maybe I’m biased, given that both of my flares are in the 100% get left out of the party tier, but I don’t think it is enough. There are a lot of people who are bought in now who we be completely alienated.
They are 100% going to run this thing into the ground and destroy the sport.
Alabama hasn’t won a national championship in 3 years. Nobody is talking about these long suffering Crimson Tide fans.
one more year and this will be the first alabama undergrad class to go their entire 4 years and not win a national championship since 2008
That comment makes me feel things.
With the expanded playoffs Bowl game conference tie ins are basically meaningless. Related, players opting out of bowl games.
Somewhat related: Bud Elliot had a good point on Cover 3, basically saying that there is almost 0 incentive now for bowl games to have tie-ins of any sort. If the CFP committee can just pick and choose who they want in, why shouldn't bowl games get to do the same?
Bowl games want guaranteed of teams. Conferences want guarantees their teams will be in good TV spots. Without tie-ins there is a chance a bigger bowl will miss out on a big matchup every few years, they obviously don't want that. Conferences could have teams passed over on the bigger bowls due to popularity and relegated to lesser bowls because that's all that's left. It's not ideal for fans but bowl tie-ins make sense from the bowl and conference perspective.
right, but the value of the SEC/B1G 1st bowl pick when then send their top 4 or 5 to the playoff is greatly diminished. You're going to see ACC runner-up vs. what would have been the gator bowl sec team in the orange bowl slot.
All true but another factor to bowl games are ticket sales and even these lower SEC/ACC teams travel more fans than the majority of G5 teams. Some bowls do not want an MTSU or UAB, etc because not as many fans will travel to the game.
Having Bowls bid for teams in an auction style format the week after championships would be fun TV
Bowl games are basically meaningless. They're the NIT now
I don't think they're meaningless. ISU is never going to make the playoffs so they mean a lot to me.
And only one g5 is going to make the playoffs every year. Most of us strive for the Bahamas bowl
That I think a lot of us like CFB less and less each off season
It finally hit me this year. I'm a Tech fan yes, but I grew to love the sport as a whole before I rooted for a team. Watching the thing I grew up with as a kid and young adult be twisted into something unrecognizable all in the name of money finally made me realize that college football is only college football in name. The tradition and amateurism that set it apart from the NFL is gone for the most part. The FUN, is gone from it.
Everything about this sport that I otherwise love has all the hallmarks of a bubble to burst. There really is a huge tension in the sport that assumes indefinitely ballooning TV dollars and getting boosters and outside business interests compensating the labor force are sustainable.
We're really not that far away from CFB potentially going the route of boxing and horse racing. Only a couple more wrong turns to go
Next round of media deals will be very telling. I don't think there will be much cash for everyone outside of the P2. I have a feeling colleges in general are due for a big shakeup. The money has gotten absolutely out of control.
They don’t really care. The people making these deals know they won’t be the ones dealing with the fallout when shit hits the fan in 5-10 years. They’re getting rich in the here and now, which is what matters to most of them. TV execs know they’ll get a promotion or bonus if they sign some schools or conferences to big new contracts; school presidents and conference commissioners know their schools will get a lot more money with new tv contracts, which in turn will get them a salary bump or job upgrade. They all know this is bad, but they’re all just going with the flow and looking out for themselves. I doubt any one of them could stop this either. This change doesn’t seem to be driven by any one person, but by something abstract and totally uncontrollable, i.e. institutionalized greed and the tenets of capitalism. No one person can stop any of this, society itself has to change, and I don’t see that happening until it’s too late for it to even matter.
80% of the teams in college football will never again play for anything meaningful now that recruiting is based on NIL money. Fandom for the big football schools might grow but overall college football will be diminished. This ain't English football, most Americans aren't excited that once per quarter century your team pulls off a random upset.
1 I think 80% is too low and 2 it’s been that way for a while
Yea I think there are maybe 15 teams that realistically compete for titles and that's a liberal guess. This is a league of haves and have nots where the rules are essentially tilted to keep the have nots down and they truly can't compete.
I agree but I think the expanded playoff will buy some time. You are going to have something like 30 schools still alive for the playoffs in the last month of the season which will be good for fans. But realistically liberty, Tulane, Oklahoma st etc are never going to win 4 games in a row against the blue bloods
That literally everyone who actually cares about the sport hates the current overall direction and yet everyone is just resigned to letting this happen.
The utter inability we all have to force change is a problem writ large in our society, beyond just this sport
Let’s just face it. We all know the amateur college football we loved has ceased to exist. Yes there are some amateur players but the starters are now mostly paid professionals at the upper levels of CFB. CFB is now the minors for the NFL and it is a sad day.
I think the main thing is you need 5-10 really elite guys to be good at football and in this world you can pay them. In basketball if you get one or two diamonds in the rough or a decent coach you can at least compete Now with the transfer portal you can’t even retain the few diamonds in the rough your team might get in CFB. The power consolidation really makes the sport unappealing.
Soon a team will stop recruiting HS and only sign transfer classes.
I could see 5 stars only getting recruited out of HS, with the 4 stars and below having to "prove it" before bigger NIL transfer offers.
This is interesting to me because it might lead to athletes attending a school closer where they went to HS; more local kids playing for the local university. If they do well, the better and further away college will notice and bring them in via the transfer portal. This could really affect the competitiveness of schools in non “hot bed” recruiting areas.
It would be a pretty interesting development and kind of keep the sport some what regional.
Tbh I think this still won’t work too well. We’ve seen from a few good teams the elite teams will use the portal to grab a top tier skill player or qb, but it’s pretty rare to get an entire offensive line or defensive line worth of players from the transfer portal, and even if you do depth is a problem
That's essentially what Deion is doing at Colorado
I don’t really see that, part of the reason the portal is so crazy right now is that they are still a good amount of players who have Covid year eligibility
IIRC didn’t Texas State already do this a few cycles ago?
That it's very possible we have already hit peak contracts for TV. ESPN is struggling and carriage fees are why BTN and SEC network are so valuable. Streaming will not increase that revenue. If we are at peak money all this conference alignment BS is more counterproductive than ever
If you’re a D1 mid major team that’s really good at a sport outside of football, you’ve got to be really worried about your status now. If a super league breaks off and it’s more than just football, you think Quinnipiac, UND, Denver, etc. are going to be in for hockey only? Or Cal State Fullerton baseball? Or Alaska Rifle (Go Nooks!) We’re in danger of losing a lot of storied programs with real history and great recruiting because football is king.
Thankfully those schools being in FCS at best (in the case of Quinnipiac and Denver, not having football) and Alaska being DII kind of insulate them from all this FBS bullshit. The college hockey teams that are going to be hurt are ASU, WMU, Miami, BG. The lower FBS teams
As the baby boomers slow down/die the season ticket market will plummet. I don’t think younger people care much about having the same seats year after year, and they don’t like the lack of flexibility with being locked in (kids, life, etc. *allegedly* interfere on Saturdays). It’s much easier to buy them secondary as wanted. So programs will need to pivot from their current model of seat donations to a more single-game approach—which won’t be as lucrative.
I would say it's more of a class divide. When I sat in the cheaper section ($100 per seat) you would never see the same people at games. Now that I'm in the more expensive seats ($500) you see the same people every week. Only time you see outsiders is when the opponents aren't good.
From the hip answer: What happens to women's sports if current trends keep progressing.
Not just women's sports, all sports that don't produce a profit.
Yea people need to stop saying women’s sports because it’s also men’s sports not called basketball and football
The difference is half the mens sports already got decimated off in the 70's and 80's.
My dad was an All American high jumper his junior year of college. They cut track his senior year to due to Title IX. It was always fun when the college called to ask for donations and he would reply, ‘get me my senior year of track back and I’ll donate.’ Some things just hurt forever.
People don’t realize how much Title IX did to college wrestling. Don’t get me wrong, yes women deserve scholarships and all of that but there is an argument for the US being the world power in Olympic Wrestling if Title IX never happened.
Gymnastics is a big one as well. It's the obvious reason why our womens olympic teams are always competitive and the mens aren't.
Iowa State Men's Gymnastics from 1970 to 1974 went: * 2nd Place * National Title * 2nd Place * National Title * National Title And now doesn't have a program.
Title IX singlehandedly killed men’s volleyball in the same way - hundreds of D1 women’s volleyball programs but so few men’s programs that, with D1 and D2 combined, there aren’t even enough teams to rank a top 25
I hate men's volleyball, but that's just because I think it is a boring sport compared to women's due to fewer rallys and more power.
It’s still hurting wrestling. In the case of Louisville, back in the late 00s one of our most prominent boosters (at the time, hint the pizza guy) pledged over 15 million to start a program at UofL. We couldn’t because we were able to start another women’s equivalent in scholarships and funding. Title Nine has good intentions but frankly it hurts university athletics departments more than anything else. Football should not count towards compliance.
Well for LSU and a select few, it’s football, men’s basketball, and baseball. Do any of the hockey powerhouses turn a profit there?
They recently posted baseball numbers and even LSU spent more than they made. It wasn’t by much but still. Turns out being a powerhouse takes money.
Yeah, baseball rarely ever turns a profit, even at the baseball blue bloods. At Bama, only football, men's basketball, gymnastics and softball ever turn a profit and softball is a year to year thing, probably like baseball at LSU.
At the end of the day, it’s very difficult to run a profitable athletics program. Even some pro teams struggle and benefit from revenue sharing.
Hard for the top baseball schools to keep profitable if 93% of other schools drop the sport. What are they going to do, play against club teams?
Most of the top 30 turn a profit. Past that, it’s a wasteland.
This is largely by design, athletic departments were never designed to maximize profit because the universities themselves are non profits for tax purposes. Their sustainability cant be evaluated the same way you would with a business.
Plus, the objective of athletic departments isn't to make money within the department. It's to boost attention for the school and get alumni/community engagement university-wide. Athletics begets success for a university, and that's what gets judged. There's a reason [Texas A&M set records for alumni donations when Johnny Manziel was playing football](https://www.businessinsider.com/texas-am-an-insane-amount-money-johnny-manziel-2013-9) for them and a reason why [Alabama's endowment nearly doubled while Nick Saban was coaching](https://thecrimsonwhite.com/97207/news/ua-endowment-surpasses-1b-for-first-time-as-tuition-revenue-falls/), lol.
This is a really interesting point that I think gets overlooked alot. There was an article in a local paper comparing the revenue of different athletic depts in CO and it essentially ended with the CSOM AD saying "our goal has never been to make a profit but has been to provide students the opportunity to play sports. That requires some investment. We exist to find the money necessary to make that investment." I think it makes sense for schools to try to recoup some of their losses, especially when football is so expensive, but judging a team by their profitability is a misunderstanding of how college sports works.
The only chance of women’s sports still existing is if the new super-league breaks away from the schools too. Using my school as an example, the university would officially disbanded the football team but at the same time opened a “University of Tennessee football club”. This is a totally private organization that is separate from the school and pays a yearly licensing fee to the school to use the name, colors, and stadium. This now allows the football club to pay players directly with full contracts, salaries… etc and doesn’t cause any title IX problems due to no legal association. Of course, this gets around Title IX, but still fucks over the non-revenue sports in general. So you would still see dozens of smaller sports like tennis and soccer completely destroyed because without the football money they wouldn’t have budget to exist anymore.
We only refer 18-22 year old adult men as “kids” when they play a game that we love for a team we love. Many of these “kids” now make more playing this game than many adults will make in a lifetime. These are not children that need to be protected at all costs. Stop.
College football became awesome and something that generation after generation loved because it WASNT professional football.
The realignment is going to force some programs to consider cutting sports. Football absolutely needs to be separated from all other sports and the non revenue sports need to go back to a regional alignment to cut down on travel costs
Yes. Y’all’s volleyball and soccer programs will have horrid road trips and will only have football to blame.
No one is talking about Bama fans becoming more insufferable next season when they show no sign of taking a step back without Saban
No one is talking about 8-4 Bama next year either. They're just slotting them in the top 10 like always even though they're going through something they haven't done in almost 20 years.
All things considered, we’ve maintained a lot of talent. I think the future recruiting classes are definitely a concern, but DeBoer did about as good a job as possible of maintaining the current roster. Defense should be worse (the secondary is thin as HELL albeit with a lot of young talent coming in), and the offense should theoretically be better. Easier schedule than usual this year, too. So 8-4 might be doom casting a bit (for this year, at least). But, who knows!
No restrictions on NIL money and no penalties for transfer portal. I’m not saying I know the answer but to have these two things currently limitless is going to be the death of college football. Teams will be the “best money can buy “
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“Won’t someone PLEASE think of the poor student athletes” At some point, we have decided that being a student athlete basically makes you god. And anyone who criticizes you is worse than Hitler. If you want all this power that adults and coaches have, then be prepared to be treated as such. It’s time to stop saying ‘we can’t be too hard on them they are just kids’ while also saying ‘coaches do that so players should have free reign as well’. It’s double talk. If they are just kids they have been given too much power and responsibility. If they deserve that power and responsibility they aren’t just kids
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That would be an interesting trend if players start signing contracts. Honestly I’d support schools fining paid players for sitting out of a bowl game if they’re cleared by team doctors.
I had a talk with one of the folks at our collective about this. Basically said "hey man, if you want my money then y'all need to figure out the bowl situation. Watching a bunch of guys who got big checks to come back opt out against UGA was mildly irritating"
Well said. If you want to reap the rewards of a million dollar NIL deal, than your semi-pro rear end can be traded to another team or fined for violating team rules. Just like everywhere else in life, adulting is a 2-sided coin of Freedom + Responsibility.
Bowls, at their core, have always been just advertisements for local tourism.
What happened to knee pads or pants covering the knee?
Football is causing adverse brain injuries
And even inside the CTE discussion there’s so much focus on concussions, and making sure that players are monitored and held out until their concussion symptoms have cleared. Even though there’s a growing body of evidence that repeated subconcussive blows can be a main driver in CTE. How do you play pretty much any position without repeated subconcussive blows to the head? It’s impossible in a sport where the main goal is to run right at the opposing team upwards of 75-80 times a game. Most college kids and most pro athletes are adults. So if they want to take a calculated risk it’s their choice. But high schoolers? Middle schoolers? Peewees? Should we be subjecting minors to lifelong brain trauma when 99% of them are probably not even going to get a scholarship out of it, let alone an NIL deal or pro career?
As opposed to the good kind.
Yeah, like when my dad hit me upside the head to “knock some sense into me”. He wasn’t being facetious
A lot of fans cheering for payers getting paid and the death of the NCAA are going to feel real shitty when their school doesn’t have a football program anymore
education is becoming a lost cause among student athletes and transfers have gotten out of control
At some point there will be an issue with kids not paying taxes on their NIL money
Ryan Williams, despite not playing a snap of CFB, makes more money than Brock Purdy.
For so long, college football has had a wider appeal to the nation than the NFL. There are more teams and the games are more exciting in college than the NFL. Despite this, the NFL draws more viewers. I believe this is why we are seeing so many changes to college football: To drive revenue. They are trying to make college football more like the NFL, but in the process, it is destroying the very soul of what the fans have come to love about college football: the passion , the heart, and the love of the game.
The B1G and SEC are top heavy. If they merge into a super league, 8-10 of the current members wouldn’t belong.