I don't necessarily agree with his take on the transfer portal specifically (if there is one change in college football that I could undo it is easily conference realignment – that's a distant first), but, I totally get what he's saying about wanting to tune out from the sport until the dust settles. We've seen 4 decades-worth of changes in a 5 year period, and we know there's more coming. I get how some find that exhausting.
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I said it in another post re VTBB. We've lost almost all of the previous season's human identity. And, we are about to see this happen on VTFB.
His point about the Packers is spot on. I've grown up on the DC Metro and have spent most of my life here outside of my long years the Burg and 6 in Charlotte.
I too, enjoy watching the NFL but could give two licks about my Redskins winning or losing on any given Sunday/Monday. Free agency started this effect and the portal is no different.
About a year ago I told myself that I will just root for VT and M&O and not worry myself with the actual players as much. I said my interest won't be deterred. Well, I am amazed at how immediate my lack of interest in VTBB has come about. Now, granted, we aren't good either and if we were, I'd probably watch it, but I wouldn't be as vested as I am watching dudes who are here today and could very well be gone tomorrow.
I want to stay positive and fully engaged but the realist inside me is settling in.
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Yeah, this is the first year since 09 where I just didn't really care about college football. Between the 12 team playoff, conference butchering, and transfer portal/NIL, it just sapped my love of the sport. Used to be like games all day from noon through the end of Hawaii's game and VT football was appointment viewing for me. Now if I miss a few minutes of VT or miss a game I'm not going back to watch like I would have. I'm doing other stuff on Saturdays and don't miss college football. I already have one pro team to disappoint me yearly (Cowboys), I didn't need a second.
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Now if I miss a few minutes of VT or miss a game I'm not going back to watch like I would have.
Life happens, and sometimes I can't watch the game. What I've done for the past decade plus (i.e. since I had kids) was if I can't watch the game, I'd avoid places where it could be spoiled, and later on ask my wife to answer a binary question: "Would VT+7 be a win or tie?" If yes, I'd watch the game. If no, I'd check the score myself, maybe look at an article, and decide whether or not to watch highlights. Basically, if it's a close game (within 7), I'd want to watch, and not knowing the final W/L result maintains some of the narrative tension. And I know beforehand if it's a blowout. It's a nice way to filter out some of the heartache from VT football of late.
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I started taking this approach as mediocrity became the norm over the last few years. A VT loss used to RUIN my weekend. Well, when you lose more than 3/yr, that's a lot of ruined weekends. So, I began skipping games entirely and checking the score afterwards. If it was a win, I'd watch a replay while working out the next day. A loss? Well at least I saved hours of my weekend. The hype of this year lured me back in to appointment viewing and it hurt much more.
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When the only thing that matters is money, it is no longer something that I care about. I don't watch pro sports and really only watched VT sports. Mostly FB and BB but I gave up on the MBB team this year as it just isn't fun to watch at all. We aren't renewing season tickets for FB next year and I'm kinda happy as this year wasn't really enjoyable for most games. WBB is the only sport I try and watch every game this year. So all this to say, I don't know how much more college sports I will be watching as time goes on.
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I feel like I can relate to this guy a lot. I'm a Vikings fan, I cheer (mostly) for the NFC North, and I'm not emotionally attached. But I enjoy the NFL product more than college because I expect turnover, there's no facade about what the sport is, there are rules in place to keep play competitive, and more so than college - I can get invested in a single player / franchise player. I can't do any of those things with college any more especially when a player may only ever play for a team for 4 games before they peace out. The only thing that I think college football does better than the NFL is accessibility - there are games on ALL the time and I can ALWAYS find my way to watching the game I want to watch. Once the NFL figures that part out at a price point that is more competitive with everyone other league, college football will become a complete afterthought for me.
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I am gravitating to the NFL more and more because the playing field is level. There is a hard salary cap and salary floor and the richest teams cannot just buy players from whoever they want because of their spending power. Teams that are good get there by making good trades, signing the right players and building a successful franchise. Teams that are bad always have a legitimate path to pull themselves out of the muck.
We don't have that in college. If you fall behind, you're left for dead. The rich get richer and the poor get walked on. There is no viable path to success for the vast majority of schools out there. And in an era where EVERY SINGLE BROADCAST focuses on the playoff and who will win the title, being a fan of a school where you have no viable path to enter that conversation is just crushing. Its not enjoyable, its actively detracts from my enjoyment of following VT, and its actively pushing me away from participating anymore.
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the only difference for me is that instead of gravitating to NFL, I'm gravitating to a different sport entirely: EPL
Growing up in Virginia to a family transplanted from the UK with a father who played rugby growing up, I never had any reason to associate with or cheer for any pro football team. I didn't really get into football until I got to VT as a student. The closest connection I have to the NFL is my wife's mother is from Buffalo and is a big Bills fan. So I'm a casual Bills fan. That's it. I find soccer to be much more interesting. I'm in two fantasy leagues. One for the NFL (which is tough because I don't really watch) and one for EPL. I'm having way more fun in the latter.
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Its interesting you bring up EPL, because I have a lot of the same issues with international soccer that I do with college sports and MLB. The rich teams are the ones who win because they can afford to buy whatever they want and there is no real limit on what they can do. For a lesser team, there really isn't a path to success that doesn't start with an influx of cash from a rich saudi. The EPL is basically what the SEC and Big Ten have, where they want to just leave everyone else behind in a lower division and hoard all the attention and money for themselves, leaving a school like VT in the equivalent of the EFL Championship, just without any hope of promotion.
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The difference is when all the biggest clubs in Europe tried to separate and organize together, all of the fans basically rioted to prevent it from happening. That's not happening in CFB. The Ohio St and Alabama fans don't care about the tradition of playing Purdue or Mississippi St every year or what the change means for the game as a whole.
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Apples and Oranges. The EPL is a league that is already essentially split away. It effectively is the P2 of English football, and while there is technically a path for anyone to be good, it typically starts with needing an influx of cash from what is usually a billionaire saudi or american. If you don't get that, you wallow in Championship football in perpetuity, maybe once in a blue moon getting a promotion only to be slapped down hard because you just don't have the cash to compete.
From what I remember, and you can correct me if I'm wrong, the backlash about the European Super League is because it was the true elites ("blue bloods") banded together to cut all the regular elites out of the cashflows. It would be like the backlash that would exist throughout the SEC and Big Ten if Alabama, Texas, Georgia, Michigan, Ohio State, Penn State, Tennessee, USC, and Oregon all decided to split away from their conferences keeping all their money for themselves. The backlash if that tried to happen would be swift and loud, and likely get the government involved to protect those left behind.
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Regarding the EPL as a P2 comp: you wrote it off, but I think it's a huge distinguishing factor that teams do have the ability to play their way into the EPL. Leicester City won the EPL in the 2015/16 season 8 years after being relegated from the Championship (the league below EPL) to League One. The only way to get access into the P2 is if the P2 decides you add sufficient financial benefit. There are also multiple examples of quality teams building from League One/Championship to stick around in the EPL. Look at Wolves, Bournemouth, Brentford, and Brighton. Multiple well run, but lower earning (and with less cash infusion) clubs have been able to compete. Brighton was in Champions League last year.
As for the Super League - I just disagree. I don't think the fans of the blue blood programs would care one bit about the teams they're leaving behind. And I have zero trust in any institution doing anything once the TV backers decide to form one league with all of the biggest brands.
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Look, we aren't going to agree on this, and I'm honestly ok with that, you're passionate about the sport and I very much respect and appreciate it. I'll just leave this here when it comes to comparing EPL to the current CFB landscape...
Leicester City won the EPL in the 2015/16 season 8 years after being relegated from the Championship (the league below EPL) to League One.
And their rise back up directly coincided with a purchase of Leicester City by Vichai Srivaddhanaprabha, CEO of King Power with a net worth of around $4.5billion USD to inject enough money into the club to bring it back. It wasn't a sudden change of processes or pulling oneself up by the bootstraps that brought them back, it was money, and a lot of it.
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is Formula 1 really any different? Because I know you're a F1 fan.
EPL isn't perfect. I understand that there are bluebloods with inherent advantages. The difference is that there still exists some amount of hope for the bottom teams. As miniscule as it may be, it is still there. That is all but gone in CFB. Add to that the fact that the one CFB team I support is much closer to the bottom than the top makes CFB considerably less fun. I know that VT will never win a championship in college football and right now the sole focus around the sport from a media perspective is who will win the championship so VT is never discussed. The interesting story lines just aren't there. In the EPL, there are story lines around every team. You can be a fan of any team in the top flight and there will be interesting and entertaining stories each week. Any team can win any game. Nottingham Forest knocked of Liverpool at Anfield. Man City lost like 7 straight games in all competitions. Tottenham has had a wild season. Lost to Ipswitch (newly promoted team) and then turned around and smoked Man City 4-0.
It's just more entertaining. Plus, from a fantasy perspective, you can have a player from a bottom team that gets a lot of points (Cunha for Wolves). The whole sport is just more interesting and entertaining than CFB right now, even if it has giants with tremendous financial backing that are going to be nearly impossible to knock off. The magic of CFB is evaporating and EPL is just more entertaining for me right now. (Plus, my kid LOOOVES soccer)
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is Formula 1 really any different? Because I know you're a F1 fan.
Lol nooooooooope it is not. And believe you me I have a lot of the same issues there as well, especially seeing how they tried their damnedest to keep Andretti out. Very happy McLaren won the WCC this year but I also know that came from ME investors saving the company from bankruptcy during COVID as well as Zak selling a sponsorship for every piece of carbon fiber on the car to get enough money to compete. Money is king in F1, though at least they are trying by limiting wind tunnel time and development spending for teams to try and level the playing field.
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I am gravitating to the NFL more and more because the playing field is level.
This. The salary cap and uniform talent acquisition process has done wonders for bringing some parity to the NFL game, and I'm finding myself more interested as time goes by, despite having been born in a city as unlucky as ATL (MLB aside).
And as much as we'd like to feel like if all the stars aligned, and we recruited some special players, we would have a shot to win a national championship, we really don't. And that's becoming more and more apparent with the portal and NIL. It's a question of how invested I want to be in Hokie football if we can't compete at the highest levels. Am I okay with winning the occasional ACC title and a game or two in the playoffs? Maybe? I don't know, we haven't gotten there, so I don't know how I'd react to that.
I guess I'm just going to keep watching. It's the school I love, ya know. But I couldn't give two shits anymore about the rest of college football.
And in an era where EVERY SINGLE BROADCAST focuses on the playoff and who will win the title, being a fan of a school where you have no viable path to enter that conversation is just crushing.
I read your first paragraph (first line, actually), and wrote my comment, then went back and read the rest, and this really hit me. We're freaking bombarded with PLAYOFF PLAYOFF PLAYOFF every game, every cfb-related site, that when you subconsciously know that you don't really have a shot of making it all the way through, it's depressing.
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I had a friend ask me if NIL or transfer portal is the bigger problem. To me it's transfer portal. I think it hurts the kids and teams. NIL was basically done under the table before and now it's in the open and kids are getting their value (or getting a reality check on how not-valuable they are).
For transfer portal,
It hurts the kids because
1. unless they are an out of the gate great talent, they likely wont know what they could have become because they don't dedicate themselves for years to become greater than they were.
2. related to the video, the kids that do go to the NFL used to have a built-in fanbase that gave a kid a shortcut to earning money after they graduate. Now, kids don't stay with teams long enough for a fanbase to care that much about them. This will eventually become a marketing problem.
It hurts teams for more obvious reasons like no roster consistency year-to-year, no multi-year build-up programs anymore (0 chance VT becomes what it became during the 90s and early 00s if the transfer portal existed), and requirement to spend gadzooks kind of money to pay for a mini NFL team (GMs, salaries, etc).
College Basketball will probably be fine because we got used to one-and-dones and one player can make a HUGE difference. VT could probably pay for a five star to come here and round out the roster with 3 & 4 star growth talent and field a pretty good team next year. That wouldn't work in football. Having said that, I really don't care about our basketball players because I anticipate them leaving. This will probably happen in football too.
If we could add restrictions to transfer portal like bringing back the one year sit UNLESS the team being transferred to compensates the team being transferred from with all costs poured into the kid from the school. I think that would make a good balance of pros/cons for transferring kids and for schools looking for transfers.
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Comments
I don't necessarily agree with his take on the transfer portal specifically (if there is one change in college football that I could undo it is easily conference realignment – that's a distant first), but, I totally get what he's saying about wanting to tune out from the sport until the dust settles. We've seen 4 decades-worth of changes in a 5 year period, and we know there's more coming. I get how some find that exhausting.
I said it in another post re VTBB. We've lost almost all of the previous season's human identity. And, we are about to see this happen on VTFB.
His point about the Packers is spot on. I've grown up on the DC Metro and have spent most of my life here outside of my long years the Burg and 6 in Charlotte.
I too, enjoy watching the NFL but could give two licks about my Redskins winning or losing on any given Sunday/Monday. Free agency started this effect and the portal is no different.
About a year ago I told myself that I will just root for VT and M&O and not worry myself with the actual players as much. I said my interest won't be deterred. Well, I am amazed at how immediate my lack of interest in VTBB has come about. Now, granted, we aren't good either and if we were, I'd probably watch it, but I wouldn't be as vested as I am watching dudes who are here today and could very well be gone tomorrow.
I want to stay positive and fully engaged but the realist inside me is settling in.
Winning does cure a lot of ailments
Yeah, this is the first year since 09 where I just didn't really care about college football. Between the 12 team playoff, conference butchering, and transfer portal/NIL, it just sapped my love of the sport. Used to be like games all day from noon through the end of Hawaii's game and VT football was appointment viewing for me. Now if I miss a few minutes of VT or miss a game I'm not going back to watch like I would have. I'm doing other stuff on Saturdays and don't miss college football. I already have one pro team to disappoint me yearly (Cowboys), I didn't need a second.
Life happens, and sometimes I can't watch the game. What I've done for the past decade plus (i.e. since I had kids) was if I can't watch the game, I'd avoid places where it could be spoiled, and later on ask my wife to answer a binary question: "Would VT+7 be a win or tie?" If yes, I'd watch the game. If no, I'd check the score myself, maybe look at an article, and decide whether or not to watch highlights. Basically, if it's a close game (within 7), I'd want to watch, and not knowing the final W/L result maintains some of the narrative tension. And I know beforehand if it's a blowout. It's a nice way to filter out some of the heartache from VT football of late.
oof, that must have been brutal the last few years. 1-12 in "close" games. Yikes
is it though?
I started taking this approach as mediocrity became the norm over the last few years. A VT loss used to RUIN my weekend. Well, when you lose more than 3/yr, that's a lot of ruined weekends. So, I began skipping games entirely and checking the score afterwards. If it was a win, I'd watch a replay while working out the next day. A loss? Well at least I saved hours of my weekend. The hype of this year lured me back in to appointment viewing and it hurt much more.
Preach it, man.
When the only thing that matters is money, it is no longer something that I care about. I don't watch pro sports and really only watched VT sports. Mostly FB and BB but I gave up on the MBB team this year as it just isn't fun to watch at all. We aren't renewing season tickets for FB next year and I'm kinda happy as this year wasn't really enjoyable for most games. WBB is the only sport I try and watch every game this year. So all this to say, I don't know how much more college sports I will be watching as time goes on.
I feel like I can relate to this guy a lot. I'm a Vikings fan, I cheer (mostly) for the NFC North, and I'm not emotionally attached. But I enjoy the NFL product more than college because I expect turnover, there's no facade about what the sport is, there are rules in place to keep play competitive, and more so than college - I can get invested in a single player / franchise player. I can't do any of those things with college any more especially when a player may only ever play for a team for 4 games before they peace out. The only thing that I think college football does better than the NFL is accessibility - there are games on ALL the time and I can ALWAYS find my way to watching the game I want to watch. Once the NFL figures that part out at a price point that is more competitive with everyone other league, college football will become a complete afterthought for me.
I am gravitating to the NFL more and more because the playing field is level. There is a hard salary cap and salary floor and the richest teams cannot just buy players from whoever they want because of their spending power. Teams that are good get there by making good trades, signing the right players and building a successful franchise. Teams that are bad always have a legitimate path to pull themselves out of the muck.
We don't have that in college. If you fall behind, you're left for dead. The rich get richer and the poor get walked on. There is no viable path to success for the vast majority of schools out there. And in an era where EVERY SINGLE BROADCAST focuses on the playoff and who will win the title, being a fan of a school where you have no viable path to enter that conversation is just crushing. Its not enjoyable, its actively detracts from my enjoyment of following VT, and its actively pushing me away from participating anymore.
the only difference for me is that instead of gravitating to NFL, I'm gravitating to a different sport entirely: EPL
Growing up in Virginia to a family transplanted from the UK with a father who played rugby growing up, I never had any reason to associate with or cheer for any pro football team. I didn't really get into football until I got to VT as a student. The closest connection I have to the NFL is my wife's mother is from Buffalo and is a big Bills fan. So I'm a casual Bills fan. That's it. I find soccer to be much more interesting. I'm in two fantasy leagues. One for the NFL (which is tough because I don't really watch) and one for EPL. I'm having way more fun in the latter.
Its interesting you bring up EPL, because I have a lot of the same issues with international soccer that I do with college sports and MLB. The rich teams are the ones who win because they can afford to buy whatever they want and there is no real limit on what they can do. For a lesser team, there really isn't a path to success that doesn't start with an influx of cash from a rich saudi. The EPL is basically what the SEC and Big Ten have, where they want to just leave everyone else behind in a lower division and hoard all the attention and money for themselves, leaving a school like VT in the equivalent of the EFL Championship, just without any hope of promotion.
The difference is when all the biggest clubs in Europe tried to separate and organize together, all of the fans basically rioted to prevent it from happening. That's not happening in CFB. The Ohio St and Alabama fans don't care about the tradition of playing Purdue or Mississippi St every year or what the change means for the game as a whole.
Apples and Oranges. The EPL is a league that is already essentially split away. It effectively is the P2 of English football, and while there is technically a path for anyone to be good, it typically starts with needing an influx of cash from what is usually a billionaire saudi or american. If you don't get that, you wallow in Championship football in perpetuity, maybe once in a blue moon getting a promotion only to be slapped down hard because you just don't have the cash to compete.
From what I remember, and you can correct me if I'm wrong, the backlash about the European Super League is because it was the true elites ("blue bloods") banded together to cut all the regular elites out of the cashflows. It would be like the backlash that would exist throughout the SEC and Big Ten if Alabama, Texas, Georgia, Michigan, Ohio State, Penn State, Tennessee, USC, and Oregon all decided to split away from their conferences keeping all their money for themselves. The backlash if that tried to happen would be swift and loud, and likely get the government involved to protect those left behind.
Regarding the EPL as a P2 comp: you wrote it off, but I think it's a huge distinguishing factor that teams do have the ability to play their way into the EPL. Leicester City won the EPL in the 2015/16 season 8 years after being relegated from the Championship (the league below EPL) to League One. The only way to get access into the P2 is if the P2 decides you add sufficient financial benefit. There are also multiple examples of quality teams building from League One/Championship to stick around in the EPL. Look at Wolves, Bournemouth, Brentford, and Brighton. Multiple well run, but lower earning (and with less cash infusion) clubs have been able to compete. Brighton was in Champions League last year.
As for the Super League - I just disagree. I don't think the fans of the blue blood programs would care one bit about the teams they're leaving behind. And I have zero trust in any institution doing anything once the TV backers decide to form one league with all of the biggest brands.
Look, we aren't going to agree on this, and I'm honestly ok with that, you're passionate about the sport and I very much respect and appreciate it. I'll just leave this here when it comes to comparing EPL to the current CFB landscape...
And their rise back up directly coincided with a purchase of Leicester City by Vichai Srivaddhanaprabha, CEO of King Power with a net worth of around $4.5billion USD to inject enough money into the club to bring it back. It wasn't a sudden change of processes or pulling oneself up by the bootstraps that brought them back, it was money, and a lot of it.
is Formula 1 really any different? Because I know you're a F1 fan.
EPL isn't perfect. I understand that there are bluebloods with inherent advantages. The difference is that there still exists some amount of hope for the bottom teams. As miniscule as it may be, it is still there. That is all but gone in CFB. Add to that the fact that the one CFB team I support is much closer to the bottom than the top makes CFB considerably less fun. I know that VT will never win a championship in college football and right now the sole focus around the sport from a media perspective is who will win the championship so VT is never discussed. The interesting story lines just aren't there. In the EPL, there are story lines around every team. You can be a fan of any team in the top flight and there will be interesting and entertaining stories each week. Any team can win any game. Nottingham Forest knocked of Liverpool at Anfield. Man City lost like 7 straight games in all competitions. Tottenham has had a wild season. Lost to Ipswitch (newly promoted team) and then turned around and smoked Man City 4-0.
It's just more entertaining. Plus, from a fantasy perspective, you can have a player from a bottom team that gets a lot of points (Cunha for Wolves). The whole sport is just more interesting and entertaining than CFB right now, even if it has giants with tremendous financial backing that are going to be nearly impossible to knock off. The magic of CFB is evaporating and EPL is just more entertaining for me right now. (Plus, my kid LOOOVES soccer)
Lol nooooooooope it is not. And believe you me I have a lot of the same issues there as well, especially seeing how they tried their damnedest to keep Andretti out. Very happy McLaren won the WCC this year but I also know that came from ME investors saving the company from bankruptcy during COVID as well as Zak selling a sponsorship for every piece of carbon fiber on the car to get enough money to compete. Money is king in F1, though at least they are trying by limiting wind tunnel time and development spending for teams to try and level the playing field.
This. The salary cap and uniform talent acquisition process has done wonders for bringing some parity to the NFL game, and I'm finding myself more interested as time goes by, despite having been born in a city as unlucky as ATL (MLB aside).
And as much as we'd like to feel like if all the stars aligned, and we recruited some special players, we would have a shot to win a national championship, we really don't. And that's becoming more and more apparent with the portal and NIL. It's a question of how invested I want to be in Hokie football if we can't compete at the highest levels. Am I okay with winning the occasional ACC title and a game or two in the playoffs? Maybe? I don't know, we haven't gotten there, so I don't know how I'd react to that.
I guess I'm just going to keep watching. It's the school I love, ya know. But I couldn't give two shits anymore about the rest of college football.
I read your first paragraph (first line, actually), and wrote my comment, then went back and read the rest, and this really hit me. We're freaking bombarded with PLAYOFF PLAYOFF PLAYOFF every game, every cfb-related site, that when you subconsciously know that you don't really have a shot of making it all the way through, it's depressing.
I had a friend ask me if NIL or transfer portal is the bigger problem. To me it's transfer portal. I think it hurts the kids and teams. NIL was basically done under the table before and now it's in the open and kids are getting their value (or getting a reality check on how not-valuable they are).
For transfer portal,
It hurts the kids because
1. unless they are an out of the gate great talent, they likely wont know what they could have become because they don't dedicate themselves for years to become greater than they were.
2. related to the video, the kids that do go to the NFL used to have a built-in fanbase that gave a kid a shortcut to earning money after they graduate. Now, kids don't stay with teams long enough for a fanbase to care that much about them. This will eventually become a marketing problem.
It hurts teams for more obvious reasons like no roster consistency year-to-year, no multi-year build-up programs anymore (0 chance VT becomes what it became during the 90s and early 00s if the transfer portal existed), and requirement to spend gadzooks kind of money to pay for a mini NFL team (GMs, salaries, etc).
College Basketball will probably be fine because we got used to one-and-dones and one player can make a HUGE difference. VT could probably pay for a five star to come here and round out the roster with 3 & 4 star growth talent and field a pretty good team next year. That wouldn't work in football. Having said that, I really don't care about our basketball players because I anticipate them leaving. This will probably happen in football too.
If we could add restrictions to transfer portal like bringing back the one year sit UNLESS the team being transferred to compensates the team being transferred from with all costs poured into the kid from the school. I think that would make a good balance of pros/cons for transferring kids and for schools looking for transfers.