As a diversion from all the recruiting rumblings happening right now, I wanted to make a post about my thoughts after watching this college football bowl and playoff season unfold. I heard a lot of nostalgic chatter from commentators this year, talking about the days before major conference expansion and a more unified postseason (pre-early 1990s). Obviously, this was before my time, but it seems in those days there was much more emphasis on winning your conference championship and playing in a major bowl game rather than the national title hunt. Comparing those times to now, the landscape of college football has changed drastically.
The sport really changed in the early 90s when major conference expansion started taking place, and the Bowl Coalition was established. Before this, the major conferences were small, exclusive leagues with round-robin scheduling and no need for championship games. You win your conference, you get an invite to your affiliated bowl game and play another top team. Independent football was awesome (just look up the list of independents from the late 80s/early 90s). Much more frequent top regular season games and rivalries came from this freedom of scheduling, and games almost had a major boxing PPV feel and hype to them (big Miami/ND games, and the bidding war between major bowls for Miami and Penn State in 1986, both independents at the time, for a de facto national title game.) All the major bowl games were played on New Years Eve and New Years Day, and whoever the polls ranked number 1 the next day claimed a stake at the mythical national title. If you happened to get a share at the title, great. If not, you won your conference and bowl. Having split national titles also lead to a lot of controversy and debate.
Fast-forward to now, and conferences have become overcrowded due to the explosion of TV and the financial windfall from television deals and conference networks. Now, you don't even get to play all of the teams in your league, and even conference championship games now seems like a nuisance for teams looking ahead to the playoff. A lot of once great rivalries have been diminished in frequency or discontinued altogether. Major bowl traditions have been rendered as consolation prizes for not being one of the top four teams. Just this season, the B1G title and a Rose Bowl berth was an afterthought to OSU making the playoff. Everything has become a financial and recruiting arms race for making the playoff above all else.
Just wanted to start a discussion on how the sport has changed in the past 20+ years, and whether diminishing the tradition and significance of major bowls and conference titles is a good thing for the sport. I don't want to start another endless discussion on most deserving teams/conference champions getting bids for the playoff, but rather is the current format better than what we had before the major changes in the early 90s.
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