The main purpose of this blog weekly newsletter is to be a trusted source where casual fans or even nonsports fans can learn about sports. Sometimes I can get ahead of myself and I forget that readers may not have caveman sports brain from watching ESPN propaganda once Nickelodeon wasn’t cutting it. This week I had a request about a college football breakdown. If you ever read anything on here that interests you that you would like to learn more about, please let me know and you’ll get an Upon Further Review.
Upon Further Review: College Football Edition
Setting: Mid-day Saturday Week 1 of CFB. I was planning on writing this on the 2:13 Hoboken train back home. On my walk down Washington to the Lakawaka station, I bumped into @BarstoolMintzy (a college football “analyst” at Barstool Sports). Please ignore the fact that it was in the middle of the first College Football Saturday and he wasn’t watching the games. Just thought it was a bizarre coincidence.
NCAA Sports
The National Collegiate Athletic Association was founded in 1906. There are 3 divisions of NCAA sports (D1, D2, and D3). As an organization, the NCAA serves as a money umbrella that includes Division I college football to Division III Women’s riling. The “nonprofit” organization ends up churning out billions mostly from two sources of revenue: the March Madness Basketball Tournament and ticket sales for college football bowl games/playoffs.
Up until July 2021, collegiate athletes were not legally allowed to receive compensation. There is also a massive gap between the generated revenue of the vast majority of college sports and Men’s football/basketball. This can explain the complexities of why all college athletes aren’t paid and why some associate the NCAA as synonymous with racketeering.
Conferences
There is currently 255 Division I football programs, so naturally, factions were created based on region and school likeness. The Power 5 conferences are the Big 10 (midwest/northeast), the SEC (South Eastern Conference), the ACC (Atlantic Coast Conference), the PAC 12 (West Coast), and the Big 12 (a combo of Texas, the midwest, and the south). These conferences exist for two reasons: to schedule games and, more importantly, to negotiate TV deals with NBC, CBS, ABC/ESPN, and Fox. The only “independent” football program is Notre Dame, which reportedly makes $25 million annually off its regular season contract with NBC.
These conferences have been around for so long that they have characteristics in terms of playing styles and the type of players they try to recruit. For instance, I try to crack a corny joke about the Big 10’s style of running the football the first 3 downs and punting on 4th & 1 because Big 10 schools tend to recruit very solid linemen and have coaches who historically wouldn’t like to take chances on 4th down. When two teams from different conferences clash (out of conference), it is either a playoff/bowl game (see below) or a game that was scheduled years prior between two teams that rarely play each other for a season opener, i.e., UCLA and Wisconsin have a game scheduled for 2030. For the most part, schools in the Power 5 have stayed associated with their original conference, however, as TV $ has become exorbitant, schools have started following the money (USC will join the Big 10 in ‘24). So yeah, college conferences are just high school lunch tables that generate millions of $ in revenue.
Traditions
College Football has unparalleled deep-seated traditions that go back well over a century. The first college football game was played between Rutgers and Princeton in 1869. For some perspective, the first NFL Super Bowl was played in 1967 (nearly a century later). Alabama started playing Auburn in the Iron Bowl in 1893. The first “The Game” between Michigan and Ohio State took place in 1897. Can’t leave out Army-Navy, who have been playing since 1890 for the Commander-in-Chief’s trophy.
“AP Top 25”
The Associated Press has been ranking college football teams since 1936 in what is known as the AP Top 25. The rankings are compiled by polling 62 writers and broadcasters from across the country. From 1936 to 1997, the AP poll essentially declared who the National Champion was after the final regular season games were played - there was no national “championship” game.
Bowl Games & The Playoffs
At the commencement of the regular season, the bowl games begin. For a team to be bowl eligible, it must have 6 wins with a minimum of .500 winning percentage. Last year there were 44 bowl games total. Some bowl games are tied with long rich traditions like the Rose, Cotton, Peach, and Orange Bowls. Others such as the GalleryFurniture.com Bowl (2002) and the Fenway Bowl (created in 2021), not so much. Most bowl games are tied with two conferences. For example, in the Citrus Bowl, a Big 10 school always plays an SEC school.
In 2014, the NCAA finally created the College Football Playoff. A 13-member committee selects and seeds the top 4 schools that play in the tournament. This past week the College Football Playoff’s board unanimously voted to expand the playoff to 12 teams. While they have agreed that this format would start in 2026, there are rumors that the board is encouraging the conference commissioners (and independent Notre Dame) to implement it by 2024.
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This was just what I needed! Thanks Tom!