Climate Change In College Football
Science is settled, and climate change is real for college football
Years from now, there will be raging beer hall debates, pontificators on multiple sides of the TV screaming at each other and maybe even house select committees to investigate what went wrong in college football. Coaches and administrators from your favorite school may even travel during the off season to the nation’s capital to ask for aid from elected officials normally tasked with running up the taxpayer’s bill, while getting filthy rich doing so. Years from now, we may even see longtime conferences dissolve faster than Lehman Brothers during the 2008 subprime mortgage meltdown. Only to have whatever assets consolidated into larger mega banks conferences. Unbelievably, long standing rivalries may even be eliminated from the season, division champions may not exist, and conference championship games and traditions, like Bo Jackson in the ‘83 Iron Bowl down the sideline, say good-bye. Years from now, college football fans may even look back and not recognize the game they aged with. “Years from now?” you say. More like today. The science is finally settled, and manmade climate change is very real in our college football world in 2023. Fact. End of story. Scientific law. King’s X.
https://www.secsports.com/article/29194882/how-1990-reshaped-sec
It is difficult to pinpoint exactly how we got here today in college football. Like most complex issues, decisions made by people years ago are having a lasting effect on change today. It would take years to fully document chronologically previous steps that lead to the radical whirlwind football is caught in the middle of today. Some people, and I would be included, would argue that the genesis of football climate change today kicked off in 1991 when the SEC expanded by inviting Arkansas and South Carolina into the league. When Arkansas joined the SEC in football in 1992, the old Southwest Conference soon collapsed. Asset Number 1 falls, then it is a domino effect. After expansion, the SEC radically formed two divisions and hosted a conference championship game at the end of the regular season between the two division winners. Alabama defeated Florida in the inaugural SEC Championship game at Legion Field in Birmingham, which springboarded the Tide to a National Championship showdown against Miami in the New Orleans Sugar Bowl. The SEC Championship game was a hit with viewership, the Tide went on to a national championship, and the rest was history. In the famous words of ESPN commentator Lee Corso, “Not so fast, my friend.”
Other conferences took note of the expansion experiment that occurred within the SEC. Quickly realizing that the competition was leaving them behind, mergers and acquisitions accelerated. After Arkansas left, the old Southwest Conference dissolved, as did the old Big 8, and the two geographically approximate conferences joined to form the consolidated Big 12. Texas would knock off Nebraska with a wild upset in the first Big 12 championship game in 1996.
https://www.si.com/college/2016/08/16/big-12-expansion-oral-history-big-8-swc-merger
After these two events occurred, the race was on. In the subsequent years, the WAC would fall and become the Mountain West, The Big East would dissolve, and its assets would be absorbed by the ACC. The Big Ten would poach teams from other conferences but still call itself “The Big Ten.” Even the way the NCAA determined championships would be consolidated into the BCS in 1998 and then again in 2014. Other conferences like the old Pac-10 got in on the action by expanding with Utah and Colorado to become the new Pac-12. Change became constant, “grow or wilt” and “adapt or die” became the themes.
Still through the transition, all was not well in college football. Administrators always mindful of the “all mighty dollar” continued to keep an eye for lucrative opportunities outside of their newly constructed college football world. When the BCS playoffs expanded from two teams to four in 2014, the immediate success from viewership with that playoff boondoggle inspired power brokers in unison the conversation mantra of more. See, if two teams generated X, and four teams generate Y, then an eight to twelve team playoff could generate Z. Naturally, the talk matriculated down to savvy people in conferences as well. See, if I play in this conference and make X, and I move to this other conference, we could make Y and Z! And here we go again....
https://www.radiofreeauburn.com/merch
Stay tuned for Part Two next week