Why the Best Era Of College Football Is Upon Us

Three yards and a cloud of dust is long gone. The AP Poll Champion is thankfully long gone. The BCS National Championship system is gone. Your grandfather’s college football is no more. A lot of people hate the direction the sport is going, but I however called this almost 10 years ago in the kitchen at my Mom’s house during a holiday gathering. I actually love the direction college football is going and believe we are heading into the greatest era in the history of this level of this sport.

I’m going to keep the transfer portal and NIL deals out of this, because I think those are very small reasons as to why I love this era we are coming up on. The specific thing I called years ago was conference realignment. I never did like or understand why there were so many conferences that had strong teams at the top and mediocre to very bad teams at the bottom. I wanted to see bigger conferences where we’d get to see an Ohio State vs USC more than once a decade or if they’d happen to meet in a meaningless bowl game that isn’t the national championship. I wanted to see Alabama do a home and home with a Texas or Oklahoma more often. It is happening and now instead of a week 2 or 3 random out of conference game between 2 heavyweights, we get it every year and way more often through the year. Sports are always better when their top dogs battle it out with each other instead of bottom feeders more often than not. We’ll get an Oregon vs Michigan and so on and so forth. That makes even weeks 2, 3, 4, etc have a Natty feel all season long. What’s not to love about that!? True fans of the sport will now get to see more of Oregon and USC and Texas and teams like that without having to stay up until 1am due to Pacific timezone games. Those teams will have to come East more often and get the benefit of the advertising and stage of the Eastern Time Zone game times and crowd.

The next thing I think is solidifying that the best era of college football is upon is the implementation of the playoff system. No more popularity contest titles and no more BCS crap. We get to see a team go through an actual bracket of teams close to their success and skill level to prove it all on the field. I loved how it started with a 4-team playoff, and I understand why it is adding so many more coming up, but I would have loved for it to finish at a 6-team playoff, but would have conceded to 8-teams. Regardless, it’s going to be amazing for the sport to watch the “2nd season” gauntlet happen for the teams that make it in. There will always be downsides to anything and there will always be an argument or someone that feels slighted, but this is the best it has ever been in terms of structure and truly playing for your national championship trophy. We are entering the greatest era in the history of college football!