The Rest of College Football

[entropy]

http://espn.go.com/college-sports/recruiting/football/story/_/id/8041461/the-cost-recruiting

Full list. Sec spends...

[entropy]

http://espn.go.com/college-football/story/_/id/8041466/jerry-sandusky-trial-penn-state-nittany-lions-assistant-coach-mike-mcqueary-testifies

Mcqueary testifies...

[iam416]

I have an idea. Let's change osu's colors to maroon and green. And while we're at it, I'd like to see osu's logo changed to Chinese lettering or Japanese Hanko. 50 years from now that's all the current osu fans will know.

I'm sure there were hundreds of Buchanans clamoring about the end of college football as they knew it in 1938 when Crisler decided to unilaterally slap wings on the M helmet. I'm sure there were hundreds of outraged OSU fans in 1968 when they decided to go with a silver helmet and buckeye leaves. And yet, the game survived -- despite those drastic changes.

What you're saying here, talent, is that tradition, in a general sense, is meaningless. It has no value in preserving a bond in a particular community of football fans or elsewhere for that matter.

That's not what I'm saying. I said exactly what I meant.

The fact is people love football. As long as they do, CFB will remain incredibly healthy; when they don't it will fall a bit. But the future of CFB does not hinge on piped in music or alternative uniforms or whatever other evil ardent traditionalists despise.

[Dr. Strangelove]

I have an idea. Let's change osu's colors to maroon and green. And while we're at it, I'd like to see osu's logo changed to Chinese lettering or Japanese Hanko. 50 years from now that's all the current osu fans will know.

What you're saying here, talent, is that tradition, in a general sense, is meaningless. It has no value in preserving a bond in a particular community of football fans or elsewhere for that matter.

I disagree strongly with that view if that is what you are espousing.

Talent has already responded to this hyperbole extremely well but I''d add that you obviously can't completely shake things up every 2 years but that doesn't mean all change should be avoided and that playing the White Stripes at games will destroy college football.

The game has changed since it was first created and didn't only start to change in the past 20 years. Michigan football didn't only start to change in the past 20 years. You just resent current changes because things that you grew up with as a kid are being "tweaked". College football is not nearly as unchanging as you want to make it out to be.

[iam416]

With respect to the most significant change (as opposed other trivial bullshit), college football has been gradually changing how it chooses a national champion since, well, 1936. Prior to 1936, there was no real concept of a national champion, at least not formally. The AP poll came out. However, for the next 30 years, the national champion would be determined on regular season results only. Bowls, during this era, were viewed more as rewards/exhibitions and not counted. That eventually changed, and the polls started accounting for bowl results. The next change came roughly 25-30 years later with the Bowl Alliance and eventually the BCS sought to match #1 vs #2. Now, roughly 20 years since that change, we're going to have a four team playoff of some sort.

I'd consider that the natural and expected progression of the sport not some sort of radical shift.

[Hannibal]

If you could rewind the clock 30 years and tell everyone that baseball would be as culturally irrelevant today as it is, people would have thought you were crazy. But decades of free agency, uniform changes, steroids, labor disputes, and corporate sponsor names on stadiums have taken the charm out of the sport, along with its relevance as "America's pasttime". "America's pasttime" is football now -- arguably, the college version. General Motors is another perfect example of what happens to an American institution that grows complacent over time. If you had told people in the 1960s that GM would one day be dominated by Japanese competitors, you would have gotten laughed out of the room. It took about two decades for it to actually happen.

No one little change will ever ruin the institution of college football, just like no one termite ever causes your porch to collapse. but it's silly to say that there is absolutely, positively, no circumstance whatsoever under which college football will lose some of its popularity. There is already very strong evidence that the numerous attempts to overengineer it are backfiring. Namely -- this year's abysmal bowl attendance and ratings. There are a lot of other storm clouds gathering, like the nonlevel playing field created by oversigning and cheating (and the complete lack of punishment for it), the destruction of rivalries like WVU-Pitt and Texas-TxA&M, the end of the uniform as a unique identifier for a team, and the end of football conferences as regional entities.

I'm sure there were hundreds of Buchanans clamoring about the end of college football as they knew it in 1938 when Crisler decided to unilaterally slap wings on the M helmet..

Incredibly unlikely, since it was a utilitarian change, not some idea created by the marketing department to sell souvenirs to 12 year olds, which is the thing that bugs people more. If our next coach determined that changing the wings on the helmets would make the game easier for our quarterback and that we might win more games because of it, you would see less hostility towards that than the uniforms that we wore for the MSU game.

[iam416]

Baseball is still plenty healthy. Attendance figures dwarf, I mean DWARF, anything from the 80s, 70s, 60s....any era and the sport is one TV far more often than the Saturday game of the week. The thing that has happened to baseball is that football has surpassed it (and TV-wise, the massive amount of competition relative to the 70s and 80s). And that's fine. The NFL IS AMERICA'S SPORT. Football is America's sport.

And sure, things inevitably decline. Why not throw in Rome, England and Carnegie Steel, too? Why hell, the US won't be the #1 superpower forever. Football, as a sport, may decline in popularity or cultural acceptance. Some would argue the path the NFL is on -- trying make safe an inherently violent sport -- will eventually ruin the game. And if that happens, it's ruined from the NFL down to peewee. And, sure, there are an infinite number of other external forces that could cause interest in the sport to decline. But what won't do it is piped in music and the like.

CFB has been constantly evolving for decades. Whether it be uniforms (see OSU and M), stadiums, TV or deciding the national champion or anything else. For example, I'm sure someone was shouting and screaming about the damage done to the regular season when the polls decided to count bowl games. I know there was mewling when CFB decided to try to pair 1v2. But CFB moved forward.

Frankly, I find your GM example to be rather ironic. One could argue GM was toasted by the Japanese because of their failure to adapt and meet new customer demands -- because GM stood on tradition. GM=traditionalists.

[Hannibal]

There's more to the sport's health than attendance. TV ratings, how much you can charge per ticket, how its success compares to other sports, and then there are all of the ancilliary activities associated with it (e.g. remember when kids used to collect baseball cards? Perfect example of something ruined by people who did not understand where the value came from). All sports have benefitted in the past 30 years from huge improvements in disposable income, massive influxes of corporate money and customers, and, between 1984 and 2008, almost nonstop economic growth. One thing that's striking about baseball is the way that it has practically dropped off of the map as a youth sport. Other sports like soccer, especially, have overtaken it in that department.

One of the ways in which college football's popularity manifests itself is in the donations that people pay to athletic departments in the form of seat licenses, etc. College football, in that regard, charges astronomical amounts of money for a ticket, something that none of the other sports do.

CFB has been constantly evolving for decades. Whether it be uniforms (see OSU and M), stadiums, TV or deciding the national champion or anything else. For example, I'm sure someone was shouting and screaming about the damage done to the regular season when the polls decided to count bowl games. I know there was mewling when CFB decided to try to pair 1v2. But CFB moved forward.

Uniforms: already addressed that one. And FWIW, the changes in uniforms didn't mean wearing four different jerseys in one season until recently. I didn't hear a peep of complaint about Michigan's uniform tweaks in the 90s. NFL fans didn't complain in 1994 when the teams decided to wear alternate jerseys for some of their games, because they were limited time, legitimate throwbacks, not marketing gimmicks. Not all uniform changes are met with hositility.
TV: I never heard anyone complain that games are on TV. The only complaint that I have ever heard in my life about TV is that it makes attending the games more boring.
Stadiums: Don't know what you're talking about other than that they've gotten bigger
Counting bowl games: Not a good comparison at all. I'd be shocked if most fans didn't want that at the time. And, actually, most fans do want at least a 4-team playoff now, and you won't catch me saying that the seeded plus-one format being discussed right now will be bad for the sport's popularity.

[iam416]

The OSU uniform change wasn't functional, and frankly I don't think M's were, either, but whatever. The OSU change is relevant to one of the things I said earlier. It is the only uniform I know. People accepted the change and it is now one of the iconic helmets in the game even though they've only been around since 1968.

So, what is the objection? Selling souvenirs to 12 year olds? That's going to bring down the game? My apologies - that's hyperbole. That's one of the things that will eventually contribute to the downfall of the game? What are you General Motors folks specifically concerned about?

[hack]

The strength and weakness of the sport is its exceptional tie with alumni, and tradition is a big part of that. You sell 18-year-olds on a lifelong relationship with an institution by establishing some expected constants: the uniform, the stadium, the fight song, etc. Not all of it has to be constant, but a few of these cultural elements of a program are going to evolve into anchors and it's human nature to want those to be unmoveable. Alumni aren't going to keep coming back to town to eat, spend and fill the stadium if the town and the experience are unrecognizable compared with when they were students. I know if the Brown Jug ever goes, that would be it for a few people. That's their anchor. So, yeah -- some stuff you can get over. Outrage followed by acceptance. But success as a CFB program means heeding tradition because people want to revisit their glory days and that involves rituals, the physical setting, etc. etc.

[Hannibal]

M's winged helmets were functional. The minor tweaks in my lifetime weren't, but people weren't complaining about them at the time either.

[iam416]

Btw, Hanni, just to be clear, it isn't that I disagree with you on any one change - I probably agree with you on the merit of most. I just don't think those changes, in the aggregate, are going to be the downfall of CFB.

[Mackenzie]

.
TV: I never heard anyone complain that games are on TV. The only complaint that I have ever heard in my life about TV is that it makes attending the games more boring.

Perhaps somewhat related but a bit off the mark.... Some of my best memories of M football is when, for one reason or another, I was only able to catch the game on the radio. I hung on every word and often it seemed like you were more at the game than when you were at the game. (Have to come back and do a paste as I can't double paste)

Does it or has it ever been better than this!

http://www.ufer.org/sounds/Billy_Taylor.mp3

[entropy]

mack.. interesting you say that, but two most memorable memories of growing up and Nebraska football where listening to the game on the radio while cutting wood for the winter, and watching the OU/Nebraska games with my grandpa after our thanksgiving meal.

[Jeff Buchanan]

There are circumstances where rigid adhearance to traditions, style, process and so forth is counter productive. GM is a good example of that although there are multiple other factors that caused GM's brankruptcy but prominent among them was corporate arrogance. That's a whole lot different than the traditions, for example, of the distinctive Cadillac or Corvette emblem, body styles or ports on the side of a Buick.

I think talent is conflating the preservation and shepparding of traditions with hanging on to out-moded processes or celebrating and advancing the arrogance of the notion that "we've always done it that way."

Traditions are central in our culture and, for that matter, in all cultures. It is frequently the binding fabric of a civilization. The good traditions anyway that serve the betterment of society so, I'm not talking the tradition of female genital mutilation in some cultures for example.

I agree with Hannibal on the points he makes. You keep carving away at those binding kinds of traditions in CFB he and I mention and soon you have the carcass of a once proud beast picked over by vultures ...... and you can name the vultures circling. Will it bring down CFB? No and for the reasons talent lists. But it won't have the same kinds of binding tradtions that everyone of those posting on this matter have listed solid examples. It won't be the kind of sporting contest I want to pay a lot of money to be a part of anymore because, aside from the spectacle, it doesn't have a wole lot of meaning for me ..... just like my response to Red Wing and Black Hawk hockey, the Pistons, the Cubs, the Braves, the Lions and the Falcons.