(10-02-2017 11:38 AM)JRsec Wrote:  

(10-02-2017 03:33 AM)AllTideUp Wrote:  

(10-01-2017 09:15 AM)JRsec Wrote:  I look around at what's happening each weekend and no longer believe that the P5 will do anything but shrink. The SEC has two strong teams and may have 3 in the middle. The Big 10 at the top consists of 2 with 2 or 3 more in the middle. The PAC may wind up being the two Washington schools. Clemson stands alone in the ACC with perhaps a challenge from Miami. T.C.U. and Oklahoma will mix it up with Texas Tech and Oklahoma State.

My point being that there is such a separation between each conference's top flight schools and the also rans that I no longer believe there are enough true coaches or enough strong recruits to fill the gaps and with high school participation shrinking I believe that college football will hang on but that the distance between the haves and have nots, and the competitive and non competitive is going to grow and inversely the the number of competitors will shrink.

I wouldn't be surprised now if the P5 shrank did shrink to 3 conferences of 20, or perhaps even fewer, perhaps as few as 54.

I can't remember when the SEC has had so few beat up on so many, so badly. At our height of strength our bottom was a low as 1 or 2 non competitive teams. After yesterday, I am left questioning if there are 6 non competitive teams: Missouri, L.S.U., Mississippi State, Mississippi, Tennessee, and possibly Arkansas.

Mathematically they can't all finish as true losers, but I really don't see any of them hanging with Alabama or Georgia. The beat down of the Vols was epic. The slaughter of Ole Miss a trouncing that only Vanderbilt would have ever been expected to endure.

I've long suspected that the high school talent pool was greatly reduced. I think that college ball is now suffering from that deficit. Couple that with the significant drop off in interest in the NFL and it's growing publicity nightmare with the anthem issue and we may be witnessing the beginning of the unraveling of the sport.

It will take decades for its decline to end in a significant reduction of the sport, but 20 years or so isn't really that long. But I do think all of the indicators point to its demise.

I wouldn't be surprised to see the ranks shrink although I think most of the schools that get dropped are in the current Big 12.

I think it's noteworthy that there are quite a few Eastern schools that could survive just fine on a basketball first budget with minimal funding for an average football product. The Big East did it for many years and maybe we see a revival of a league like that. A while back, I theorized that certain ACC schools could move to the SEC and B1G while a core of them, due to their unique cultures, could survive in a basketball-centric league that was confined to the East Coast. Maybe it comes about...

All in all, I think the NFL's issues are mostly separate. While there are existential threats to the game itself and I think those are mostly CTE/health related, we're still too early in the process to know for sure what the long term effects are for participating in the game.

Compared to the NFL, the roots of college football run very deep and I think it would take much longer than 20 years for that support to evaporate. I've often compared college sports to the European soccer leagues because the teams are based in communities with long histories of organic support rather than in the biggest media markets and they don't move when the going gets tough. The NFL is 100% a cutthroat money making machine and eventually the market allows for entities like that to fade or shut down. For example, it's absolutely ridiculous that the NFL has been considering placing a team in London. Only corporations think with such arrogance and while there's nothing wrong with making a buck, eventually the money dries up for entities that aren't woven in among society's institutions.

The college game would exist whether the money was huge or not for a lot of different reasons. I could see a future where college football once again becomes the pinnacle of the game.

If the NFL suffers significantly as a business model, it will affect college football. Most of the players in college football wouldn't fare well at all as just university students. So I'd say without the lure of the NFL they would be trying to adapt their skill sets to baseball or basketball. IMO, the death or severed impairment of the NFL will essentially gut college football as we know it. It would basically make most college teams Ivy League quality. But hey, if that happens it will actually be college sports again. The campuses would be cleaner and safer places to be and the college spirit might come back in a fuller way as the IMG's of the world pulled out.

You're right that some athletes would seek out other sports to specialize in so they could make money in the pro ranks. And I think soccer will have its day here before all is said and done.

But I'd say there are still plenty of decent athletes that will pursue football because it will give them an opportunity at an education and upward mobility. I think that's especially true for athletes of size because their natural skill set is so foreign to other sports for the most part.

College football was a cultural phenomenon long before the NFL started paying million dollar contracts to its players so I think it would take quite the cultural upheaval to really bring it down.

(10-02-2017 12:10 PM)AllTideUp Wrote:  

(10-02-2017 11:38 AM)JRsec Wrote:  

(10-02-2017 03:33 AM)AllTideUp Wrote:  

(10-01-2017 09:15 AM)JRsec Wrote:  I look around at what's happening each weekend and no longer believe that the P5 will do anything but shrink. The SEC has two strong teams and may have 3 in the middle. The Big 10 at the top consists of 2 with 2 or 3 more in the middle. The PAC may wind up being the two Washington schools. Clemson stands alone in the ACC with perhaps a challenge from Miami. T.C.U. and Oklahoma will mix it up with Texas Tech and Oklahoma State.

My point being that there is such a separation between each conference's top flight schools and the also rans that I no longer believe there are enough true coaches or enough strong recruits to fill the gaps and with high school participation shrinking I believe that college football will hang on but that the distance between the haves and have nots, and the competitive and non competitive is going to grow and inversely the the number of competitors will shrink.

I wouldn't be surprised now if the P5 shrank did shrink to 3 conferences of 20, or perhaps even fewer, perhaps as few as 54.

I can't remember when the SEC has had so few beat up on so many, so badly. At our height of strength our bottom was a low as 1 or 2 non competitive teams. After yesterday, I am left questioning if there are 6 non competitive teams: Missouri, L.S.U., Mississippi State, Mississippi, Tennessee, and possibly Arkansas.

Mathematically they can't all finish as true losers, but I really don't see any of them hanging with Alabama or Georgia. The beat down of the Vols was epic. The slaughter of Ole Miss a trouncing that only Vanderbilt would have ever been expected to endure.

I've long suspected that the high school talent pool was greatly reduced. I think that college ball is now suffering from that deficit. Couple that with the significant drop off in interest in the NFL and it's growing publicity nightmare with the anthem issue and we may be witnessing the beginning of the unraveling of the sport.

It will take decades for its decline to end in a significant reduction of the sport, but 20 years or so isn't really that long. But I do think all of the indicators point to its demise.

I wouldn't be surprised to see the ranks shrink although I think most of the schools that get dropped are in the current Big 12.

I think it's noteworthy that there are quite a few Eastern schools that could survive just fine on a basketball first budget with minimal funding for an average football product. The Big East did it for many years and maybe we see a revival of a league like that. A while back, I theorized that certain ACC schools could move to the SEC and B1G while a core of them, due to their unique cultures, could survive in a basketball-centric league that was confined to the East Coast. Maybe it comes about...

All in all, I think the NFL's issues are mostly separate. While there are existential threats to the game itself and I think those are mostly CTE/health related, we're still too early in the process to know for sure what the long term effects are for participating in the game.

Compared to the NFL, the roots of college football run very deep and I think it would take much longer than 20 years for that support to evaporate. I've often compared college sports to the European soccer leagues because the teams are based in communities with long histories of organic support rather than in the biggest media markets and they don't move when the going gets tough. The NFL is 100% a cutthroat money making machine and eventually the market allows for entities like that to fade or shut down. For example, it's absolutely ridiculous that the NFL has been considering placing a team in London. Only corporations think with such arrogance and while there's nothing wrong with making a buck, eventually the money dries up for entities that aren't woven in among society's institutions.

The college game would exist whether the money was huge or not for a lot of different reasons. I could see a future where college football once again becomes the pinnacle of the game.

If the NFL suffers significantly as a business model, it will affect college football. Most of the players in college football wouldn't fare well at all as just university students. So I'd say without the lure of the NFL they would be trying to adapt their skill sets to baseball or basketball. IMO, the death or severed impairment of the NFL will essentially gut college football as we know it. It would basically make most college teams Ivy League quality. But hey, if that happens it will actually be college sports again. The campuses would be cleaner and safer places to be and the college spirit might come back in a fuller way as the IMG's of the world pulled out.

You're right that some athletes would seek out other sports to specialize in so they could make money in the pro ranks. And I think soccer will have its day here before all is said and done.

But I'd say there are still plenty of decent athletes that will pursue football because it will give them an opportunity at an education and upward mobility. I think that's especially true for athletes of size because their natural skill set is so foreign to other sports for the most part.

College football was a cultural phenomenon long before the NFL started paying million dollar contracts to its players so I think it would take quite the cultural upheaval to really bring it down.

It probably would be a good thing if we returned to what college football was with regard to student athletes in the early 20's. There were still sub par students, but it was a campus game played by mostly local boys.

But make no mistake, if the NFL gets severely curtailed and their money goes down, the venue size of the CFB schools will too. I didn't say it wouldn't survive. I said it would be more like the Ivy League than what we experience today. And to be quite frank, that might be refreshing. It would be nice to attend again with more alums and to talk about the kids with old friends while we watched college kids play a game as opposed to endless scandals, the presence of corporate entities taking over our signage, applying PC standards to the cheers, controlling the noise levels, and leaving everyone's logo highly visible throughout the venue. If we don't stop them soon the schools logo on the 50 will be gone. We would have less rapes, less crime against students, and more team attitude than we do right now. I'd say that would be welcomed once people saw how much better that would be than what we currently experience.