{"id":91866,"date":"2025-12-21T22:59:30","date_gmt":"2025-12-21T22:59:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/91866\/"},"modified":"2025-12-21T22:59:30","modified_gmt":"2025-12-21T22:59:30","slug":"college-football-playoff-is-here-but-sports-soul-is-gone","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/91866\/","title":{"rendered":"College Football Playoff is here, but sport’s soul is gone"},"content":{"rendered":"

Amid the spectacle of the College Football Playoff\u2019s opening weekend<\/a> \u2014 and the nagging sense that we\u2019re watching a sport we no longer love \u2014\u00a0here\u2019s the uncomfortable question no one in power seems eager to answer:<\/p>\n

Is college football slowly turning off<\/a> the very fans who built it?<\/p>\n

The other day on our radio show<\/a>, we asked a simple poll question: \u201cWhat\u2019s your excitement level for this year\u2019s College Football Playoff?\u201d The result wasn\u2019t close. The runaway winner was: \u201cMild at best.\u201d<\/p>\n

No, it wasn\u2019t a scientific poll by any means. But it was taken in a college-football-crazed state, in a city that hosts three bowl games, from listeners who have spent decades scheduling fall Saturdays around kickoff times. These are not casuals. These are the lifers.<\/p>\n

And they sound tired.<\/p>\n

College football has always thrived on passion \u2014 irrational, inherited passion. We fell in love with this sport because we were loyal to our hometown or home-state schools. Because our dads and moms went there. Because our grandparents wore the colors. Because even when our teams were bad, they were ours. We believed players loved our schools the way we did. We believed coaches were stewards of something bigger than themselves.<\/p>\n

That belief is gone.<\/p>\n

What we\u2019re left with now is a sport that feels increasingly transactional, untethered from its own history, and openly hostile to the idea of loyalty. The transfer portal and NIL didn\u2019t just change college football \u2014 they rebranded it. Players are no longer student-athletes growing into men within a program; they\u2019re year-to-year contractors shopping their services to the highest bidder. And coaches are no longer culture builders; they\u2019re free agents with obscene contracts and super-agents who are already negotiating new deals with new teams by midseason.<\/p>\n

Lane Kiffin didn\u2019t even wait for the College Football Playoff selection committee to put his Ole Miss team in the 12-team field before bolting for his next big job. Think about it: the head coaches from three CFP teams will be elsewhere next season, meaning in the most important tournament in the sport that a quarter of its leaders already had one foot out the door before the playoff even started.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s not continuity. That\u2019s chaos.<\/p>\n

And the collateral damage is everywhere. Bowl games \u2014 once the measuring stick of success \u2014 are now disposable. This year alone, Notre Dame opted out because it got snubbed by the CFP committee while Kansas State and Iowa State opted out because they lost their coaches. Bowls used to mean something. They were a reward, a destination, a final chapter. Now they\u2019re an inconvenience.<\/p>\n

Missouri coach Eli Drinkwitz didn\u2019t mince words when he said earlier this week: \u201cCollege football is sick.\u201d He warned that the sport is \u201ccracking\u201d \u2014 not metaphorically, but structurally. Rules without consequences. Participation agreements nobody honors. Tampering without punishment. Freedom without guardrails.<\/p>\n

UCF coach Scott Frost went even further. He said the quiet part out loud: \u201cIt\u2019s broken.\u201d And for that honesty, he was attacked. Not because he was wrong \u2014 but because he threatened those who benefit from the disorder. Frost described a world where participation agreements are ceremonial, salary caps are fiction and booster money determines competitive balance more than coaching or development ever could.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s not college football. That\u2019s the NFL without contracts, unions or rules.<\/p>\n

Minnesota coach P.J. Fleck summed it up best: \u201cCollege football does not have any of what the NFL has in place. \u2026 I don\u2019t think the general public actually knows what it looks like when you peel back the onion.\u201d<\/p>\n

And that\u2019s the point. Fans (and coaches) are finally peeling it back \u2014 and they don\u2019t like what they see.<\/p>\n

Conferences now stretch from coast to coast, stripping the sport of its regional soul. Rivalries that once defined generations are disappearing in favor of television windows. Which brings us to a fair question for UCF fans: With USF no longer on your schedule, who\u2019s your big rival? Answer: You don\u2019t have one.<\/p>\n

A sense of place used to matter in college football. Geography mattered. Identity mattered. Tradition mattered. Now everything is optimized for TV inventory and gambling markets.<\/p>\n

Don\u2019t get me wrong, college football is still idiot-proof. It will march on. ESPN needs the programming. Sportsbooks need the content. Saturdays will still be filled with games, spreads and parlays. The machine will not stop.<\/p>\n

But what happens when the true fans \u2014 the ones who stayed and cheered through the losing seasons, NCAA sanctions and decades of irrelevance \u2014 start checking out emotionally? When excitement becomes obligation? When loyalty feels foolish?<\/p>\n

We\u2019re already seeing the signs. Fans less invested in bowls. Fans less connected to rosters that turn over annually. Fans who no longer recognize their own conferences. Fans who watch out of habit, not hope.<\/p>\n

This isn\u2019t about opposing player compensation. Players deserve to be paid. It\u2019s not about nostalgia for unpaid labor or closed systems. It\u2019s about structure, fairness and meaning. A sport without rules isn\u2019t freedom \u2014 it\u2019s anarchy. And anarchy is exhausting.<\/p>\n

College football was never supposed to be perfect. It was supposed to be personal. It was supposed to mean something beyond the scoreboard. It was supposed to connect campuses, communities and generations.<\/p>\n

Right now, it feels like a sport in disarray where even coaches and administrators are just\u00a0 hopeless spectators to its unraveling. It\u2019s so bad that they are begging the federal government to get involved. Can you name another multi-billion-dollar business that actively seeks governmental regulation?<\/p>\n

The scariest part isn\u2019t that coaches like Frost and Drinkwitz are speaking up.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s that we longtime fans are starting to quietly nod along and wonder why we\u2019re still watching.<\/p>\n

Yes, the College Football Playoff arrived this weekend and it\u2019s never been bigger.<\/p>\n

But, sadly, the sport itself has never felt emptier.<\/p>\n

Email me at mbianchi@orlandosentinel.com. Hit me up on social media @BianchiWrites and listen to my new radio show \u201cGame On\u201d every weekday from 3 to 6 p.m. on FM 96.9, AM 740 and 969TheGame.com\/listen<\/p>\n

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