From Urban Meyer’s press conference Sunday afternoon:
“A sign of the times, it wasn’t until the eighth of ninth question of the session that Meyer was asked specifically about winning a Big Ten championship roughly 15 hours earlier. “
Now, the article goes on to talk about the significance of winning the conference championship, and that’s interesting, but I want to talk about the larger point here, and that is that college football has changed. The public is obsessed with the playoff. The entire season is now about who is going to get in, and once we’ve got that done, the rest of it didn’t, and doesn’t matter.
Football attendance at non Power-5 conferences is down. Bowl ratings and attendance for non-playoff games are down, the media in Columbus is asking draft eligible players if they’ll even bother to play the in Cotton Bowl. From what I hear, the Buckeyes are having trouble selling tickets to the game, all because at the end of the day, it’s nothing but a glorified exhibition game. Sure, USC and Ohio State should be a good game. It’s a game that pits two storied programs against each other, being played in Texas on national TV.
It’s also, due to the ridiculous bowl scheduling we now have, being played on a Friday night. Not on New Year’s Day, not on a weekend, but on a day most of us have to work. It’s no wonder they’re having trouble drumming up a lot of interest.
It’s also no wonder so many decent coaches are being fired. If you’re not in playoff contention, what’s the point?
The NCAA did this to itself. By creating the media frenzy that is the playoff, they’ve relegated everything else about Division 1-A college football to second-class status. College football fans aren’t going to fork out money and attention for second-class teams and games. It’ll only get worse from here.
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