Week 0 of the college football season begins this coming weekend, and this year "has an end-of-an-era feel,” according to Ralph Russo of the AP. Texas and Oklahoma are “taking their last lap in the Big 12.” The Pac-12 is “still a Power Five conference” and year 10 of the CFP will be the “final one with only four teams competing for a title before the 12-team format is implemented in 2024.” The days of "one bad game potentially ruining a team’s title hopes are going away," so there will be "fewer winner-take-all moments.” And while realignment “taketh away, but it can also giveth.” After a “decade apart, and insisting they don’t care about each other,” Texas and Texas A&M will play again in 2024. When it comes to “last-go-rounds,” the “saddest will be in the Pac-12, which is simultaneously on the brink of extinction while also primed to be maybe the most competitive and entertaining conference in college football this year.” Along with everything else, “one way or another,” there will “likely be some attempt to regulate NIL and booster-funded collectives” next year. Managing NIL “could be nothing compared to having major college football players, whose sport generates billions that fuel all of college athletics, legally deemed employees” (AP, 8/20).
VIEW FROM THE DIAMOND: Cubs 2B and former Stanford baseball player Nico Hoerner said recent college realignment is “just a shame and something that doesn’t really line up with the intentions of college sports, I feel like, as far as being dominated more so by revenue than by the sports experience itself.” Cubs 2B and former Oregon State baseball player Nick Madrigal said, “I understand that football brings in most of the money, especially at some of these big-time schools, but I don’t know if it’s worth hurting all the other sports, at least for Oregon State.” Madrigal said if OSU “were to go to, like, the Mountain West, that would be a huge jump down to competition level, just from the recruits to everything” (CHICAGO TRIBUNE, 8/20).
