Florida State and Coach Mike Norvell won all their games this season, but were still shut out of the College Football Playoff. And expect a diminished Seminoles team playing in the Orange Bowl against Georgia. Colin Hackley/Associated Press
College football’s silly season is upon us, and every year, it seems to get sillier and sillier. If you are confused, let me help you: here is a rundown of the 10 silliest ways college football ends its season every year …
1) A bunch of championship games that may or may not be meaningful, followed by …
2) A bunch of nerds huddled in a smoke-filled room to decide which four teams pass the eye test and get to play in the playoffs, followed by …
3) A bunch of coaches acting – emphasis on acting – super excited about playing in some meaningless exhibition game somewhere against an opponent they may or may not care about, followed by …
4) And then some of those same coaches announce that as much as they love their teams and want to coach in the exhibition game, they are taking another job, so someone else will have to handle it, followed by …
5) A bunch of players who thank God, family, friends, teammates and coaches and declare they will “always be a Seawolf for life” and then announce they are transferring, followed by …
6) A bunch of players telling us how much they love their brothers on the team, their coaches, and the university, but not enough to want to play in that one last meaningless exhibition game with them as they head to the NFL, followed by…..
7) A bunch of the players who thanked God, family and friends a few days earlier announcing they are thanking God, family and friends again because they have found a new team and group of people to call brothers, followed by …
8) A bunch of the players who thanked God, family and friends a few days earlier announcing that God has spoken to them and told them their best move was to stay in their current program so they really are going to be a Seawolf for life, followed by …
9) A bunch of meaningless exhibition games that are basically the spring game rosters for both teams because so many of the key players have opted out for one reason or another, followed by …
10) A four-team invitational that we are told will determine the national championship even though the four teams were selected in a smoke-filled room, and an undefeated team sits at home …
I don’t even know if I understand college football anymore, and I am not even sure it makes sense anymore.
And the fact that players are now announcing – through the NIL collective at their respective schools – that they are STAYING is downright stupid.
Look, I am happy the players are getting paid through NIL deals. And I am happy they are free to move, but college football is an exciting regular season that comes to an anti-climatic end with how the month of December goes.
You add to that teams jumping conferences, rivalries being left in the wake of TV dollars and home games, a whole traditional conference collapsing and NIL collectives becoming the most important recruiters on any team. And now we have players transferring multiple times and playing six, seven and even eight years of college football, which is just idiotic.
College football has killed itself. It is dead. It is no longer anything more than a collection of loosely affiliated teams that play games, a developmental league for the NFL and a television show. The sport itself is broken and beyond repair.
And don’t even get me started on how the college football playoff teams were picked. Three major conference teams were undefeated, and thus nobody can say, “This team is better or that team is better” because they didn’t lose.
But if those three were picked, it would have left the SEC out in the cold – a conference whose nonconference work suggests was wildly overrated this year – so they needed to concoct some nonsense about the eye test and Florida State.
It would be OK if Florida State was left out if the cowards who run the playoff committee just said, “This is an invitational, not a playoff, and a television show, not a competition, and we have to kiss the brass ring of the SEC.”
I could live with that because that is at least honest, but spare me all of the nonsensical explanations about how a team that hasn’t lost looks like it might not be as good as a team that did.
As for the transfer portal, I don’t ever want to hear a single coach whine about tampering ever again. There isn’t a single program out there that doesn’t engage in tampering via their NIL collectives. How do I know this? Because it is incredible that 15 seconds after a guy enters the transfer portal he is putting on social media that he has offers from 10 different schools. How do these coaches all have this player on their speed dial?
And how have they all gotten to the point where they will offer him a scholarship 10 seconds after they find out he is available?
Then there is this new thing: players going into the transfer portal to leverage a better deal from their own school’s NIL collective.
I mean, what are we even doing here anymore? And is the pursuit of a degree still even a thing for “student-athletes” playing “college” football?
The bowl system is officially dead as well. I think they would be better off going to like a 32-team playoff and then cutting the number of bowls down to about 15.
For one thing, there are too many bowls involving too many bad or mediocre teams, and there are too many bowls that are watered down because players have opted out and teams are coached by interim coaches. I laugh when fans puff out their chests about how they earned a spot in a New Year’s Six bowl as if that is any different than any other bowl other than maybe it is in a better time slot.
At the end of the day they are all just exhibition games, and none of them matter.
Don’t believe me?
Go back and watch the news conference with Mike Norvell and Kirby Smart as they tried to declare their excitement for the prestigious Orange Bowl. Both men looked like they were being forced to give publicity to their next colonoscopy.
And since then, Florida State has had a bunch of players either transfer or opt out or opt to have some sort of surgery, so it won’t even be the same team that went 13-0 when they get to Miami. And every NY6 Bowl game and even many of the other games have had key players opt out, which shows how much these games actually mean to players.
I call this the silly season of college football, but for now, let’s drop the word “season” because college football is just downright silly now.
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