Cold Weather vs Warm Weather Schools

The moment that we had two Southern California schools moving to a conference in the middle of the midwest and northeast United States, geography has become a meaningless construct. The aesthetic animated graphic of all of the B1G schools popping up next to the Great Lakes all the way up to Rutgers will no longer exist.

There is going to be a reckoning on the field and off the field the moment that we get the in-conference matchups and rivalries that are going to be unbelievably chaotic since these two vast worlds are having a Freaky Friday moment to where it’s now not just going to be conference pride, but a matter of those “soft” west-coasters that like to hike and surf by the water having to play a football game in the rust belt in November without having shoveled any snow in their lives. It’s a matter of pride here, people.

When USC loses a frigid ugly game where they’re favored on the road in West Lafayette you know the East Coast mob will come out of the woodwork with “I knew Lincoln Reilly and those Cali pretty boys couldn’t handle the GRITTY football of the B1G!”

It could even go the other way, too, if Oregon wins a snow game in Madison it’ll be “KINGS OF THE NORTH” tweets, or if Penn State can’t get up for the time zone in an early west coast trip!

Geographic may mean nothing when it comes to conferences, but the personal pride is still going to be on another level this year.

Group of 5 Apologists vs Power Conference Defenders

The expanded format of the College Football Playoff is going to create a rivalry similar to the midmajors uniting when a smaller school loses an automatic bid to a large school that lost more games in a major conference on the bubble in March Madness. Whether you like it or not, one of the 12 teams that will make the playoff is going to be a Group of Five champion. There will be years where a Power Conference team that played a monumentally more challenging schedule with more losses won’t make the playoff because of that automatic qualifier! 

Take last year, for example. Liberty would have made it automatically as the 11-1 conference champion, likely as the 12 seed, and a school like Arizona would have been left out. When bowl season came along, Liberty got taken to church by Oregon, if you will, 45-6, and Arizona walloped Oklahoma.

The Power Conference “snubs” would then cry for Arizona in hopes that the automatic Group of Five qualifier be eliminated if we’re determining the “best team,” whereas the Group of 5 Apologists would say, “Then why are we even playing anyway if we don’t have a shot to get in without it?” in defense of Liberty.

Playoff politickin’! The group of five ain’t played nobody, Pawl!

Conference Newcomers vs The Old Guard

You have to be able to earn your keep if you think you can hang with the big dawgs in the era of realignment. For schools like Texas or OU entering the SEC, if they lose to Mississippi State or someone that has merely just been there before, it’s going to be a barrage of “Oh, you wanted to come in and play in the SEC where it just means more??” or vice versa where if they go on a run, you better believe the Matthew McConaughey disciples will throw out the, “I thought this was supposed to be the best conference?”

College Football Observers  vs “NFL remains king!” Crowd

College football is going to have a new, invigorated type of following this year from the new video game format, to the new playoff format, and all of the possible theatrics that are going to consume our Saturdays. The popularity behind it may reach new audiences to grow the sport even to areas where it hasn’t been in their bloodline or with those that didn’t attend a “football school.”

The NFL on Sundays is the largest media conglomerate and business in the world that dominates every single TV rating and consumes lives for months, and that’s only broadened with gambling and fantasy rising with it. For some reason, there’s a type of sports fan that claims “the NFL is king!” and roots for their favorite league and feels that it’s weirdly necessary to only follow it and that you can’t enjoy college on Saturdays and the pros on Sundays too. Just because college football may get some heightened Q-rating this year from a national standpoint does not mean that it’s trying to overtake the NFL as they’re both businesses now, but they’re going to have the TV ratings ready and in the clip IMMEDIATELY when the big conversation is a college-related topic.

Pro-Pat McAfee on College Gameday Bros vs Anti-McAfee adults

ESPN’s College Gameday is the pregame staple before the kickoff of the noon games as it’s on campus for whatever the game of the week is to get you ready as you tailgate. For as historic a program it’s been and with all the accolades it’s achieved since running for three decades, it had kind of run its course for a while for a combination of Lee Corso getting up there in age and fighting to articulate before putting on a mascot head, Desmond Howard saying some questionably biased statements on television, and Kirk Herbstreit remaining a neutral before he has to go call a game in the booth. It’s a constant that in a way is comforting.

Pat McAfee was brought in as the “disruptor” at ESPN with his WWE-style delivery where he wears cutoff shirts, yells into the mic about schools that “have that dawg” in him, and cares much more about entertainment rather than actual buttoned-up broadcast analysis before a game. No one can talk about McAfee normally since he’s not what the traditional journalist is in order to bring in a new audience. There are the McAfee bros on the internet that will tell you he’s great for growing the game and making it entertaining television that hypes up a crowd of college kids and plays into the narratives, and there are the traditionalists that will tell you he’s obnoxious and doesn’t provide any insight to the games that are about to be played.

McAfee remains unsigned after having been on Gameday for two years, and this season Nick Saban is set to be an analyst fresh out of retirement, but with McAfee and his boys having their show on ESPN and already dividing their sports-watching viewership as a whole, the noise has been and will be extra loud and extra weird.