CFN Analysis
5 Thoughts, Sept. 26
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Week 3
- Fiutak: The bias against Boise State
- Cirminiello: Oregon is back to being Oregon
- Zemek: The incredible flopping punter
-
Sallee: Florida is the class of the East
- Fiutak: Non-conference games are overrated
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Pete Fiutak
With Texas A&M now officially gone to the SEC in July of 2012, and the rest of the snowball soon to pick up steam with the SEC needing a 14th team, the Big East likely to grab a few Conference USA
programs, and the Pac-12, ACC, and Big Ten still fishing around for ideas to get bigger and better, there’s one part of the equation that’s a near certainty, and it’s the part that too many fans are freaking out about.
There will be more conference games and fewer big non-conference games.
All of a sudden, what SEC team is going to want to
schedule an extra nasty non-conference game when it
has to deal with Texas A&M on a regular basis?
But
here's what's being lost; how much would you rather
see an SEC game against the Aggies over an SEC team
playing Florida Atlantic? If it's Florida State,
Clemson, or Virginia Tech coming in as the 14th
team, wouldn't any one of them provide a better and
more interesting game than Memphis?
With the new world of mega-conferences we’ll all be entering in the near future, the one
certainty is that TV will drive things more than ever.
College football is a cash machine for the networks and the schools, and with the bigger conferences come bigger games, bigger stakes, and more viewers than ever. ESPN is chirping about owning Saturday nights, FX is doing great, ABC is loving the big game ratings, and everyone is happy. Going forward, though, the networks are going to want more options, and the fewer dud non-conference games, the better.
The concern is that the top non-conference games are
soon going to go away. The reality, though, is that
for every LSU vs. West Virginia and Georgia vs.
Boise State, there are way, way, way too many
clunkers that no one cares about. While there
will always be a cupcake game on everyone's slate,
there will also always be a big rivalry
non-conference game of note that'll be tough to get
out of. The losers will be the middle-tier programs,
but really, for the fans of great matchups, that
won't be a bad thing.
I’m sorry, non-BCS
schools, but America just doesn’t give a hoot about
who Idaho is playing next week. Trust me when I say
that no one but the true die-hards really care about
whether or not the hot Conference USA team might
pull off an upset. It’s been a CFN mission to
highlight the under-the-radar teams, players, and
games you should see and should care about, but on
the whole, the bigger and more important conference
games are far more interesting than hoping for a
good game out of a Sun Belt team against a Big 12 power.
Even if you don’t care about the Big Ten, is Northwestern’s game against Illinois this week
more interesting, or Western Michigan’s game against the Illini last week? Kansas State’s heart-stopping win over Miami barely got two minutes of play on the highlight shows, and as good as that was, Baylor’s trip to Manhattan will be more meaningful,
even if it doesn't resonate on a national scale.
Almost all non-conference games sound more fun in theory than they actually are
- Alabama vs. Penn State, anyone? - and with more important conference seasons
and bigger and better leagues will come a bigger and better overall college football season. If the world has to sacrifice the occasional Georgia vs. Boise State matchup for Georgia vs. Arkansas, so be it.
Really, there just aren’t that many great non-conference games to be missed. This year, for example, Arizona vs. Oklahoma State sounded good in March, but it was awful. Texas at UCLA barely drew a national yawn.
Even the biggest of the big games, LSU vs. Oregon, wasn’t exactly
an all-timer. Those are just the big, splashy
matchups, without mentioning all the games with a
-24.5 next to the home team on the sheet The top-notch non-conference matchups quickly fall off the map once you get past the most attractive ones at the top.
Yes, Indiana playing anyone in the Big Ten right now isn’t going to move the needle, and yes, Ole Miss vs. Vanderbilt didn’t get the world rocking. Yes, certain conferences and teams will be overinflated just by looking great in league play. And yes, the idea of more conference games being big only works
in the long haul if there’s a playoff at the end of the rainbow to make up for the lack of an extra non-conference game or two.
However, after too many snoozer matchups over the
first month of the year, please, it’s time to get
the conferences rolling in full force. October will
be more fun than September, and soon, September will
be even stronger.
- Fiutak: The bias against Boise State
- Cirminiello: Oregon is back to being Oregon
- Zemek: The incredible flopping punter
-
Sallee: Florida is the class of the East
- Fiutak: Non-conference games are overrated