Same old, same old FBS – at least through 2026
After months of speculation to expand the College Football Playoff (CFP), the Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS) powers that be (SEC and Big Ten in particular) got what they wanted. They maintain the limited participation among only four teams annually until the current contract expires in 2026. Basically, among the 133 (or is it now 134?) FBS teams, we’ll most likely see the same old teams reach football’s Final Four each of these years. Boring. What ever happened to “competition”? As pointed out in past Salvos, expansion inviting twelve teams – 10 conference champs and two at-large teams – would not only spread the financial wealth for all, but the talent would be dispersed around more evenly as well.
As long as Nick Saban remains at Alabama, figure The Tide is in. Look for the SEC to keep playing nobody out of conference and play non-conference games all at home. This helps guarantee to get their second-best team among them a second bid. The Big Ten will get a least one participant among 14 members. The FBS conference with the biggest market footprint draws the highest TV rankings. After these three slots, the fourth team is “pot-luck”. That generally means Oklahoma, Clemson (with Dabo), or Notre Dame gets invited before anybody else even gets noticed. Pollsters assure us of that before they hand the FBS rankings over to “The Committee”. No favoritism among these so-called “experts”. Agree?
Like this past season, we don’t even focus on who’s going to win it all. We’ll continue to take our interest on a game-by-game basis. We’ll enjoy our college football going into our 43rd year of attending games every weekend and beyond by traveling to the best match-ups we can afford to attend! That includes Football Championship Subdivision (FCS) teams as well as FBS. Also, we include the Group of Five as well as the Power Five. We’ll do all we can to keep the average attendance at college games from continuing to slip. Read below.
FBS Football attendance declined for 7th straight season
Attendance has fallen continually from 44,603 per game among all FBS programs back in 2014 to 39,849 in 2022. Adding 15 FBS new programs since 2000 with stadium capacities of about 30,000 have contributed to the decline. Of course, we made our efforts to help offset this by attending games at the likes of UMASS, Coast Carolina, and Texas State! Ha! Not enough evidently. However, the greatest impact comes from comprehensive TV coverage.
TV: the double-edged sword whacking away the numbers
Every game is shown live in some form of media. And think about this: it has to be now because of the necessity of replays to assure correct calls. Despite the technological necessity, the primary factor impacting attendance is the capability for fans to stay home and watch as many good games as possible. Unlike us at collegefootballfan.com who love the enjoyment of attending games, more people can peruse multiple games. Fans can also easily update bets which is more prevalent than ever. To each their own.
The secondary impact of television affects those of us in attendance by making games longer and sitting through many, long TV time-outs. It ruins the rhythm of games. One hundred eighty minutes plus embodies sixty minutes of actual playing time. And instead of flipping a station to watch another game, how many award ceremonies, donation presentations, dance-cams, and uncoordinated students throwing or kicking footballs do we have to clap for? Too many interruptions caused by media time-outs. How many insurance commercials do you have to watch? We came to see a football game.
Conference USA vs. Sunbelt
Not on the playing field. To start with, in court most likely. With all the recent changes (once again) among FBS conference memberships, the biggest faux pas in the making comes from the miscommunications of these two conferences regarding when three teams can make their transition from C-USA over to the Sunbelt. ConferenceUSA announced their game schedule for 2022.
Update
Three current ConferenceUSA members – Marshall, Southern Miss, and Old Dominion – insist that they will compete in the Sunbelt starting July of 2022! Despite C-USA insisting that their 14 members remain intact to play through 2022 until further break-ups and assimilations in 2023, there are no financial buy-outs holding absconders from leaving. On March 1, the SunBelt released its 2022 schedule for all teams. These three are officially included. We now await the ConferenceUSA slates.
Golden Dome welcomes “Golden” Dome
New Notre Dame HC Marcus Freeman brought former college HC Al Golden back from the Cincinnati Bengals to head up his defense. Golden, a former Penn State TE, went on to turn a beleaguered Temple program around before he left for Miami. We didn’t see Miami as good fit for him trying to correct off field issues with that program as well as bring it back up to standards of” The U” on the field. As Defensive Coordinator for the Bengals, he helped them get to The Super Bowl after 40 years.
With Freeman’s years of focus and development on defense at Ohio State and at Cincinnati before coming to Notre Dame, he must figure his defense will thrive in Al Golden’s good hands. Freeman can step away and spread himself around as needed. Knowing he has great experience in place with Golden to support his defensive schemes, he can provide more oversight on his offense and special teams.
Our 2022 schedule looking “up”
As we piece together our upcoming schedule, we seek opportunities to see more pre-season Top 25 teams before the season begins than ever before. Knowing that the pre-season does not guarantee all these programs will finish there, we know we have a solid second tier of schools also in Top 25 contention when others fall out. Currently, ten top teams fall on our schedule. A few more still loom as we pursue other interesting options we await to unfold.
We still look for new venues to attend for the first time, and a few allow us to seek some of the games we consider “must-sees”. The season starts six months from now, but here we list games that look like definites on our “tentative” schedule in 2022:
8/27 Austin Peay at Western Kentucky – Two locals we like; FCS vs FBS for our Week 0 opener.
9/1 Penn State at Purdue – Neither in pre-season rankings so far; first trip to Purdue. Thursday night.
9/10 Wake Forest at Vanderbilt – With QB Sam Hartman back, Deacs are ranked in Top Tens.
9/17 Penn State at Auburn- Great rematch from last year, but neither ranked. Need turnaround seasons.
9/30 Utah State at BYU – returning to Utah for two more games; Cougars ranked, solid USU.
10/1 Oregon State at Utah – Utes favored in PAC 12; we venture to our first game at Salt Lake.
10/8 Texas A&M at Alabama – Our first trip to Tuscaloosa gives us two Top Tens.
10/22 Houston at Navy – Our traditional trip to Annapolis meshes with the ranked Cougars’ visit.
10/29 Ohio State at Penn State – Can Nittany Lions bring down a top-ranked OSU to move up?
11/12 Washington at Oregon – Oregon in; can Washington make a move up here? Possibly combine with Cal at OSU to see games played in the state of Oregon for the first time. A CFF.com goal.
11/19 Georgia at Kentucky – UGA back with defense is ranked near top again; Wildcats have high hopes as well.
12/10 Army-Navy – Our 14th edition of college football’s greatest rivalry: Go Navy!
Our alternative “game strategies”
Only March now, we analyze other fall weekends for other opportunities. We weigh some Collegefootballfan.com goals aside from new FBS venues, best matchups, new teams, tailgate opportunities, meeting with friends, tickets costs, travel expenses, side trips, places we like, etc. Some schedules have not been released yet.
In particular, FBS conferences like the Mid-American and the SunBelt now offer some mid-week contests within range for our consideration. We always look to kill “multiple birds with one stone” even though that is probably not politically correct today. Our pre-historic ancestors sometimes had do to that to survive. With the MAC schedules released, we see viable opportunities to visit Ball State and Miami (O.) during the week. Both are in driving distance and both will host Ohio U.
Below summarizes other weekends we continue to consider. To us, this is the fun part of our off-season. We try to put together the most exciting season we can based on the time and resources we have.
September 3
We return from Purdue on Friday Sept 2. We foresee the possibility of Vanderbilt hosting FCS Elon on that Friday night. Last season, the Commodores lost such a game at home to Eastern Tennessee, 23-3. It could be competitive in HC Lea’s second season in Nashville. Easy ticket, close by. On Saturday, two decent FCS contests loom nearby. The Wofford Terriers, a first-timer for us, visit the Moccs of UT Chattanooga in a SoCon opener for both. Between two microbreweries, UTC’s Finley Stadium will be primed for the 6 pm kickoff. However, we await the completion of aforementioned ETSU’s possible home opener in Johnson City. Finishing ranked No. 7 in FCS with an 11-2 record, we’d like to see ETSU if we can. This looks to be our best shot to see them this season.
September 24
Maybe we coordinate with our Demon Deacon friends to see Wake host Clemson – both ranked of course. Known by these dedicated Deac fans as “10 and almost 0” Koreivo for our personal 10-1 record when attending Deacs games over the years, they may want us there to overcome Clemson’s dominance in the ACC “rivalry”.
Otherwise, it looks like we’ll head to Tennessee-Martin for the first time. Winner of the Ohio Valley Conference last season, we will see them host struggling Tennessee Tech. Eastern Kentucky at Austin Peay looms as an option if both teams are off to good starts. Both locations are drivable.
October 15 and November 5
We may be considering another Purdue visit to catch up with friends who may be there when the Boilermakers host both Nebraska and Iowa (ranked) on those respective dates. Our alternatives for those games would be interesting. October 5 offers our first trip to nearby Middle Tennessee to see them host Western Kentucky in their rivalry known as “100 miles of hate”. The November clash comes up with James Madison at Louisville. As a member of the SunBelt now, JMU would be recorded as our 131st FBS team.
November 25-26
As family gets older and kids leave for other parts of the country, some family traditions change. Our annual trek to New England for Thanksgiving offered many opportunities to see a college game on the following Saturday at schools such as Boston College, UMass, or Rhode Island among others. With our daughter now in Texas, we have new options. We await the final SunBelt schedules to be announced. Her fiancé works for Texas State. We hope the Bobcats will be playing that Friday or Saturday. In addition, we note that LSU will be at Texas A&M at Kyle Field, where we’ve never been. Also, Baylor is at Texas. What we hope for is that one of these games will be rescheduled to Friday. For us, two games after Thanksgiving would me much to give thanks for!
Six months to go. Plans for 2020 are looking good. With concern for inflation as the year moves along, this “tentative” schedule is our best-case scenario. We are also building an “economy plan” to scale back costs if necessary. Either way, we plan a full slate of games weekly. We’ll stay positive for now. Check back in two weeks for more offseason input from us.
By Steve Koreivo, ed. Author of Tales from the Tailgate: From the Fan who’s seen ’em all! Click on the title to enjoy our lifelong adventure as you wait for the upcoming 2022 college football season.