Alabama and Clemson Again Who Cares

Higher football has e'er explained America. It is no wonder why the sport has skewed the way information technology has. Corporations box out the mom and pops in the business world and, on an individual level, the wealth gap in the United states has never been greater. So why would you expect the most nakedly capitalistic sport in the country to operate any differently? The simply deviation in college football is that the spheres of influence are not mainly on the coasts but instead prevarication inside a office of the country that does not oftentimes have positive front end-facing enterprises.

Salary caps and draft orders seek to level the playing field across pro sports, but might makes right in college football. The S simply cultivated the greatest natural resource in sports (talent) and attracts most of the best assets. This is the stop result of factors both within and beyond the sport'due south locus of command. Following the postwar dominance of northern programs, integration ushered in a new stream of talent in the 1970s. A population boom in Florida juiced Florida, Florida Land and Miami in the '80s and '90s. Migration patterns and the perpetual move of contempo success are the current reality.

The original sin was pretending college football is something it simply isn't. It is a sport with regional pockets of fervor that masquerades as a national endeavor when you link them all together. In that location are weak links in the concatenation. It is played from bounding main to shining ocean, but it is no hush-hush where it is played the best.

We've gone through numerous unfulfilling paths to selection a champion. Years ago, the sport shackled itself to postseason exhibitions as rewards and has since been forever defenseless between kowtowing to that bowl system because of its uniqueness and delivering what is the end goal of every other American sport: a straightforward champion via the postseason.

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A rematch of southern teams (LSU and Alabama) was the major impetus behind finally creating a College Football Playoff. Southern teams kept winning the "new thing," and it is function of the reason the CFP is due to expand. And if that happens, it will probable create a system where more than teams are playing for the right to get smoked past the same core of the top teams, the majority of which reside in the S. That is not a reason to go on the Playoff at the current 4-team format, just more an understanding of what is to come. Playoff expansion is necessary and then the illusion of a championship is tangible, which hasn't been the case for many teams, whether nosotros were voting on the gnaw, deciding it by computers or doing it past opaque committee decisions.

To be the man, ya gotta shell the man, and few programs outside of the region have proven able to do that at the highest level since the start of the modern era with the advent of the BCS in 1998. The Playoff and its marketing promised access for everyone, but the results accept shown regional dominance with every passing yr. If the sport wants to reverse the trend, find ways to win the biggest games in this bottom-line business.

Unless you're an advertiser or an ESPN executive, you don't demand to care about the Telly ratings. Semifinal viewership suffers on non–New year'due south Day years, merely if thirty million people are watching dull semifinals instead of 17 million, information technology doesn't change the results of the games (only three of which have been one-score contests). Possibly college football has simply maxed out within an increasingly crowded media and sports media landscape. Going dorsum to the start of the BCS in 1998, the numbers are fairly consistent for the national championship game through 2019, generally hovering between 24 and 28 million viewers. In that location are peaks effectually a Game of the Century featuring the second-biggest media market in the country (2005 USC-Texas; 35.6 million viewers), Alabama'southward first trip dorsum to the title game in 17 years (30) and the offset CFP title game ever (34.14).

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It remains to be seen whether Alabama and Ohio State's 18.7 million number in 2020 is a pandemic outlier or the new norm, only a midwestern team in the season's biggest game certainly did non juice viewership even though the Buckeyes have arguably the strongest national brand in the sport. But if '20 taught business anything, it's that COVID-19 exploited whatever inefficiencies an organisation has. Is at that place any wonder why Alabama steamrolled to the title despite the headwinds?

In that location is no escaping the jealousy that a southern team is going to win the national title over again. There is dynasty fatigue across sports, whether information technology is the Patriots, or the Yankees or the Lakers. Those are big cities with certain amounts of glamour. You can easily signal them out on a map. They're nothing like and nowhere about Clemson, S.C., or Tuscaloosa, Ala. Nationally, you're not normally jealous of that role of the land. The conversation surrounding this sport would certainly exist different if Rutgers and USC were dueling for national titles every twelvemonth—the latter at to the lowest degree has a pathway back to prominence.

There is also the fact that Nick Saban, the greatest coach in the history of the sport, also runs the most football game-mad programme, Alabama, at a level of excellence that is basically untouchable. Saban and Bama are shipping out NFL prospects at an untouchable Amazon.com-blazon step. Just like Jeff Bezos pivoted his company from but selling stuff to making stuff, the Ruddy Tide went from doing business defense force-first to becoming an offensive juggernaut. Trying to go along up with the corporation drives contest and so the Tide rises while lifting all boats where interest is the highest. Signing Saban assistants equally head coaches, beefing up facilities and armies of support staff and other programme infrastructure. Meanwhile, the residual of the land is even so playing catchup.

Brian Kelly, Oklahoma, and Texas just showed that if ya tin't beat out 'em, ya join 'em. That too serves to create margin for the South when Alabama doesn't win a championship. Pending a USC revival, the West Coast'due south hopes are squarely on Oregon's shoulders. A similar situation exists within the Midwest and Ohio State. This isn't merely almost getting into the Playoff, information technology'southward nigh winning it. Washington, Notre Dame, Michigan State, Michigan and Cincinnati all were worthy of beingness chosen one of the iv best teams in the country, simply at that place is a massive gulf betwixt CFP aspirant and CFP winner.

College sports has a phobia of admitting what everyone knows: It is a business-first, enterprise-driven largely by football game profits. The South spends, so the S wins. Many successful teams in the region make no bones about the fact that they are big state schools that offering fine educations while not truly purporting themselves every bit the ivory tower institutions of higher learning. An boilerplate of the briefing's U.S. News & World Report shows there are few Ivies down South (SEC schools boilerplate 110th, Big Ten 56th and Pac-12 80th)—as if that truly makes them bottom than in a modern America that devalues the college caste each twelvemonth. If all of these universities were honest, they'd tell you the football teams prop upwardly enrollment and keep the schools relevant in the zeitgeist, also.

If yous desire the sport back from the South, then seize the ways of production and have it. Until so, you will have to be content to remain under the southern thumb.

More College Football Coverage:

• Film Room: What Must UGA Exercise Differently This Fourth dimension?
• Is the SEC's CFP Dominance Bad for the Sport?
• Can Playoff Expansion Get Over Its Hurdles?

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Source: https://www.si.com/college/2022/01/07/sec-football-domination-south-alabama-cfp

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