In Reply to: Is your thrill gone ... posted by lafong on September 05, 2026 at 14:35:00
As a (former) long time UCLA season ticket holder, I have not liked the evolution of college football since the inception of the BCS system through NIL to Pro Player -> college football free agency.
For me, my dissatisfaction started with the blatant money grab of the BCS that diminished the tradition of the New Years Bowl games. This coincided with Fox and then ESPN trying to consolidate the New Years Bowl games under one marketing/commercial umbrella...a bowl package advertising deal to maximize ad revenue to the networks.
My dissatisfaction continued with ESPN fabricating many meaningless lesser bowl games to fill programming on their gazillion channels.
Then the CFP took the money grab to the next level and are currently contemplating a further expansion of the CFP. This has led to colleges joining Super Conferences to maximize their revenue all the while athletic departments budgets explode into indebtedness.
And now, the money grab continues with the long term effect of the NIL and revenue sharing...a logical evolution of the money grift...why shouldn't players benefit?
All this has led to an unstable, unsustainable and, to me, an unappealing product. The greed is so obvious and make the sport less attractive to me. That said, I still love watching UCLA football, but not like I used to 25 years ago.