I have been a football fan since a very young age and I grew up in what is perhaps the golden age of college football.

Ohio State vs. Michigan and Army/Navy would cap a season that began in late August and ended in early December. Bowl games were played in the stadiums for which they were named, and the big ones took place on New Year’s Day.

Geographic, traditional rivalries and long standing conferences dominated the landscape, we cared about which colleges had the highest graduation rates in their football programs, players had to sit out a year after transferring, and the polls chose the national champion.

The free-ride scholarship in lieu of financial compensation was supposed to be enough for student-athletes. Throwback uniforms and alternates, once a novelty, have become the norm. Some schools and conferences even founded their own TV networks, or carved out a niche with ESPN.

Conferences made sense up until they started adding teams, especially from outside the geographic area the conference represented. The Big 8 became the Big 12, the PAC 8, became the PAC 10 and then PAC 12. The Southwest Conference was disbanded. The Big 10 has so many teams now, who can count them all?

The Big East, Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC), and the Southeastern Conference (SEC) started taking on schools that were nowhere near the region their names implied. With the recent implosion of the PAC 12, the Big 10 and ACC raided schools well outside of their traditional geographic areas.

Players used to need a good reason to transfer. I must admit, I felt for kids who were recruited by a particular coach only to see that coach quit and move on or get fired. Those players had to sit out a year before they were eligible to play for a new school. Often the receiving school was a downgrade in prestige or even level for a player.

Now we have the transfer portal, which is free agency by any other name. Teams can completely rebuild a roster in one offseason rather than take the customary three to five years to build a competitive program. Certain players have transferred multiple times for better playing opportunities or incentives.

And now, schools are suing each other for tampering with transfer portal players. It is difficult to track players as they hop, skip and jump from school to school. I no longer understand eligibility. COVID didn’t help with that.

Long about the early 1990s, fans started clamoring for a true national championship. For me, it was 1994 when Nebraska inexplicably leapfrogged Penn State for the No. 1 spot and Nebraska went on to win the national title. Full disclosure, I am a lifelong Penn State fan.

Around that time, the Bowl Championship Series (BCS) came along (which wasn’t perfect), and now we have the College Football Playoffs, which has grown from four teams to 12. Conference championship games have helped extend the season for some teams (and many TV networks). And a bowl appearance, thanks to a six-win threshold, has become the equivalent of a participation trophy. Select bowl games are used as playoff games and the traditional conference-aligned bowl matchups we grew up on are long gone. Somewhere along the line, they renamed Division I and Division II to Football Bowl Subdivision and Football Championship Division. I guess they didn’t want Division II to feel bad about itself. And there are those who argue if you don’t win your conference you shouldn’t make the playoffs.

In the NCAA’s defense, the older stadiums did age out or start to crumble, and it’s a money-making racket to have prestigious bowl, conference championship, and playoff games played in NFL stadiums.

Nobody wants to play in the Cotton Bowl anymore, the Orange Bowl hosted its last one in 1999, the Gator Bowl was razed in 1993, and the Sugar Bowl was played in the New Orleans Superdome and the Georgia Dome. Only the Rose Bowl in Pasadena maintains its venue and prestige.

Newer NFL facilities such as AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas (home of the Cowboys) and Allegiant Stadium in Las Vegas (home of the Raiders) clamor for these games. I’m not even going to get into the TV money.

Well, I suppose I do have to get into the TV money because botched negotiations for the PAC 12 Network led to that conference’s demise. According to ESPN, the bulk of the NCAA’s revenue for fiscal year 2022-23 — $945 million — came from media rights and marketing deals tied to championship events. Football is very much a part of that revenue, of course.

Many would argue that it is the student-athletes who are responsible for generating that revenue. That argument led to the creation of Name/Image/Likeness (NIL) collectives, organizations, similar to agents, empowered to negotiate sponsorship, merchandise, video game, etc., deals for its members.

Recently, a judge ruled that universities are now allowed to pay players directly. As a result of that ruling, the NCAA and major conferences will pay $2.8 billion to former student-athletes for previously denied NIL compensation.

The transfer portal is essentially free agency and now college football players are allowed to make money and play for the highest bidder, whether that be money, playing time, perks, or some combination.

Some time ago, the major TV networks stopped listing the schools with the highest graduation rates among their football programs and my guess is because it just doesn’t matter anymore. Major college football is no longer a path to a free education while continuing to play a sport beyond high school, it is a path to the National Football League. Why else would anyone want to go to Alabama?

Let’s take the University of Washington for example. According to SoFi, the University of Washington’s cost of attendance for four years — including tuition and fees, room and board, books, and other expenses — is $141,220 for in-state students (based on 2024-25 numbers). By comparison, the national average at public universities for in-state students is $115,360 for four years.

Earlier this year, Tennessee QB Nico Iamaleava transferred to UCLA. According to ESPN, Iamaleava was earning $2.4 million at Tennessee under the contract he signed with Spyre Sports Group, the Tennessee-based collective, when he was still in high school. He’s making less at UCLA, but it’s still seven figures. Any discourse that still considers college football players “student-athletes” is woefully misguided. They are professionals, plain and simple, and the transfer portal is free agency by any other name.

Some traditional rivalries have taken a hit as well. The Apple Cup here in Washington was the annual year-end game, the season finale bragging rights match-up between UW and Washington State. From 1949 to 2023, the game was played in late November or early December. It is now a September match-up.

Even Ohio State vs. Michigan has lost a bit of its luster due to the Big 10 Championship game. The Big Game, Cal vs. Stanford, is weird now because both teams are in the ACC. TV analyst Joel Klatt has suggested Army/Navy be moved from early December to Week 0 (whatever or whenever that is).

I’ll mention uniforms briefly. I am a traditionalist, I don’t care for all these crazy alternate uniforms. I know I’m going to raise some ire here but only Oregon can and should do this. They do it well and it’s become part of the shtick for Faber College.

Legendary broadcaster Bob Costas recently appeared on Meet the Press and he talked about the overwhelming accessibility of sports. I tend to agree with him. College football is no exception.

Here on the West Coast you can wake up on a Saturday morning, turn on the TV at 9 a.m. and watch college football all day into the late evening non-stop without a break. Just as putting ABC’s Monday Night Football on ESPN democratized network TV coverage of the NFL’s weekly Prime Time showcase in a bad way, college football is no longer appointment viewing. We used to have the game of the week. Now we have televised games starting nearly every hour.

Yes, I recognize that times have changed and that players probably do deserve some recompense for all the revenue they generate. Not every collegiate player will make it to the NFL, or the Canadian Football League, or the XFL, UFL, USFL or whatever they’re calling summer football this week. According to NFL Football Operations, only 1.6% of all NCAA football players (roughly 77,000) ever make it to the professional level.

I also know that the college football playoff is necessary, I advocated for it myself. And, I would also argue that more football on TV is a good thing. More regular season games and conference championship games are good things.

However, I don’t like the transfer portal one bit and I don’t like the realignment that puts schools in conferences that don’t make any geographic sense. Forty-seven bowl games for 136 schools is ridiculous. Only 42 teams don’t make the postseason. Where’s the incentive? Especially with more regular season games than ever, you only have to win six games out of an average of 12 to become bowl eligible.

Despite all of this … the player compensation, the TV rights deals, the conference realignments, de facto free agency, the crazy uniforms, the convoluted bowl system and playoff format and my inability to recognize the college football landscape that once was … I’m still going to watch.

Jerry Knaak is a reporter for The Daily World. He can be reached at jerry.knaak@thedailyworld.com.