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definitely. One thing I vehemently disagree with though is that teh CFP caused the shift away from this. People say "well if you didn't make hte playoffs/top 4, what's there to get excited about a menaingless bowl game?" but I mean nothing has changed in that regard. In the BCS if you weren't int he top 2 you had "nothing to play for" besides a bowl game. Prior to that if you weren't one of the top handful of teams playing in a major high profile bowl you had no chance at being national champion so why get excited about the bowls? The real problem is with the current generation of players. Every 18-21 year old playing CFB these days was born post-2000. They've been born with a phone in their hand and are used in INSTANT gratification AT ALL TIMES. In addition of course to growin up on social media where it's me, me, me, me all the time. So now that these young entitled people don't make the playoffs we do get that thinking of "well what's left to play for" but the 18-22 year olds of the previous generations still very myuch appreciated the opporunity for what it was.

It's a cultural/generational problem, not a CFB problem. On that topic specifically I mean.

I have accepted the "CFP is to blame" idea but you are right...even back when a natty was just a beauty contest by mid December only 3-4 teams had a shot at a natty and usually 2 were clearly better than anyone...nothing has changed about that except what we call it. The bowls meant something though because, and this is just my opinion, a successful season was not measured by winning a natty and thats it...as is the case today. If your team had won a game they should have lost, had improved from the season before...these were all viewed universally as successes...now if it ain't a natty it is a failure. That stems, in my opinion, from a cultural shift where winning at anything is all that matters, damn the effort, damn the preparation, damn the luck...if you didn't win you lost...and it applies today to everything from sports to careers to marriages etc.