2004-2014

College football was pure. Cheating was done on the low (good job, Alabama), hard hits were allowed, the rules didn't favor the offense in every way, the transfer portal didn't exist, players didn't just care about money and NIL and there was consistency from year to year with player development. Every game mattered to make it to the National Championship. Bowl games mattered. That extra practice time for bowl games mattered. Players didn't sit out to preserve draft stock (99% of the time).

Auburn happened to be very successful during that time, sure, but so was the SEC as a whole. The Auburn vs Alabama rivalry was at an all-time high due to a multitude of reasons, the SEC dominated college football as a whole and the SEC had the biggest impact on the NFL as well.

Today's era of football sucks.

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Posted by RollTide1987

Augusta, GA

Member since Nov 2009

70462 posts

Posted on 2/10/26 at 7:13 pm to TTsTowel

Probably from 1999-2009 for me if I take off my crimson-colored glasses, for many of the same reasons you mentioned. The summer of 2010 is where it started to unravel when conference realignment and expansion got going. Then you had the lawsuit that killed the NCAA Football franchise for a decade, the advent of the CFP, the early signing period, and a bunch of other things that just made the sport like all the others.

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