re: Myth: "The BCS/CFP ruined college football by making all other bowl games irrelevant."

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Yep. It should only be top 25ish. Hell, do top 30 and have 15 bowls fighting for final top 25.

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25 years ago there were only 15 bowls total, including the big 4. We went to the damn Independence Bowl as a top 15 team in 1997 and played Notre Dame. Now that bowl is reserved for teams that are barely bowl eligible.

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Since when do you have a sport with 100+ teams playing in the same league where more than half of them know they have absolutely no shot at a national championship before the season even begins?

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I see what you’re saying and I don’t disagree, but that doesn’t mean those same teams aren’t trying to have the absolute best season they can. They want to win games. I think most teams, even Alabama, begin their season with the goal of winning their conference. Outside of that, let the cards fall where they may.

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I think most teams, even Alabama, begin their season with the goal of winning their conference. Outside of that, let the cards fall where they may.

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And that's what the sport was about for many decades. Win your conference, win your bowl game, and the chips would fall where they fell. Less emphasis is being placed on that now. It's either national championship or bust and ESPN has been driving that narrative for a while now. It also doesn't help that the post-season has been diluted with 40+ bowl games.

Bowls have always been shite. Unless it was Sugar, Orange, Fiesta or Rose, no one cared much even back then. The thing that's changed is they've added a shitload more bowls now which makes it even worse.

And players are leaving for the NFL earlier today than they did in the AP era. You almost never heard of players leaving after their Soph year for the NFL when I was young. People usually stayed through their senior season, no matter how good they were. (Not sure if the rules were different back then or what).

The playoff era is far superior to the old AP or BCS system. In fact, it needs to go to 8 teams. Then we'd have 6 or 8 bowls on top of that for teams to fight over their final ranking in the top 25.

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Opt outs are caused by the playoff games being elevated at the expense of others.

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I don't buy it. Even back in the AP era (before the BCS when NC was voted on by media), only a few teams going into bowl season had a chance at the MNC. You still didn't see teams ranked, say 20th, opting out of bowl games even though their chances of winning the MNC were zero.

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Bowls have always been shite. Unless it was Sugar, Orange, Fiesta or Rose, no one cared much even back then.

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That's not true. Plenty of non-major bowl games used to be sell-outs or very close to it

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You almost never heard of players leaving after their Soph year for the NFL when I was young. People usually stayed through their senior season, no matter how good they were. (Not sure if the rules were different back then or what).

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Well one, freshman weren't eligible to play until the 70s. Other than that, nothing has changed much with the rules so much as 1) the NFL is willing to draft younger players more now than before and 2) the money wasn't as big and the value of a degree for players dwarfed what it means now with so many players making life changing money with their rookie contracts. 25 years ago, the #1 pick in the draft, Keyshawn Johnson, signed a $15 million dollar contract with 6.5 million guaranteed. The last pick of the 1st round that year, Andre Johnson, signed a 2 year deal for 3.7 million with 985k guaranteed. Now you have guys in the bottom of the first making what the #1 pick made 25 years ago and day 3 picks making what bottom of the first round guys made.

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4 and 5 win bowl teams killed bowl games

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that's a good point. When you have so many bowl that you don't have enough 6-6 teams to fill them all up and need to put teams with losing records in bowl games, then there are far too many bowl games. I also read an article that many of the G5 conference teams who don't do revenue sharing for bowls like the P5 conferences do actually lose a tens of thousand of dollars just going to bowl games with the travel expenses and week-long lodging for all their players, staff, and support personnel. Can't remember who it was, but one of the teams in the Bahama Bowl lost an ungodly amount of money just playing in the game according to that article.

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If there is anything driving lower bowl apathy, it's the sheer volume of games with barely qualifying teams, along with the opt-outs, and a general fragmenting of entertainment.

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This is what did it. The product has been diluted to nothingness.

i mean shite, 6 win teams killed bowl games

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Since when do you have a sport with 100+ teams playing in the same league where more than half of them know they have absolutely no shot at a national championship before the season even begins? Major college football is unlike any other sport in world in that there is no official championship for said sport. The championship of college football has evolved dramatically over the years. Up until the 1950s, despite the fact that the AP had been voting for well over a decade, there was no agreement on what a national championship was. Beginning with the establishment of the Coaches Poll in 1950, the waters began to get less muddled on that score, but it took over 80 years from that first game against Princeton and Rutgers in 1869 until there was some agreement on what a national championship even was in the sport.

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D1 college football is screaming for a 16 or better yet 24 team playoff where every team has some chance at the championship day one. Some may have a very small chance, but still a chance.