iamandykeim

The sport was better when it was less accessible. The leaders of the sport are working hard to make everything very easy to access and understand for the casual fan. On its face, the 24 team playoff is fantastic. More postseason competition, lots of entertaining matchups, and a champion crowned directly on the field. What the casual fan does not / cannot comprehend is what is being lost:

Less meaningful regular season.
With 24 teams making the tournament, the elite teams are virtually guaranteed a spot. Yes, the regular season games can still be entertaining and the players will still play hard and want to win. But, the key difference there is that while they want to win, they won't actually have to win to avoid being at risk of reaching the playoff. The absolute desperation of the regular season is gone.

Genuinely meaningless bowl games.
This will fall on deaf ears for casual fans, but bowl games used to be a lot of fun and competitive. Reaching the Sugar Bowl, the Cotton Bowl, or even the damn Capital One Bowl was a really fun way to cap off a solid year. It was a moment to say "this season we came up a bit short, but this is our last chance to get to see a lot of these guys play, and we still had a damn good year."

Winning those games would actually create a lot of momentum going into the offseason and following year - look at how the 2006 Sugar Bowl, the 2010 Cotton Bowl, and the 2018 Peach Bowl carried to the next year. Whooped arse in a big bowl game on big stages, and it resulted in 3 teams that came into the next season with a lot of swagger and belief in themselves. Instead, 23 of the top 24 teams in college football will end the season with a loss. Think about Vanderbilt this past year - they had an amazing season by Vandy standards, but because of this culture that's been created that it's playoffs or bust, they ended the season in disappointment rather than going to something like the Orange Bowl and potentially capping things off with a statement win.

Watered down games.
Yes, the 24 team playoff would create exciting matchups and inevitably some all time classic finishes, but at some point, I'll just feel numb to the big moments because there will simply be too many big moments. I don't even care that 17 seeded Iowa went on the road and upset 16 seeded Utah because there's just too much to follow.

I mean honestly I think that if we are cleared to get all the guys we're trying to get, it ruins or at least taints CBB. With that being said, it's hard to blame WW for taking a swing at it when we have such a major roster build.

Coach O would genuinely be electric

Thought of him as a prime candidate to see a significant improvement under new coaching. Oh well.

They bring it up 50 times per year - Louis Oosthuizen's Albatross on 2

Was the #19 overall, #6 SG in last year's class. Averaged 9 points as a freshman. Struggled with consistency as most freshmen do, but looks like he can stand out with some time. Portal post and highlights below:

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Maybe I'm misunderstanding how this rating system is calculated, but how on earth is Ryan Day 2019 on here and Ed O 2019 not? How does Dabo Swinney never appear? I feel lost.

That's why I try go into rounds thinking "today might just not be my day" so that I have a better chance to just enjoy golfing rather than attaching my happiness to shooting well. Ironically, I tend to play better with this mindset.

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Julian Phillips & Yohan Traore

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Phillips would have been good if he didn't go pro so early. averaged 8 & 5 at Tennessee.

it looks like Traore ended up being a bust, but I feel like Wade did a good job maximizing output from those elite athlete bigs by getting them to be dogs on the boards and on defense.

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I was a Woodward supporter for the longest time

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Same here. I thought it was a big mistake to fire him, but very happy to learn that I was wrong about that.