College football returns amid playoff expansion and corporate greed that threaten traditions and the value of the regular season. The sport's charm comes from its foolishness, campus pageantry, and intoxicating traditions that matter deeply to students and alumni. Expanding the playoff field risks devaluing regular-season stakes while commercial forces push the game toward NFL-style professionalism. Week 1 will reveal whether audiences favor traditional pageantry or a more corporate, spectacle-driven product. Early-season games must deliver compelling on-field drama to distract from growing business-driven conflicts and to preserve the chaotic, communal pleasures that differentiate college football.
Israel Daramola: It's not quite autumn, but it is college football season. America's favorite roux of bloodsport, campus pageantry, and shady bookkeeping returns in a moment of existential crisis for the sport, as playoff fever and corporate greed threaten to tear asunder the things we once held precious. Not content to make the bowl season meaningless, college football bosses' desire to expand the playoff field astronomically also threatens to devalue the regular season.
The beauty of the college game is how stupid and silly it is. Things that matter to no one else will matter deeply on campuses all over the country. Traditions are held, national titles are argued over, and because we're talking about college here, convoluted excuses to get blindingly drunk are granted. We do not suffer under the rigid perfectionism of the NFL-the dumber the games get here, the better they are. Let us never lose sight of this.
Ray Ratto: Week 1 is going to explain what kind of college football the audience prefers-Lee Corso being the first old person in any walk of life over the last 75 years to be allowed a totally graceful exit, or Dave Portnoy being muscled off the field at Ohio State because either the school, his own network, or both don't want him out there.
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