Date: Whatever today is
Breaking News: Nebraska Blows The Big Game
Is College Football Gaining or Losing Popularity vs. the NFL?
If you’re on this site, you’re definitely a big college football fan. Odds are, you like college football more than you like the NFL. But, do you match the rest of the country?
The short answer is no, the NFL is holding its popularity better than college football. Over 5 years, Super Bowl viewership declined -19% while college football championship viewing declined -24%. Of course, the numbers don’t tell the full story.
One things certain, and that’s that NFL has a firm hold on the number one sport in the country. 165 million unique people viewed NFL games last season. College football land at somewhere between half and one quarter of that depending on what metric you use.
However, many points indicate that CFB is experiencing incremental growth. TV ratings grew following the introduction of the playoff before falling during the COVID era (note, NFL ratings fell during this time too). Merchandise sales, though not always the most correlated, point in this direction too; following Georgia’s National Championship, Fanatics saw record sales for college licensed merchandise.
Due to the COVID years weighing down all live sports ratings and lots of moving parts in realignment and TV deals right now, it’s likely the next few years will provide a much more definitive answer on how college football popularity is changing compared to the NFL. Hopefully, intriguing matchups and an unbeatable culture help make this the biggest sport in the country.
Who’s going to stop UCF fans?
It’s near impossible to be involved in CFB Twitter and not run into the self proclaimed “UCF Twitter Mafia”. They’ll swarm any UCF post, positive or negative, and fill it with Knightro-in-flames gifs and shouts of Charge On! (Or, worse if you’re on their bad side).
But, this crew is not just a dominating force online. In person, UCF fans are quickly becoming some of the most dedicated and rowdy – or, they always were (save a few despicable seasons) and are just finally getting recognized. It makes sense they’d have such number when they boast the largest undergraduate population, but their commitment and energy is even more impressive (or annoying, depending on your POV) than their numbers.
Regardless, as this crew makes it’s presence known and dominates airwaves of all kinds, you have to ask – who will stop them? Who will be the next G5 darling (or even underrated P5) to have a fanbase so strong they can shutout Internet polls and swarm any mention of their name. In 4+ years blogging about CFB on Twitter I’ve never seen a comparable fanbase in terms of their tenacity. So, I invite:
Who’s going to stop them?
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4 College Football Teams That Will Exceed Expectations In 2022
Everyone wants their football team to win lots of games, but it’s always even more special when a team comes out of nowhere and defies preseason expectations. Here’s our four picks to make some noise this season and silence the haters:
1. Bowling Green
No offense to the Falcons, but we can imagine Bowling Green isn’t top of mind for many of our readers. However, they return the most overall production this upcoming college football season, and a wide open MAC means we have Scot Loeffler’s Falcons making a long shot run at a conference title.
2. TCU
The Horned Frogs had a pretty middling season last year, just missing a bowl. However, this is the first year Sonny Dykes gets to cook with his own guys recruited, though TCU also boasts one of the highest returning production percentages. TCU will have experiences on all sides of the ball plus some great recruits, and we see Sonny Dykes finally bringing his winning culture to Fort Worth.
3. NC State
NC State has lots of returning seniors (especially thanks to COVID amendments), an experienced QB in Devin Leary, and a reasonable strength of schedule. Nothing stopping NC State from getting double digit wins, and we expect it will be them or Clemson taking the ACC title. Write down the Wolfpack as must watch TV.
4. Maryland
Though Taulia may not have met the initial, galactic expectations his brother set for him, he’s been working in silence (more or less) and continually improving on his game. Furthermore, Maryland has finally recruited the supporting players he needs to succeed as well as developing some all American talent (like Biletnikoff contender Rakim Jarrett). Mike Locksley isn’t just building a spoiler team – Maryland could finish Top 3 in the Big Ten East, setting up for even more success down the line.
Follow us on Twitter at @CFBSelect for daily CFB content like this!
4 College Football Teams That Will Exceed Expectations In 2022
Everyone wants their football team to win lots of games, but it’s always even more special when a team comes out of nowhere and defies preseason expectations. Here’s our four picks to make some noise this season and silence the haters:
1. Bowling Green
No offense to the Falcons, but we can imagine Bowling Green isn’t top of mind for many of our readers. However, they return the most overall production this upcoming college football season, and a wide open MAC means we have Scot Loeffler’s Falcons making a long shot run at a conference title.
2. TCU
The Horned Frogs had a pretty middling season last year, just missing a bowl. However, this is the first year Sonny Dykes gets to cook with his own guys recruited, though TCU also boasts one of the highest returning production percentages. TCU will have experiences on all sides of the ball plus some great recruits, and we see Sonny’s Dykes finally bringing his winning culture to Fort Worth.
3. NC State
NC State has lots of returning seniors (especially thanks to COVID amendments), an experienced QB in Devin Leary, and a reasonable strength of schedule. Nothing stopping NC State from getting double digit wins, and we expect it will be them or Clemson taking the ACC title. Write down the Wolfpack as must watch TV.
4. Maryland
Though Taulia may not have met the initial, galactic expectations his brother set for him, he’s been working in silence (more or less) and continually improving on his game. Furthermore, Maryland has finally recruited the supporting players he needs to succeed as well as developing some all American talent (like Biletnikoff contender Rakim Jarrett). Mike Locksley isn’t just building a spoiler team – Maryland could finish Top 3 in the Big Ten East, setting up for even more success down the line.
Follow us on Twitter at @CFBSelect for daily CFB content like this!
Why College Football off-season is the worst
Off-seasons of sports you enjoy age always bad. It’s obvious why, life with sports to look forward to is just better. But, the CFB off-season is a special breed of bad, and here’s why.
1. NIL Updates
The CFB landscape has completely changed. Students are getting paid up to tens of millions to play college football, often through pretty artificial and transparent “endorsements”. While the occasional O Line getting sponsored by a burger chain is hilarious (or someone like DeColdest Crawford getting sponsored by an AC company), these just get old after a while and make many of us sad about the current business of the game.
2. Obsessing over high schoolers
Yes, recruitment is what fuels college football. But, getting push notifications about the latest 16 year old kid to commit to your rival school gets so exhausting when we don’t have the actual sport to watch. Yes, many of us obsess and follow the recruiting trail because we love the game, but it gets tiring.
3. Dealing with rival fanbases online
Meeting rival fans in person can be quite fun. As long as you don’t go full SEC fan and get stabbed by a rival in a parking lot, we all enjoy a good chirp. This is NOT the same on Twitter or Reddit. There’s nothing like going back and forth with some incompetent rival fan who thinks his team is better than yours because they won a few titles before their parents were born. Just get us to the games already where we actually have evidence that our team is better. And if they’re not, there’s always next season.
4. Bad CFB List Articles Online
Who wants to spend their time reading a crappy list article online when you could be watching a game instead. Wait…what?
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Greatest Non Playoff Teams of the CFB Playoff Era
There may be no worse feeling than your team having an amazing season and getting snubbed from the College Football Playoff. Only 4 teams can make it, so some amazing teams have missed the cut due to a tough loss or two (or none). So, here we pay homage to those amazing college football teams that just barely missed the cut.
5. 2017 UCF
2017 UCF is an extremely controversial team. They finished the regular season undefeated yet were snubbed from the playoff (though they were not the first G5 team to get this treatment, with Western Michigan being another recent example). Their weaker strength of schedule was held against them. That being said, they beat Auburn in an all timer Peach Bowl, demonstrating they had what it took to beat the big dogs. How many games would they have won had they been let into the playoff?
4. 2018 Ohio State
While many may celebrate Ohio State missing the playoff, you have to admit their 2018 team had a resume worth getting in. Their only regular season loss was a stunning upset from Purdue, 49-20. Despite this bad loss, they beat up on many teams they faced with a very high strength of schedule in the competitive Big Ten East. Perhaps what makes this snub so controversial was that a non conference champion 12-1 Alabama got in over them, after losing to Georgia in the SEC championship game. As we know, that Alabama team would go on to win it all.
3. 2015 Stanford Cardinal
2015 Stanford was greatly hurt by a Week One loss to Northwestern. Their only other loss that season was to a very strong Oregon team, 38-36. While two losses is generally too many to make the playoff, this year had a generally weaker field and Stanford looked like one of the most powerful teams out there. This is less of a playoff snub and more so one of the all around best football teams that just couldn’t get it together when they needed to. At least we’ll never forget Christian McCaffrey tearing up that Rose Bowl game against Iowa.
1. (Tie) 2014 TCU and Baylor
You all knew this would be here. Both TCU and Baylor were absolute forces of nature in 2014. This marked the first ever playoff snub, as this was the first year of the College Football Playoff. Both TCU and Baylor were seen as playoff caliber, with TCU’s only being to Baylor and Baylor’s only loss being to a 2 loss WVU (who would end the regular season 7-5). This snub wasn’t just painful for these fans, but it literally reshaped CFB. The Big 12 did not have a championship game at the time, so both 1 loss Big 12 teams would be left out in favor of conference championship game winners FSU, Oregon, Ohio State and Alabama. Immediately following this, the Big 12 began putting plans in place to reinstate their championship game between the two teams with the best record.
Who do you think was the best College Football Team that didn’t make the playoff? Who was the worst CFP snub? Let us know in the replies!
What does “FBS” Mean in College Football? Is “FCS” worse or better?
The college football landscape is confusing, certainly much more complicated than its professional counterpart, the NFL. So, when you hear terms like “FBS” and “FCS” thrown around while watching college football, it’s easy to get confused. Here’s a brief explanation of what exactly “FBS” and “FCS” mean in College Football.
FBS stands for “Football Bowl Subdivision”. The reason it’s called a subdivision is because both FBS and FCS are technically Division 1 football – but, “FBS” is the more competitive level. The primary difference between FBS and FCS Football is how the championship is played.
FBS Football has bowl games (hence, “Bowl Subdivision”). In the current version of this format, 2 of the New Years Six Bowls (rotating) are semifinal games between the top 4 college football teams, and then the two winners of those championship games go on to play the championship game, run by ESPN.
FCS stands for “Football Championship Subdivision”. In FCS Football, the top 24 FCS Subdivision teams play in a bracket style tournament for the NCAA Championship trophy.
Fun fact – this is the highest level college football championship awarded by the NCAA itself. The ESPN College Football Championship Game is what is almost always used to designate the NCAA champion, but there are technically other championship selectors that could make multiple different teams count as National Champions. For an example of this, see UCF in 2017, in which they were awarded National Champions by the Colley Matrix, even though Alabama won the National Championship game – most everyone refers to Alabama as the champions that year, but UCF technically has a rightful claim.
Another significant difference between the two subdivision is that FBS teams can award 85 football scholarships while FCS teams can only award 63. This contributes to FBS college football teams having an elevated standard of play, but the main driver between the increased competitive level of these schools is that the best conferences in the country form the Football Bowl Subdivision.
The subdivision split traces its roots to 1978, when Division 1 football was split into two subdivisions, 1-A and 1-AA. The main driver of this split was that the smaller D1 schools couldn’t keep up with the largely developed football programs of the largest D1 schools. This is similar to “mid majors” vs Power Conference basketball teams in College Basketball. In 2006, these two subdivisions were given the FBS and FCS names they hold today.
Though FBS is technically the higher level of play, FCS football is spectacular to watch. The large tournament system for the championship is extremely exciting and may even reflect the future state of the FBS playoff. Here at CFB Select, we love college football of all kinds – bookmark our site and follow us at @CFBSelect on Twitter if you do too!
Best Candidates for PAC 12 Realignment
The Big Ten has announced that USC and UCLA will join from the PAC 12. More PAC 12 schools are already reported as applying for admission to the Big Ten. Here’s who a desperate PAC 12 may invite to replace them.
Note: The PAC 12 would need to vote to relax it’s research school requirement before admitting most of these members.
San Diego State
The San Diego state Aztecs have been reunited to the PAC 12 multiple times before, and they fall right in its footprint. Furthermore, they’re one of the better Mountain West Schools at both football and basketball.
UNLV
The new Las Vegas Raiders stadium is quickly becoming the best away game in the NFL. Who’s to say you couldn’t have such an away game for college football? UNLV would bring much needed money into the PAC 12 as well.
Boise State
Boise State was often rumored to the PAC 12 as well after their stand out performances in the field at the highest level (we all remember the Fiesta Bowl). They’d also fit in the PAC 12 realignment footprint.
Nevada (Reno)
Nevada is one of the more realistic candidates as they would have less academic barriers to entry to hurdle. They also have a consistently relevant football program, producing the likes of Kaepernick and Carson Strong. Plus, a natural rival for the addition of UNLV.
Do you agree with our picks? Think we got it all wrong? Share the link on Twitter and tag us (@CFBSelect) to start the conversation.
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Fans Speak Out: Most Over-Hated Coaches in CFB
Despite good to great on field performance and calm demeanors, some college football coaches are just always hated by fans. Yesterday on Twitter we asked our fans who they think the most over hated coach in CFB is right now. Let us know in the replies if you agree or disagree.
Dabo Swinney
Despite skyrocketing from WR coach to the most decorated active CFB coach besides Saban, Dabo has many haters. In fact, this rise to the top is almost certainly a huge factor in most of the hate Dabo Swinney gets. That being said, some perceive his southern tone as occasionally ‘holier than thou’. Here’s some comments from our fans:
PJ Fleck
PJ Fleck started as one of the more inspiring stories in college football. His “row the boat” mantra and punching far above his weight as Western Michigan to an undefeated regular season, everyone seemed to be behind this man when he got the job at Minnesota. However, PJ Fleck hasn’t had nearly the support at Minnesota as he did at WMU. Here’s what our fans have to say:
Here’s some other great nominees for most over hated college football coach by our fans. Which currently active CFB coach do you think is hated on too much? Let us know in the replies and they’ll appear in our CFB forums.
Would you say you need to be one of the best CFB Coaches to be over hated? Will Dabo Swinney, Jim Harbaugh, Gus Malzahn, Scott Frost or PJ Fleck shake their hate if they have their most successful CFB season in 2022, or will it only make the hate worse? As always, let us know in the comments and they’ll appear in our CFB forums on the forums tab.
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