The new face of college football, where only money and ratings matter, is no fun

We’re halfway through the 2024 season, and I’ve gone from loving college football to hating what’s happened to my favorite sport.

I knew this season would be different as the first one since the Pac-12 splintered with 10 schools going to the Big Ten, Big 12 and ACC, kicking Oregon State and Washington State to the curb.

I still watch the games, but every matchup bothers me for one reason or another. Utah and Arizona State played the other night and for all the world it felt like a Pac-12 game, but it was a Big 12 game. Washington played Iowa at 9 a.m. Pacific time in a Big Ten game. Miami played at Cal on a Saturday night and it had the look of a “PAC-12 After Dark” game, but it was an ACC game.

The Beavers and Cougars are playing what amounts to a weaker Mountain West Conference schedule, which improves their chances of having successful seasons. Since I’m a Coug, I’m trying to get on board with the new era of Washington State football, but I’m slow to warm up to it.

Take this weekend - it’s homecoming for the Cougs, and usually that means we’re playing UCLA or Stanford or Arizona, but instead of a Pac-12 opponent, it will be Hawaii.

I’m guessing it’s weird for everyone, even fans of the defectors who left the Pac-12 to chase bigger shares of media rights deals in Power 5 conferences. Husky fans I’ve talked to understand why the Dawgs took off, but they don’t seem happy about the demise of the Pac-12 either.

Washington has already lost two Big Ten games at Rutgers and Iowa, a pair of road trips that must have seemed endless at 30,000 feet. Next week the Huskies play at Indiana and later this season they’ll have to go to Penn State.

Maybe things will change over time, but early returns show that teams playing games that are two or three time zones away have struggled, which is something the decision-makers should have thought about when asking student-athletes to travel that far.

But money matters more than anything else, whether it’s from media rights for schools or NIL deals for the athletes. Coaches can’t develop athletes and build programs anymore - if a player becomes a star or at least a highly productive player, he’s likely to enter the transfer portal after the season and go to the highest bidder.

I like that Washington State and Oregon State are fighting back, reviving the Pac-12 by adding San Diego State, Fresno State, Utah State, Boise State and Colorado State for football and basketball and Gonzaga for basketball.

It shapes up as one heck of a conference for basketball and a decent conference for football but nothing close to what the Pac-12 used to be.

There’s talk of adding Memphis and Tulane to give a little more oomph to the conference, but I’m completely out on including schools that aren’t in the West. I’m told that Memphis and Tulane would be valuable assets, but there’s nothing about them that appeals to me because of their location, to hell and gone away from the other Pac-12 schools.

And it’s not just the records and polls we pay attention to now, we have to check out TV ratings to see how well our favorite school is attracting all-important eyeballs because the more people are paying attention, the more relevant our team will be.

Personally, as much as I love the Cougs, I don’t give a damn how they’re doing in the ratings, I just know I’ll be watching regardless - if I can figure out how to find the channel they’re playing on via Fubo or Hulu or some other streaming service. This streaming stuff is also maddening to an ancient cable guy like me.

I don’t want to be cynical, but if the Cougs go 10-2 this year, which is possible since they’re 5-1 and facing beatable opponents the rest of the way, coach Jake Dickert and quarterback John Mateer will be in hot demand and apt to go to more prominent programs with bigger bankrolls and NIL collectives next year.

But don’t forget, before the best players leave, there will be a bowl game that’s seemingly important to everyone but an increasingly number of NFL draft eligible players. They will opt out of the bowl game, citing the fear of injury that could drop their draft status, making their team a shadow of itself.

How crazy has it gotten? I heard a story about a coach who played a big role in funding his own school’s

NIL collective, essentially paying his players through a third party. I shouldn’t have been surprised - a coach won’t be successful without talented players, might as well pay ‘em to keep ‘em and strengthen my job security.

Every time I tell myself to roll with it and be OK with it because there’s nothing I can do about it, I still can’t accept it. Compared to the old norm, the new norm just flat out stinks.

Jim Moore has covered Washington’s sports scene from every angle for multiple news outlets. He appears Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays at 10 a.m. on Jason Puckett’s podcast at PuckSports.com. You can find him on X (formerly Twitter) @cougsgo.

This story was originally published October 15, 2024 at 10:13 AM.