This happened with bowl games. Fans liked bowl games so what do we do? Let's double the number of bowl games! If a few is good, a ton will be better, right? Not. The glut of bowl games has watered down the significance to the point that some of the best players don't even want to play in them. And fans actually think it's a good idea. What used to be the climax to a great season, anticipated by fans and players alike, has turned into an anticlimactic meaningless game that's not even worth playing in. All because we had to have more, more, more.
Now we're doing the same with non-conference matchups. I hear folks talk about how cool it will be to see Michigan and SoCal play on a regular basis. Ironically, I even heard them say on ESPN Gameday on Saturday that realignment will give us more of the fun non-conference matchups like Michigan/SoCal, totally missing the point that once SoCal joins the Big 10, it won't be a non-conference matchup anymore. Non-conference matchups were fun for the very reason that they were non-conference matchups and didn't happen very often. I don't know why folks can't see the fallacy of the logic that taking an intriguing matchup between two non-conference teams and making a conference matchup, instantly wipes out the very thing that made it intriguing in the first place. Will it be cool the first time we go to Norman or Austin or OU or Texas come to WB? No doubt. But after the first time, it just becomes another conference game.
There are other ways college football has used the same rationale to ruin things, like so many rule changes penalizing defense in order to artificially create more offense.
I guess it's just human nature to take something that's fun in small doses and overdo it until it loses the quality that made it fun in the first place.
Now we're doing the same with non-conference matchups. I hear folks talk about how cool it will be to see Michigan and SoCal play on a regular basis. Ironically, I even heard them say on ESPN Gameday on Saturday that realignment will give us more of the fun non-conference matchups like Michigan/SoCal, totally missing the point that once SoCal joins the Big 10, it won't be a non-conference matchup anymore. Non-conference matchups were fun for the very reason that they were non-conference matchups and didn't happen very often. I don't know why folks can't see the fallacy of the logic that taking an intriguing matchup between two non-conference teams and making a conference matchup, instantly wipes out the very thing that made it intriguing in the first place. Will it be cool the first time we go to Norman or Austin or OU or Texas come to WB? No doubt. But after the first time, it just becomes another conference game.
There are other ways college football has used the same rationale to ruin things, like so many rule changes penalizing defense in order to artificially create more offense.
I guess it's just human nature to take something that's fun in small doses and overdo it until it loses the quality that made it fun in the first place.
