A Random Thought on College Football

[DOCTORLOOMIS]

I have been watching college football for a solid 20 years now. If you had told me 20 years ago that the teams I will mention momentarily would CONSISTENTLY be out of the top 20....and oftentimes not competitive...I wouldn't have believed it. Did any of us believe way back when that these teams would struggle as they have.........

Notre Dame
Michigan
Miami
Florida State
Nebraska
Tennessee
UCLA
And until VERY recently...Alabama

I suppose it just shows the parity in college FB these days........

 

[Hardwood_fanatic]

I have been watching college football for a solid 20 years now. If you had told me 20 years ago that the teams I will mention momentarily would CONSISTENTLY be out of the top 20....and oftentimes not competitive...I wouldn't have believed it. Did any of us believe way back when that these teams would struggle as they have.........

Notre Dame
Michigan
Miami
Florida State
Nebraska
Tennessee
UCLA
And until VERY recently...Alabama

I suppose it just shows the parity in college FB these days........

I think it also goes to show what can happen if you make one bad coaching hire and stick with it too long. Or a coach who used to win does not change with the times, and gets passed by like the wind. This is what happened to several of these programs, in one way or another.

 

[defaultusername]

I agree. Bad coaching hires by Notre Dame, Nebraska, UCLA, Alabama. Some old timers were passed by (Michigan, Tennessee, Florida St.).

But if you look at it, excepting Florida St., all of these programs are poised for a return to the consistent top 20. Looks like they've made good coaching decisions. The thing about these programs, they may be down for a few years, or maybe even longer, but they'll always return. Now think about where teams like Cincinnati, UConn, Kansas etc. will be in ten years. Tradition just has a way of perpetuating itself in something like college football.

 

[bamabobo]

I bet scholarship limits has got a lot to do with those programs' problems. Recruiting is much more important now than it was then because you have less room for error. Think of all the highly rated guys coming out of HS who don't pan out. When you only have 85 scholarships to give you can really only hope to have maybe 5-10 guys on your team who are NFL talent, withh maybe only one of those being superstar material. And that is a high profile program like UT, ND or Michigan. Add in a loss of scholarships for NCAA violations (such as Bama a few years ago) and it can cripple a football team.

In days gone by the big programs could stockpile talent which gave them great depth and watered down the competition. Not to imply the coaches of those programs in that era were not as good as we are led to believe, but having talent 4 deep versus a smaller school who has to take the leftovers makes any coach look brilliant. Woody Hayes, Paul Bryant, Bo Schembechler, etc. all benefitted from this. Its just like Bama playing Florida International today or UT vs. WKU last week. The talent difference is not as great as it was once but it is still there. I doubt that many of those programs will stay down much longer and that is mainly due to those years of tradition and basically having an established brand name. Talented athletes want to play for the big names and get a shot at the pros. Brand name and success helps draw them in.