I always felt things started moving faster towards professionalism when the traditional bowl games were abandoned in favor of the college football playoff championship series. It made the championship the all or nothing goal. Now if you lose a couple of games you're out of the running for the championship and your season is essentially over. Take, for example, Auburn this season. They started out ranked very high and were in the running for the championship. They lost to us and then to LSU. They are not going nowhere except to a meaningless bowl game. Their season is over. Before this bowl championship series was put into effect the Auburn fans would be thinking we've got a pretty good team. We've lost two games, but we still have a lot to play for. If we win out, beat Bama and go to a New Year's Bowl game we've had a really good season.
The same thing could happen to us if we lose to Georgia. Our season would essentially be over. We would just go through the motions of playing out the season. We would go to a meaningless bowl game. If we beat Georgia we're still in the running for the championship and our season still has meaning. The bowl championship series really changed the meaning of college football at least as far as I am concerned. It caused all of the marbles to be put in one basket. It started more intense recruiting. It's led to the ridiculous salaries of football coaches. It's not good enough to have a beloved coach anymore. There's no room for a Bobby Dodd or a Ray Graves any more. You've got to have Nick Saban or Urban Meyer. Hired guns. There was a time when even Bear Bryant said he did not want to be paid more than the college President. Used to a state school tried to recruit primarily from within its own state's boundaries. Now look at these rosters today and you have players from all over the nation on one team. It's just less more about rah rah college football and state pride and more about professionalism.
The proliferation of corporate sponsored bowl games has also been a factor in diluting the meaning of the college football season. This new movement of paying players extra for their name, image, and endorsement will only speed up the drive to professionalism in college athletics. I know that the one constant in life is change and I don't entirely live my life in the past, but there does come a point when you get so old that there seems to be nothing worth a grown man's time anymore. Change is always with us, but change is not always for the good.