The college football season opens with Kansas State facing Iowa State in Dublin, nicknamed Farmageddon. Recent years brought dramatic structural changes: realignment, expanded playoffs, unlimited transfers, revenue sharing and Name, Image and Likeness payments. Despite these shifts, the immediate landscape resembles last year, with only modest tweaks like playoff seeding adjustments, fewer overtime timeouts and new media personalities joining broadcasts. That surface stability is temporary. The Big Ten Conference, with its self-regard, past pandemic choices and expansive footprint, is identified as the likely source of significant future disruption.
For those who have been unable to stop their head from spinning following all the dramatic changes that have landed on college football over the last half-decade - realignment, expanded playoffs, unlimited transfers, revenue sharing, Name, Image and Likeness payments to players - you may be surprised to find that college football, on the whole, looks mostly like it did last year.
There are small changes, sure: they've tweaked the playoff seeding; teams get fewer time outs in overtime; Dave Portnoy (of all people) is going to be a part of the FOX pregame show. But college football didn't spend the entire offseason tearing itself down to the studs the way it has done so often in recent years. But that consistency is not going to last.
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