Who Killed College Football?

Steven and Ryan sit down once again to review questions from the paid subscriber community on Substack, this time about Suspect Number Four: The National Football League. A free preview of the episode is available to everyone, but if you’d like to unlock the full episode and be able to submit questions of your own for future suspects, become a paid subs…

Once upon a time, the NFL shaped its Draft policies (and date) around not angering college football. The power and popularity of The Shield have increased dramatically over the last four or five decades, but the league spent many of those years keeping underclassmen out as a default, and it took years of pressure from players like Barry Sanders, Cris Carter, and Herschel Walker to eventually open up a pro pathway for juniors. Why has the NFL shied away from taking on college football, and what has it meant to the college game to keep players trapped in one system for most of the sport’s history?Producer: Michael HenahanResearcher: Alex McDaniel

As we do after every suspect is revealed and investigated, we turned it over to the paid members of the Who Killed College Football Substack community to interrogate us about the NCAA episode. Topics include why the Association and its members failed to plan for the future, the death penalty vs. just kicking a school out of the NCAA altogether, and what…

The NCAA spent the better part of 70 years stamping out threats to amateurism wherever they could find them. From big scandals to seemingly minor violations, the Association was there to defend the idea that college football shouldn’t be about money, at least for the players. For a while, the courts, media, and public opinion all backed them up. But as the riches in the sport grew, the NCAA became something of a comic villain, and when the time came for college football’s relationship with labor to evolve, the NCAA never seemed ready to lead the charge.Producer: Michael HenahanResearcher: Alex McDaniel

R. Bowen Loftin served as president of Texas A&M from 2010 to 2014. He also appeared in our Conferences episode, discussing the influence the Longhorn Network had on Texas A&M’s decision to head to the SEC. But he had more to share about life in the old Big 12, including some revelations about the Governor’s office and the reality of the conference’s po…

As we do after each suspect, we took questions from the paid members of the WKCFB Substack community about the conferences episode. (Temple is mentioned twice here, to give you a sense of how winding this gets.) A free preview of the episode is available to everyone, but if you’d like to unlock the full episode and be able to submit questions of your ow…

Conferences didn’t used to be where all the bargaining power resided in college football, and their concerns used to be exceedingly local. Today, they’re conglomerates locked into escalating wars of spending and revenue, and leaning on their market strength (or weakness) to shape everything from the postseason to realignment. They’ve even found a way to make that business competition important to fans, and the conferences have no reason to slow down now.Producer: Michael HenahanResearcher: Alex McDaniel

After we review each suspect in our college football murder mystery, we’ll be taking questions from paid members of the WKCFB Substack community about that episode – what went into making it, topics we didn’t cover, questions about the history we laid out, whatever. We got some great questions after the TV episode and enjoyed batting them around.If you…

College football’s rise as a valuable TV product is still relatively new. For decades, the sport either couldn’t be televised or was limited at a national level. But once that market opened up, networks moved fast to get more of everything – more games, more bowls, more playoffs. They’re not just broadcast partners either. These companies have found a way to acquire partial ownership of college football, becoming business partners with conferences. Thanks to television, it’s easier than ever to watch almost every game at the FBS level. It’s also a lot harder to tell what that level’s going to look like in the future.Producer: Michael HenahanResearcher: Alex McDaniel

Before we dive into the six suspects in the death of college football, let’s begin with a confession. College football is, in fact, very much alive, with upsets being sprung, conferences continuing to realign, and expanded playoff spots to fret over. The sport remains incredibly popular, entertaining, and, at least for certain segments, financially lucrative.But the college football you used to know? That might be dead, whether you’re unhappy about the slow erasure of amateurism, swollen superconferences disregarding geography, the power of television networks to shape the future, and any number of other changes that could shake your belief in what college football was, is, or should be.If you’re feeling that way, well, so is Nick Saban. So let’s start digging into how we got here in the first place.

Producer: Michael Henahan

Researcher: Alex McDaniel