Video demoing the new game

Get in here sickos

Cover features Quinn Ewers, Travis Hunter, and Donovan Edwards (similar to last week's reveal of the deluxe edition cover).

Anyone going to pick up the game? I hate EA as much as the next guy and I haven't really played anything in about a decade, but I love college football enough that I'm tempted.

We’re inching closer to the start of the 2024-2025 college football season.

At this point we’ve had signing day and a bunch of transfers. Who’s your offseason champ?

I’ll make my very biased case for the Miami Hurricanes.

Solid recruit class, and great transfer portal pick ups in Cam Ward, Sam Brown, and Damien Martinez, among others. We’ve also lost a few good ones in the portal, though.

All that said, I’ve dubbed the Canes “Offseason Champs” several times before, and it has not quite translated to anything on the field.

Please just figure out a way to pay kids for 3-5 year contracts. The portal, way more than NIL, is sucking all the joy out of this sport, but I can acknowledge that my interests as a fan only coincidentally and partially align with those of the players trading their services and health for my entertainment.

The University of Houston has informed the NFL that it will proceed with plans to add an alternate blue uniform. The about-face comes six months after the NFL’s merchandising and licensing division sent a cease-and-desist letter to UH, threatening legal action if the school did not halt what was described as UH’s “blatant copying” of the Houston Oilers-themed uniforms.

Good. Fuck Bud Adams. If spectator sports have any value beyond mere economic activity, it's down to communities and their fans.

You absolutely hate to see it. There's no proof and it's likely unhelpful to speculate, but based on the article I suspect suicide. Y'all look out for each other out there.

Reggie Bush has his 2005 Heisman Trophy back, as the Heisman Trust announced Wednesday the formal "reinstatement" of the trophy to Bush amid what it calls "enormous changes in the college football landscape."

The Heisman Trust's decision comes after Bush forfeited his Heisman Trophy in 2010 in the wake of significant NCAA sanctions for USC, which included Bush receiving improper benefits during a Trojans career that spanned from 2003 to 2005.

Because this was so last second, you've been awarded a single action item that will be accomplished immediately without litigation or bureaucratic red tape. What do you do to "save" the sport?

TL;DR: Football only, 7 permanent conferences of 10, one more with pro/rel, 16-team playoff with objective criteria, centralized media negotiation, NOT fully equal revenue among schools, private equity definitely involved, ESPN/FOX very much not on board for now, SEC/B1G also wary.

Basically, it looks like the "power" schools outside the Super-2 trying to shift the narrative, and providing a fallback plan for if the existing financial structure gets nuked from judicial orbit.

Before you get too excited, maybe check the calendar (and this is the Daily Mail)... but the rendering has me too hyped so I'm going to pretend this is happening

Was lurking a bit at the old place, and there was a thread asking who had never bet on CFB*, but the discussion went more into how legalized sports betting has affected fans' engagement with college football. I am in a weird place, as I can't come up with a lot of good reasons to specifically ban it when so many other forms of gambling are legal. It can also of course be done to a healthy degree, and even if someone is enthusiastic and engages with the sport in a gambling-centered way, who am I to say that's "wrong"?

That said, I do fucking hate it at a personal level when people care more about the lines and the spreads or how their fantasy roster is doing in contrast to the rivalries and the stories and the analysis as a competition. I feel like these people, and particularly the media catering to them, are nudging team sports closer to the liminal space currently occupied by boxing and horse racing, where there is a hardcore base dedicated to the sports themselves, but the broad appeal is for gamblers and the occasional looky-loo spectacle. I can't argue for any particular measure to stop it, but I sure don't have to like it.

So, for those of us still hanging around in the very stupid offseason we now have with no real transfer restrictions and plenty of NIL to push players to leverage that fact, how has the explosion of sports betting affected your relationship with CFB?

(* - One $10 bet, well before 2022, on TCU to win the natty while in Vegas for other reasons, and one very boring season of buy-in fantasy football, though now that I type it, I guess that was betting on the NFL)

If the ACC falls apart, I don't want any of em

Just more proof that the cfp was a bad idea. None of the options outlined here seem fair to me (or productive). Let's just go back to regional rivalries y'all

Just because it’s the offseason, doesn’t mean college football discussions need to stop. What matchup are you most looking forward to this year?

For me, as a Canes fan (yes, depressing, I know), I’m looking forward to the August 31, 2024 matchup against the Florida Gators.

Interesting insight into how NIL and free transfers have combined (and only the combination could have done it) to wreak havoc on the G5, and to some extent up and down the chain. Seems the biggest schools are even cobbling together NIL packages for "walk-ons" that mysteriously cover the cost of attendance.

“They’ve got to make up what a scholarship covers. I get it. It’s smart,” Chadwell said. “But the NCAA needs to create a rule requiring players to sit out a year if they are not on full academic scholarship.”

But as always, this is where they lose me. Limiting player movement without compensation is never the answer. Either you're a student and this an extracurricular and anything you do or anywhere you go between seasons is your own goddamn business (even you Trevor fucking Etienne, even you, traitor), or you deserve material consideration for limiting your own mobility during your prime developmental years and/or your last chance to play a game you love competitively.

I think the restructuring is going to take a while yet, but moves like this probably do signal the end of the beginning.

I haven't looked yet, but I wonder if it would be possible to find news stories and opinion pieces for other watershed moments, like when the Ivies formally dropped athletic scholarships or when the D1-A/D1-AA split happened. There was a great Texas Monthly article from the 70s where UT was already moaning about the rest of the SWC, and while it focused on gameday revenue, it looks prescient in hindsight.

NCAA looks like they may have overplayed their hand. While I've been done with the NCAA for a while, this may truly be the beginning of the end.

Shocked, shocked I tell you. Nusm called it