I thought kickoff would pause the offseason bullshit, but I was wrong.
Let’s be honest. This year’s college football’s offseason was exhausting. College football gave us offseason drama such as continuing conference realignment fallout, the never-ending playoff expansion debate, Brendan Sorsby’s gambling saga, getting Congress involved with the Protect College Sports act, asking fans to support NIL cash flows, and now the perpetual eligibility merry-go-round, where who’s eligible and who’s not changes by the day, depending on the judge and the jurisdiction, from Trinidad Chambliss in the winter to NFL players getting cut last week.
The World Cup was a good distraction from the offseason bullshit for a month, but when Spain lifted the trophy, there were still six grueling long weeks until the season kicked off. As August crept by slowly, the dinner reservation that is the college football season finally approached, and I thought that the complimentary bread of Week Zero and the appetizer of Week One surely would make me forget about everything else surrounding the sport and have me look forward to the main course in the coming weeks as we get into the meat of the schedule. I was wrong.
As I type, LSU’s saga with pro players and the SEC continues with the SEC threatening expulsion. The Big Ten clearly robbed a win away from a group of 6 team, and now their television partner NBC and the MAC, whose teams rely on Big Ten buy game paydays as an essential part of their budget, are falling in line with the Big Ten state media out of Pyongyang, oops I mean Chicago. And to make your brain hurt a little, Miami traveled to the San Francisco Bay area to play a conference game against Stanford, meanwhile UCLA traveled to Cal to play a classic Big Ten vs. ACC non-conference game.
To mark the start of the college football season, a friend and I embarked on three games in three days, because there’s truly nothing better in college football than live, real games. The traditions of each school playing out in the pregame pageantry, the bands playing the fight song, the crowds cheering on big plays or rallying around the defense for a big third down, the hard hits rattling across the stadium and fans collectively going “ooohhh” and “ahhhhh” afterwards. All of it is unmatched.
We started off the weekend at Bobby Dodd as Colorado came to town to play Georgia Tech, went down to the old Turner Field on Friday for Georgia State’s opener, and then Saturday I went to Athens for Georgia’s home opener while he went to the Benz for Auburn-Baylor. Surely, this was the cure to offseason bullshit. Toe was meeting leather down at the flats, and it was time to attack the day between the hedges.
And for a while there, I thought it was the cure. As much as I love my Dawgs, I hate my rivals. I was fully expecting a Tech double-digit win, but the shifting tides on Thursday night made for a generational hate watch. When Colorado scored to take the lead and sealed the win with a blocked field goal, I was ecstatic. Not quite the ecstasy of seeing Nate Frazier cross the goal line in the 8th overtime and Brent Key crying into Kirby Smart’s arms, but watching the Tech fans trot out silent and downtrodden was fuel for the soul. Enough to overpay a homeless man on the way to MARTA for an ice-cold Michelob Ultra from the cooler, that is.
And then two days later, I got to go to my happy place. Despite the temperatures flirting with 100 degrees and the heat index even higher, I was back in Athens. Even against an overmatched opponent, I could rid the eight-month stench of the Ole Miss loss in New Orleans. And what I got was pretty damn great in the moment. After “only” scoring 28 against Austin Peay and 35 against Charlotte last year, where the Georgia offense was stuck in the mud despite the talent differential, a completely different energy was on the field Saturday. The first team offense went 5 for 5 on touchdowns and the first team defense went 4 for 4 on three and outs before subs started coming in. Before Tennessee State got their first first down, Georgia had 35 points and 320 yards on 24 plays to their zero yards. Good work, on to the next.
I was very happy with my team, I saw one of our biggest rivals lose in person, and the aforementioned offseason bullshit surely was paused. And to make matters even better, there was no way my team could even jump into the pool of bullshit. Boy, was I wrong.
On Monday night, the official University of Georgia accounts decided to post their weekly victory reel behind an NIL paywall. And just like that, the on the field product was compromised by all the bad things about college football I have mentioned. Don’t get me wrong, Georgia doesn’t have a big oil money billionaire or a former NBA owner billionaire that can throw any amount of money they want on the program, they have to get creative. Part of that is driving NIL subscriptions for an alternate uniform, which will be worn this week. Part of that is putting player features on the platform, in a model that is like On3 and 24/7 content, even if it is state media and less journalism. I will give them credit for that. But to put something that gets many retweets and shares across social media behind a paywall just screams tone deaf and shortsighted.
I would have no problem if our in-house NIL used a “freemium” model for content. Put a director’s cut or a Hard Knocks type of 10-15 minute feature behind a paywall. But to take a formerly easily accessible thing that rallies the fanbase or can be easily shared to prospective recruits and fans of all types (as seen in reactions of cinematic recaps from big games like Texas, Tennessee, and the SEC Championships) to a paywall without any added benefit is just lazy, lousy, and greedy. It reminds me of the UGA that existed before Kirby came in and made things right – from the joke of a 25-yard indoor practice facility to the lack of institutional foresight in letting Mark Fox and Scott Stricklin keep their jobs for so long.
And it’s not about the money, it’s about the intent. Fans have been asked to foot the bill forever, but at what point is enough truly enough? Colleges have always used the fanbase to raise money, and it’s been successful, but where do the law of diminishing returns kick in? Just in the last decade and a half, on top of the season ticket contribution that has increased multiple times, Georgia has created special capital project funds to raise money for their facilities, created an “accelerator” program for donors to earn more priority points for ticket status, and now have created an in-house collective after the House settlement ended the original NIL collective set up.
Raise ticket prices, but cancel home and homes with power 4 teams and move them to neutral sites, like Georgia playing Florida State in 2028 in Nashville. Add teams to your conference, but at the expense of playing traditional rivals, as Georgia will travel to Texas twice in 2027 and will play Arkansas, Missouri, and Oklahoma despite not playing Tennessee this year. Donate to the stadium renovations, but you won’t get to use them as a normal fan. Donate to the NIL collective, but the player can jump to a new school with no recourse if he chooses to. Can’t you see why donor fatigue and the nickel and diming of fans is a real thing?
I can pay $20 a month if I wanted to, like I can pay my $56 a month gym membership. I could easily part with $240 a year, which is just around half of my monthly truck payment, but then again, Georgia isn’t signing a 5-star player for $240. Saturday’s game was behind the SECN+ streaming service, which has become more accessible than ever with ESPN streaming content integration with Hulu, YouTubeTV, and DirecTV, but still behind a streaming service. Some fans still have only an antenna or basic cable, and some fans live with the fact they can only watch games on ABC and/or ESPN or listen on the radio. Some fans might not even have wifi. It might seem improbable, but being from rural Georgia, some people still live like that, whether it is of their own choosing, a lack of money, or a lack of resources like cable and fiber lines.
Fans like that might rely on their technologically advanced children or grandchildren sending them the victory highlights so they can put sights to the sounds they heard or even missed earlier. Or maybe there’s a kid who lives a few miles from campus showing his parents the post, trying to convince them to attend an affordable game for the first time in their life. Or maybe there’s an elderly man unable to attend games anymore, but able to share a pastime with his son and grandson via a highlight reel. I went to the game, sat through all 60 minutes, I have the game recorded on my DVR to rewatch, I don’t need victory highlights. However, I will speak up for the ones that do.
My family donates the minimum to keep our lower level, row 26, shady side seats every year, and I feel like the eventual push will be to get rid of fans like us, making the entire lower bowl a premium experience, not just the suites and the clubs. I’m sure there are consultants and investors in the ears of the athletic department to re-seat Sanford, jack up prices, and make as much money as possible. Our NIL content director Bryce Koon tweeted out a two-word response yesterday, responding to a media member with “revenue generation.” His job, the president’s job, and the athletic director’s job eventually all lead to revenue generation. It is what it is. It’s coming. College football will not stop until the stadiums look like Arthur Ashe Stadium at the US Open or the Miami or Las Vegas F1 Grand Prixes. And then, it will be too late.
The days of fan first amenities, which you see only at Daytona, Talladega and EchoPark Speedway these days, are long gone. With each passing day, this sport feels more and more like a watered down NFL.
So yeah, the season starting off did not pause the offseason bullshit, in ways it amplified it. But alas, I still hold out hope that the 60 minutes of actual gameplay on the field can be somewhat pure, just like Auburn and Florida fans hold out hope that they finally got this coaching hire right and that they are finally championship contenders.
So let’s try again. I’ll be in Sanford again on Saturday, I’ll be watching big time matchups like Ohio State vs. Texas and LSU vs. Ole Miss until we host our own big time matchup with Oklahoma in three weeks, and I’ll be gearing up for another generational hate watch as Georgia Tech plays Tennessee, where either way I come out on top. Maybe, eventually, we can focus on the games played at hand. Or maybe not.
At the very least, this new foreign world still beats watching Tua Tagovailoa play quarterback for the NFL franchise just down the road in Flower Branch, but alas.
Maybe the season isn’t the main course at the dinner reservation anymore, where we fill ourselves with good tastes and memories, maybe it’s more like going out to the bar, drinking away our problems and forgetting about the wrongs of the world until we wake up with a hangover the next morning. Well maybe it’s not that either. A judge might say you’re ineligible for Advil and Gatorade. Or maybe then an NIL collective tries to put your Liquid IV behind a paywall. In this era of college football, who knows at this point.
In 264 days, race car summer returns. Until then, may the Braves shock the world and the Dawgs in the NFL do well. Goodnight everyone.
