NCAA... Let It Be!

Opinion: With the landscape of college sports constantly changing, it's hard for fans to fully enjoy it... hear me out.

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​If you didn’t hear, the ACC just announced a 9-game football schedule, and like me, it had a lot of college football fans, say “ok?”
 
But why?

​Photo from Reddit: “Dream College Football Conferences”

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‘Will this change our rivalries? Will this hurt my favorite sport?’ NCAA, I’ll be the one to say it, please just stop.
 
Stop confusing us. Conferences - stop changing rules, and schedules, and everything we know about the college sports that we love.
 
You know what made the PS5 so exciting, because they waited 7 years to release it, everyone wanted it. College football is becoming like the iPhone to me. Way too many updates and a new phone every year. Sure, the product is shiny and exciting, but can’t we just enjoy it for a while, before the next one comes out right away?
 
Over the past 5 years, so many teams have switched conferences that some barely exist anymore. Take the Pac-12 conference, for example, which in 2023 had 12 teams. It currently has only... 2. And starting next year, they’ll have 9. But actually… only 8 in football. Honestly, how do you keep up!
 
Especially in college football, it has become so easy to find loopholes that there are no waiting periods for anything. It used to take years for things like that to happen.
 
In the new era of college football, colleges care more and more about gaining players in the transfer portal Just this month, the NCAA changed the transfer portal rule again… now there's only a period in the winter, but then it came out that if your coach gets fired mid-season, you can transfer in a special period.
 

​Photo by 247Sports: Example of Transfer Portal Rankings

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​We won’t even dive into NIL, but there are literally no rules at all anymore. All these constant changes, you think might be helping the game, while in fact, they make even the die-hardiest of college football fans, confused and annoyed.
 
All the switching is ruining the fan experience, and I’m exhausted.