Yes, the College Football That You Love Still Exists

“I miss the OLD college football!”

“What happened to the game I love?”

College football has become a different planet. There’s a transfer portal. There’s a 12-team playoff. There’s NIL. People are playing in the NFL or may be eligible soon, begging for another year. There are corporate advertisements on jerseys and fields, and fans clutching their pearls because the sacred…. Pop-Tarts Bowl doesn’t matter to some anymore.

It is different. It’s unrecognizable in many aspects. It’s led the old men who like to yell at clouds to disavow the sport entirely because they want to be mad at something.

The layers that have made it essentially a professional league, along with the drama that is not related to the actual sport, have made us forget about not only what is still beautiful about it, but also the history that is repeating itself in real time.

The clichés that we, and the old men yelling at clouds community, love about “the good old days” still exist in the sport today.

“He’s Got a Little Baker Mayfield in Him”- Sam Leavitt, LSU

Baker Mayfield was the ultimate chip-on-the-shoulder guy. The swag, the moxie, the “everyone counted me out” narrative, and the plays he makes when it seems like he has to make something out of nothing. The 4-year Heisman winner we love to say, “He’s got a little Baker Mayfield in him!” any time we see somebody who embodies that sort of spirit in college football.

Did you watch Sam Leavitt in week one against LSU? We thought he was essentially handicapped, given how he was talked about transferring from a down season at ASU to LSU via the portal, and the 6’2 gunslinger with wheels made Dabo Swinney and Clemson pray for forgiveness. He threw for over 200 yards, ran for more than 100, and has absolutely no regard for his personal safety in the process (we’ll see how long this is sustainable). He leaves it all on the field in the same way that Baker always has, despite someone once meme-ing him as “white Lamar”.

The Uniform Matchup That Looks Like an ESPN Classic // UCLA vs. USC

There’s been an Oregon-ization of the college landscape where the Nike factory school isn’t the only one to have an alternate uniform that people get mad about each week, but more than that, it feels awful watching what could be a classic game, and then the lasting memory of the game is that the team wasn’t wearing their iconic getups at the time; we love the grainy footage and watching the schools play in what’s picturesque and could be found on the old ESPN Classic channel.

And oh baby, we could potentially get a great one on November 28th. The USC-UCLA rivalry is one that has rarely had seasons where both schools are humming right at the same time, or caring about football for that matter, and this might be the year where new coach Bob Chesney has revitalized the Bruins program and QB-whisperer Lincoln Riley gives us a shootout between Nico Iamaleava and Jayden Maiava in a Los Angeles sunset where those beautiful UCLA blues are matched up against the cardinal and gold in a rivalry game that might mean something. Bill Walton would’ve loved this.

The Anti-Coach // Mike Elko, Texas A&M

There’s been a pushback against coaches in the modern era, be it excuses about the portal or not having enough NIL funds, jumping from job to job because the grass is always greener, or just simply because Curt Cignetti pulled off a modern miracle, you now have fans calling for your firing within one bad season.

We have the anti-modern coach who would have thrived in the golden era of college football: Mike Elko at Texas A&M. Coaching at a university that may live in its own world more than any other hasn’t bothered him in the slightest. He’s openly telling the fans and players that they have an empty trophy case. He’s asked for a quote about expansion and plays it off by giving us the honest truth: “no one cares what I think,” and “anyone that gives these quotes and excuses is trying to preserve themselves.” Elko wants to preserve himself by doing what? Winning with what he’s got. It’s so incredibly Mike Leach but in a brickhouse sort of way.

College Gameday // Whatever You Choose

There’s been a lot of “THIS IS NOT MY COLLEGE GAMEDAY!” pregame show talk. Lee Corso is no longer putting on a headgear selection pick. Kirk Herbstreit is profiting off of his dog. Pat McAfee is doing pro wrestling speeches next to Nick Saban. They even had Ted Cruz keep talking, and keep getting booed, in a segment throughout Austin.

But you know what? There are enough College Gamedays out there now that whatever you believe, whatever you watch, whatever you want to listen to, someone with a microphone can say exactly what you want to hear!

“The Sport Is Better When ______ Is Good!” // Miami

It’s one of the biggest clichés in sports. We love the big brands. We love people caring. We love the slick uniforms. We’ve said that about the U for years after the glory days of the 90s and early 2000s, only for them never to win an ACC title or play at a stadium so far from campus that it feels like no one is there.

Now we’ve got the U humming again. Following their National Title appearance, they’ve got Darian Mensah throwing to Malachi Toney, a supercharged Tyreek Hill in terms of size, who does the Heisman pose after every touchdown and is nicknamed Baby Jesus, and people are just okay with it. They’ve got a similar disrupter, bad-boy aura to what they had with Mario Cristobal, a grizzly bear who builds through the trenches. It feels like the same sort of team we enjoyed previously.

The Villain off the Field // Texas Tech

We love a good scandal and getting to boo a university for reasons not related to football! Texas Tech trying to jump the line into being a blue blood with oil money for recruits, vouching for a quarterback who gambled on his own team, and playing a YMCA schedule to get into the playoff fits the bill!

The Villain on the Field // Michigan

It is hilarious how one clock controversy that let Bryce Underwood, the $12 million quarterback, throw a Hail Mary and steal a win from G6 neighbor Western Michigan in Week 1 united the rest of the country to root against the Wolverines. This is a blue-blood team regrouping with only an 8.5-win total going into the season, but the B1G refs gifting them a second to pull off a miracle and the fans storming the field have made the entire nation want their heads on a spike. Then, of course, they end up getting a ranked win against Oklahoma in one of the ugliest fashions possible.

The Pac-12 After Dark Team // Cal

One of the best aspects of the old Pac-12 conference was when you’d go to sleep, get up to get a glass of water or something in the middle of the night, and suddenly realize that two West Coast teams with gunslinging quarterbacks and no defenses are in a chaotic war when you thought the day was over; now, schools like Washington are playing at high noon in Lincoln.

The spirit of the old-school Pac-12 after dark ironically lives on in the ACC. It’s the California Golden Bears. Week 1, they lost valiantly in this sort of game against UCLA (a B1G team!) while everyone was sleeping, and Jaron-Keawe Sagapolutele, AKA JKS, is the Michael Penix Jr. lefty darling that can sling it in Tosh Lupoi’s system. Go to bed, wake up to tinkle or something, and check that you’re not missing the Calgorithm in a shootout.

Tebow Lite // Drew Mestemaker, Oklahoma State

Tim Tebow embodied a cultural presence off the field that no one will be able to replicate in terms of his revolution. But the non-traditional path, the underdog story, the warrior, the player that you’re not entirely sure that he’s actually good but is good? That’s Drew Mestemaker at Oklahoma State. The 0-star recruit who never started a varsity high school game got into a North Texas bowl game via opt-outs, slung the rock for over 4,000 yards, and is now competing in a major conference.

The detractors will tell you he’s not actually a Heisman contender. They were cursed with the “they could be this year’s Indiana” tagline after following the same model of bringing over the entire roster from Denton to Stillwater. Still, even after a loss to Tulsa, he left it all on the line and got a win over a title-contender in Oregon week 2. Get zesty for Mesty.

Getting to Blame the Refs

Lost in the art of yelling at each other about realignment, playoff expansion, paying players, rostering NFL players, and everything off-the-field related? We love to be able to complain about the refs together. It’s a thankless job, but someone has to do it.

There’s something kind of comforting about it, since you know for a fact that there were old men in suits who didn’t like a call made by an umpire in a game where Tungsten Arm O’Doyle threw a pitch that was supposed to be called outside the strike zone, and we still get to have those same sorts of complaints today.