Politics and not just the fleeting optics of ravenous fanbases determine the revenue streams and ultimately the winners at the vortex of the NCAA sporting universe and the losers dying a slow painful death in the hinterlands of obscurity.
Pure pork barrel politics.
Combined with the traditions of regions, college football has lost all parity, and the athletic departments hamstrung by the indifference of “upper campus” and liberalized state and local policy face the inevitable fate of being marooned in perpetual mediocrity. While the NCAA flexes its pure brunt force bureaucratic procedures with the current farce of the College Football Playoff rankings dictating the championship field, the billions of dollars invested in maintaining a static infrastructure, results the rigid and obstinate tendencies of the tech hierarchy born from latency, seem like a paradise of tolerance congruent to sustainability.
Can Elon Musk purchase and fix the broken NCAA? He can certainly buy-off politicians.
With the ESPN factoring influencing the tapestry of the current power poll of dominate teams representing vast land tracks in the South and middle of the nation, everybody else participating is a has been, and things are not likely to change unless the revenues from the newly implemented Name Image and Likeness (NIL) program which infuses capital into the hands of student athletes is proportional to population magnitudes. However, the likelihood that this will transpire correlates to the number of tyrants running the show in the big metro areas, and the California quandary of lawmakers destroying competition and the pursuit of excellence by promoting diversity and the antithesis of winning. During the onset of the pandemic, the Santa Clara health department, an organ notorious for enacting restrictive measures, placed a limit on athletic participant capacities, which effectively killed football in the Bay area.
While the NCAA has discussed expanding the college football playoff field from four to twelve teams, until the new format is activated, the top heavy-burlesque lineup of big names, is as listless Rose Bowl parade protestors pushing for change in renaming Thanksgiving to Invader Day, the ceremony completed with Colombus tofu voodoo dolls as appetizers for the activists blocking the streets of Pasadena. The current top-12 NCAA College Football Playoff rankings includes only two teams from Blue states (California and Washington).
It should be about the players, and not the politics, however, a record number of FBS football athletes have entered the transfer portal, which gives individuals the opportunity to be released from scholarship commitments at institutions that are not designed, nor is there any desire to win. The correlation of ideology to the mass migration of student athletes is certainly disturbing, if not indicative of the ominous tribalism which afflicts the West coast and the Northeast. California-Berkley which as enjoyed some moderate success over the decade is the posterchild for a university that is surrounded by a plethora of football talent, but the culture and radicalized dogma are not aligned towards sustained success.
Add into the flavorless stew the perpetual wariness of the majority of the population in those regions still in fear of large gatherings, and game start times dictated by television revenue, and the vast monolithic grand stadiums hosting the shadows and ghosts of traditions are virtually empty on any given Saturday. Apparently, the liberal mentality favors inclusion over success, and this pathological condition is why society embraces participation trophy culture.
As college football is being morphed into a reverse weekend bad pick-up game, at least the athletes have the choice to win or not to win, while the fans unfortunately, are bound by the fabricated incredulous culture of the education royalty foisting the American nightmare behind the Ivy-covered walls upon society.