College football Week 1 thread

Why would they want to get rid of tailgating? Are they insane, or just have big sticks up their asses? That's Dean Wormer stuff right there.

 

Pitt plays at Heinz Field, which is on the North Shore and slowly transforming the surface lots into parking garages with restaurants and bars at the ground level. Since the Rooney family owns a sizable portion of this real estate they sure as hell would rather people patronize these establishments rather than BYOB it at a tailgate. Stiller fans are gonna' see their tailgating go away eventually as well, they just don't realize it yet.

when Pitt agreed to move into the Steelers then-new stadium with a shotgun pointed at its head the selling point was superior tailgating than what was available at old Pitt Stadium. When they're finished developing that section of the city, they'll be about the same.

 

More schools are now selling alcohol inside the stadium, no longer allowing food in, no in and out privledges. It's all about retaining more money.

 

It's about a six-hour commitment, including transportation, to go to a football game. (Five hours for students on campus.)

There's like 20 games I want to see in whole or in part on TV in that time.

 

Because BC is surrounded by neighborhoods and fans have to park and shuttle bus to games, there's no tailgating except for a select group of season ticket holders. Consequently, not so many fans show up. They actually had to stop letting people in after the game's first 10 minutes because in my day, the students and alums wouldn't bother to enter the alcohol-free stadium until the second quarter.

 

If I gotta miss every other great CFB game on TV to sit at a game for $35-50 a pop, I'd better have the following:

A real seat. Not a bench. A seat with a cupholder.

A food/drink voucher. I'm not paying those prices for a beer and a hot dog.

Video screens that show me other games during timeouts. I don't care about your in-house ads.

Real-time updated scores.

Excellent wi-fi.

So, obviously, I'm not going to CFB games because stadiums don't offer these things in total. They might offer some of those things. Not all of them.

College basketball is different. Tickets are cheaper, game takes less time, you're not all wrapped up in the other games going on.

 

I have 37 games awaiting me Saturday. Also have access to free or cheap tickets to a handful of Power 5 openers within a couple of hours. I’ll stay home. By far the best experience.

 

Isn’t Alabama downsizing its stadium? That tells you all you need to know about the state of the modern in-person experience vs. at-home viewing.
The issue is not that your favorite team’s games are televised; it’s that every game is televised.

 

A longtime AD at an SEC school was a mentor of a close friend of mine; the AD recently told my friend to get the hell out of the college athletics industry because a tsunami of change is soon coming that will result in the P5 CFB programs being spun off from the schools themselves and into their own galaxy, where the players will be paid and the programs will serve officially as an NFL minor league, and the programs will be sponsored by the schools, but the players will not have to be students.

This is a plan the AD has been briefed on by a major TV network.

 

If that's true, we must all ask ourselves: Would we still watch as much as we do now?

 

Worst use of resources in college sports in the past 25 years: I've got UConn football. They went in for a stadium. No sooner did they do so than the seismic shifting of conference realignment effectively killed the Big East as a football brand. They'll be paying for the place for years, I imagine.
Curious as to what others think.

 

UCF’s Aaron Robinson stretchered off after first play of 2018