Schoffel: A time to reflect on changes in college football, and us as fans

With all of the fundamental change and upheaval in college football the past few years, this holiday season feels like a good time to reflect on our complicated relationships with the sport.

To look back at what many of us feel were the glory days of college football and remember a time when all of our focus was on the events that took place on the field, not off of it.

Before conferences were in a constant state of flux, with university administrators chasing dollars from this league to that one, and when rosters were filled with players we cheered all the way from their recruitment through their senior years.

Some of the progress since those years gone by has been for the best.

The players receive better coaching and support, which leads to an improved product and makes them more marketable for the next level. We now can watch just about any game we want -- on a multitude of devices -- as opposed to being at the mercy of the few national TV games of the week. And we have an actual playoff system in place, which gives us a much more legitimate national champion than any process we had in the past.

At the same time, it's hard to not feel nostalgic when the Ghost of College Football Past comes around and reminds us of how fun college football was -- and how much we cherished it -- in decades past.

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The sacrifice back then was part of what made Saturdays in the fall so special.

Because not every game was on television, and because the home viewing experience was so lackluster, you longed for the opportunity to be inside those stadiums on game days. You didn't feel obligated to be there to support your team; there was nowhere you would rather be.

And you didn't care if the seats were metal bleachers. Or if they were way too cramped, with no leg room and a space barely wide enough for someone half your size. You weren't planning to sit much anyway.

And you embraced the elements, whether it was scorching heat at the Orange Bowl or freezing cold up in South Bend. It was a small price to pay, and it was going to give your story all the more flavor when you got back home to tell family and friends.

Speaking of flavor, the concession stands offered only the most basic of offerings -- hard pretzels, soggy hot dogs and watered-down Cokes -- but it was OK because you just needed something to hold you over until you could get to a restaurant after the game. I mean, who would ever expect fine dining at a college football game?!?

The action and pageantry were what you were there for. Not the amenities.

You wanted to see the big hits and the dazzling runs. The beautiful passes, acrobatic catches and emotional goal-line stands.

If you watched a game on TV -- and there was no guarantee that any particular game would be available -- you were at the mercy of the camera operators and directors.

Maybe they would show that defensive back get juked by a double-move before his receiver runs past him and hauls in a long pass; maybe they wouldn't. Perhaps they would catch the home team's coaches losing their minds on an official after a terrible call; perhaps they wouldn't.

But if you were there in person, you got to soak all of it in.

You heard the roar of the crowd when seemingly everyone in the stadium -- at the exact same moment -- recognized that the quarterback saw his receiver breaking free. And you jumped up and down with complete strangers when the ball landed perfectly in the wideout's hands as he raced into the end zone.

You loved the game-day experience so much that you thought nothing of piling into a car with friends for a 10-hour road trip. Sometimes, you had it planned it out in advance and ordered tickets ahead of time. Sometimes, you winged it. "We'll figure it out when we get there."

You didn't think twice about packing eight friends into a hotel room. It just meant more money for beer and pizza. "Sleeping on the floor sucks. But we've got seats on the 35 in Death Valley? Sign me up!"

You not only knew the players' names, but you knew their hometowns and their back stories. You read about them when they first signed out of high school, and you followed every step of their careers.

There were no one-year rentals out of the transfer portal; you knew you were going to see these guys develop over the course of four or five years. You'd watch them get picked on as freshmen or sophomores, learn from their mistakes and then become consistent performers as juniors and seniors.

And you cherished the fellowship and atmosphere of college football Saturdays. Tailgating in the parking lots. Trash-talking on the way in and out of the stadium. The commingled smells of suntan lotion, sweat and smuggled-in booze.

You enjoyed watching the mascots before the game and the marching bands at halftime. And when a timeout was called or there was a break in the action, you either finally grabbed a seat to catch your breath, or you looked around to see if there were any familiar faces in the stands around you.

You weren't mad about the spotty or non-existent wireless service, because you didn't even know what a smartphone was. You didn't feel the need to comment on social media about every big play, and you weren't bothered by not knowing up-to-the-minute scores from every game around the country. You were going to find out who won all of those other games when you got back home, or maybe on the car radio on the way there.

As much as you adored your team, you absolutely detested everything about your biggest rivals. And because their coaches had been there for so long, you had years and years of bad blood to stew over.

Of course, when coaches would make it to a Florida or Oklahoma or Tennessee back then, you knew they were going to stay there there until they got fired or retired; they didn't leave for another school. And because they weren't making $7 million or $8 million a year, they always got at least four or five years to build their programs -- to get their own players in the system. So more often than not, your rival's head coach was somebody you got to know intimately.

And your team played that rival every single season without exception. In many instances, you played them the same weekend every year -- or at the very least during the same month. Your school administrators would never have dreamed about changing conferences if it meant losing a rivalry that your parents and your parents' parents grew up watching.

Ah, that feels like such a long, long, long time ago.

College football has changed so much since then. And yet in some ways, the changes seem to be only beginning.

We have absolutely no way to know where things will go next with players getting paid for their Name, Image and Likeness. The sport not only has a playoff now, but that playoff soon could be expanding to eight or 12 teams. Conference realignment hasn't stopped yet, and it might not ever until we blow everything up and organize it into a pro-style league with two or three super-conferences.

The NCAA still exists for now, but it's anybody's guess for how long. And this new era of player free agency, which has been brought about by the transfer portal and the one-time transfer exception, may only be beginning to pick up steam.

For the most part, the only players transferring right now are those who want a starting job or want to play for a more high-profile program. What happens when a bunch of elite players decide to leave their respective schools and join forces to create a new "super team," like has become common in the NBA? That can't be too far down the road, can it?

While all of that change makes us uncomfortable, and sometimes makes us wonder if this is even still the same sport that we love, I think it's important to remember that we fans have changed as well. And in many ways, we have been the impetus for the greater upheaval.

Our impatience is why coaches don't get four or five years to establish their programs. If our team isn't winning, we stop going to games. And if we stop going to games, the schools feels pressured to bring in a new staff.

Our desire to be comfortable -- and connected -- at all times is why schools are spending so many millions of dollars to make the game-day experience more modern and enjoyable. If they don't, they fear we won't buy tickets anymore, and then it will become even tougher to compete financially.

And our desire to win at a championship level every year, and to accept nothing less, is why university presidents are constantly looking around to see if there's more money to be made with other conferences. Because no one wants to be left behind.

As 2021 comes to a close and we take stock of how college football has evolved over these last 20, 30 or 40 years, it's only natural to wonder with trepidation where things are heading next. And maybe even to lament how different the sport has already become.

The college football experience has changed, without question. As have the fundamentals of how rosters are constructed and maintained, and the way championships are decided.

But just because it's not the same, and it's not perfect, doesn't mean it's not worth our time and our passion.

It wasn't perfect back then, either.

It might just be that we were more willing to live with the imperfections.

Contact managing editor Ira Schoffel at ira@warchant.com and follow @IraSchoffel on Twitter.

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Talk about this story with other Florida State football fans in the Tribal Council