*FAN SUBMISSION by Jarod Daily of Little Rock, Arkansas. Follow him on Twitter @jadaily.*
Courtesy: NBC 33 TV
Dear Football Gods: Thank you for letting this week be here, at long last. All the NCAA tourneys, NBA playoffs, College World Series, World Cup, regular season MLB and preseason MLB games just. Didn’t. Cut it.
So thank you for letting NCAA Football Opening Week be here at last. Amen.
And what an opening week it is. Hell, just Thursday alone has two games (two!) that I really want to see: Texas A&M at South Carolina is obviously a must-watch, but Ole Miss-Boise State in Atlanta has plenty of intrigue, too.
Every year, it seems like this weekend gets better and better, and that Rebels-Broncos game is part of why: neutral-site kickoff games are all the rage. This weekend, we also have Wisconsin-LSU in Houston, Florida State-Oklahoma State at Jerry World (sorry, AT&T, it’ll always be Jerry World to me), and Alabama-WVU, which is Atlanta’s main event to the Ole Miss-Boise undercard, so to speak. (Though I’d wager the latter will be a much better game.) We’ve also got Colorado-Colorado State in Denver, but that’s a different kind of neutral-site game.
Perhaps I should be thanking Chick-fil-A, not the Football Gods, for this lineup of unmitigated awesome. Sure, neutral-site kickoff were a thing in past decades: Before 2002 (the last year of the Kickoff Classic, held in the Meadowlands for about two decades, and also the last year for a couple of other similar matchups that were often not at neutral sites), teams that wanted to play 12 games had to play in one of these “classic” games.
These disappeared for a few years in the BCS era, when big-name teams were rewarded for being undefeated. But then Chick-fil-A brought them back in 2008, with an annual game (and two in 2012 and this year) in Atlanta between teams largely from outside of the Peach State (Georgia lost to Boise State in 2011). Increasing scrutiny on strength of schedule might have had something to do with this matchup’s success — or maybe it was just the boatload of bucks, or the football frenzy that is the Deep South. Perhaps ESPN just willed it to work. Actually, who cares why: The point is that this game succeeded so well that imitators popped up in short order.
The Cowboys Classic started in 2009, leaning heavily on teams who travel well to the D/FW Metroplex like Oklahoma, Oklahoma State, LSU, and local TCU (my alma mater), and has become a staple of the opening weekend. Over the years, we’ve seen matchups in places like Houston, Jacksonville, and suburban Washington, D.C.
These matchups, simply put, increase fan interest, which is the lifeblood of college football. Fan passion is one of the key elements separating college sports from professional sports, particularly in football. And in recent years, as fan interest in college football has exploded, so has the value of the business. Just ask ESPN. Or the Big Ten. Or anyone involved, really. (Except the athletes, but that’s a topic for another column.)
And there’s little that fans love as much as big games. Sure, teams in major leagues have several big games throughout the season. But some have a pretty light road until conference play starts. Take, for example, the 2014 Baylor Bears, who open up with SMU, Northwestern State, Buffalo, and a bye week before facing Iowa State, one of the weakest conference opponents. (Still, it’s an improvement over Baylor’s 2013 schedule, which featured only Wofford, Louisiana-Monroe and Buffalo before Oct. 5.) Schedules like this don’t exactly get the blood moving fan-wise, and sometimes teams can risk falling off the national radar if they don’t play a legitimate game before October. Big-time, neutral-site matchups can provide a big boost in this area.
With the College Football Playoff’s supposed greater scrutiny on strength of schedule, that might become an even bigger deal. Already, Pac-12 teams are getting a lot of media love for strong scheduling; we’ll see if that bears out when the selection committee gets down to work.
Hopefully, as the playoff becomes more established, teams will start really believing it’s worth their time to play tougher nonconference schedules, and we can get more of these “kickoff classic” style games. Because we fans really can’t get enough of ‘em. True, some fans of teams playing in one of them might prefer a home game, but I’d wager that for every fan that feels that way, there are two more who really like the bowl-like trip. And obviously, these big-time matchups are like crack for true college football junkies like me.
What I’d really like to see is more locations getting into the act, particularly in places like the West Coast, the Northeast, and the Midwest. Most of these games are in the South, where admittedly football is king (some might say god). I can’t help thinking that it might be really cool to see more of these outside that region. A few suggestions:
Soldier Field, Chicago: A really cool and historic venue in a great city that, because of its outdoor nature, likely will never host a bowl game. But the Windy City in August sounds A-OK to me. Throw in a Big Ten team (or Notre Dame) playing another Power Five foe, or possibly a top opponent from outside that group (Cincinnati, BYU, Boise State, et al), and you’ve got the makings of annual fun.
MetLife Stadium, East Rutherford, N.J.: The aforementioned Kickoff Classic worked in the Meadowlands from 1983 to 2002, so why not again? Much ado has been made in recent years about tapping into the New York City market for college football. It might help if the Big Apple saw more big games there. Alternately, Yankee Stadium in the Bronx might want to get in on the act, though there’s the little matter of baseball getting in the way.
Levi’s Stadium, Santa Clara, Calif.: Jerry Jones has proved that college football can be really fun in a new stadium; let’s see that formula replicated out west. Bonus: The Pac-12 has been scheduling tough nonconference matchups for years. Let’s just see one of those a year become neutral-site games.
That’s just three suggestions. Really, several cities could be ripe for the picking.
Come on, Football Gods, I beseech thee: Make these happen!
