Open membership

College football's elite group grows larger every season

Louisville beat Florida State Thursday night. This is a very cool thing, not only for the Louisville fans who turned the field into a postgame mosh pit, but also for anybody who has been seriously paying attention to the ebb and flow of the college football power structure for the last decade and a half. You can call Louisville's victory an upset if you like, but it is one only in the strictest sense. College football has changed, and the definition of an upset must change with it.

(There's another issue here, too: Florida State is not quite Florida State anymore. I agree with ESPN's Kirk Herbstreit, who intimated Thursday night that the Seminoles possess a bit less swagger and intimidation these days. Got that right. During the 'Noles' incredible run through the 1990s, they were a fearsome combination of talent and organization. They were a program, in the purest sense of the word; a steamroller, perhaps even more so than Nebraska. But then Bobby Bowden lost assistants Chuck Amato to North Carolina State and Mark Richt to Georgia, and I think that sliced a little of the heart out of his program. You slip a little in college football, you slip a lot. Ask Frank Solich.)

The bigger picture: College football will never be college basketball, where every game is an upset waiting to happen and a school like Gonzaga can nearly get to the Final Four every year. (Of course, college football has no Final Four, which is another issue -- and a thorny one, too).

College football will always have a power elite. You know the names: Tennessee. Penn State. Oklahoma. Texas. A bunch of others. The usual suspects, having good years (Notre Dame) and bad (Colorado), but never disappearing altogether. Because college football programs operate like corporations (basketball programs operate like the neighborhood pizza joint, by comparison), the size of the stadium and the size of the budget will always dictate that the biggest and boldest have an advantage. This used to mean that nobody else really had a chance. You could pencil in the Top 25 in March and feel pretty good about it.

But that's no longer the case, for a number of reasons. I'm not saying that college football is wide open. In most years, a power program is still likely to win the national championship. The difference is that there won't be 10 power programs sitting in the top 10, duking it out like an intramural swim meet. Every year, more power programs will struggle and lose games. Mathematics dictate that one of them will survive. But the odds get longer.

The reasons: Old saws like scholarship limitations and television deregulation, which prevented power schools from stockpiling players and dominating the airwaves. And fresher reasons, too: Good coaches are less inclined to shun a seemingly difficult coaching environment. Sonny Lubick has built a terrific program at Colorado State, John L. Smith has done likewise at Louisville (which, in fairness, has a proud football history but had never won a game like Thursday night's). Talented players are landing in odd places. Take Louisville quarterback Dave Ragone, who was only mediocre for much of Thursday night's game but whose accuracy and cojones on the tying drive early in the fourth quarter were spectacular. Tell me he's not better than Florida State's Chris Rix.

Last weekend Cincinnati almost beat Ohio State. Michigan almost went down at home to Utah. (Don't get me started on Michigan.) Think about that Thursday night game: Florida State at Louisville; night game; on the road; national cable television audience; opponent has a good QB; biblical rains. Upset? I don't think so.

Next Saturday Connecticut plays at Miami. If UConn wins, now that would be an upset.

Sports Illustrated senior writer Tim Layden is a regular contributor to CNNSI.com. Click here to send him a question or comment.

 

Related information

Stories

Tim Layden's Insider Archive

Multimedia

Visit Video Plus for the latest audio and video