The College Football Playoff semifinals felt like the glory days of the sport

From the second that Pat McAfee, Desmond Howard and Joey Galloway breathed a sigh of aid after Rece Davis mentioned “naysayers” on School Gameday, the School Soccer Playoff semifinals have been off and operating. With Michigan taking over Alabama and Washington going up towards Texas, there have been nice expectations for the ultimate playoff earlier than growth.

The video games didn’t disappoint. Each of them have been selected the final play. Jalen Milroe was stuffed by Michigan on 4th and objective in additional time and Quinn Ewers’ go try on the final-final play of regulation was swatted away by Elijah Jackson. Two thrilling contests to finish the four-team system earlier than next-season’s 12-team market saturation playoff with the likes of 13-0 Liberty qualifying.

Watering down the method of crowning a champion with too many playoff groups is straight out of the playbook of the most important skilled sports activities leagues. School soccer adopting that revenue-boosting technique is simply the newest approach during which it’s permitting cash to remove from the spirit that makes it nice.

In fact injustice was rampant within the model of faculty soccer that existed pre-2021. The gamers have been ruled by novice guidelines, whereas the convention commissioners, colleges, sponsors and tv networks participated within the free market {of professional} revenue.

Whereas School soccer was extra enjoyable when the switch portal was not a perfect method to stack a roster, convention realignment within the early 2010s started to empty what was particular from the game. Syracuse went to the ACC, Maryland headed to the Huge Ten, and Nebraska, Colorado, Missouri and Texas A&M practically disintegrated the Huge 12 by bolting. Gamers having the liberty to vary packages makes school sports activities worse, however not practically as a lot as the hearth that the regional rivalries present being extinguished.

On New Yr’s Day 2024, although, school soccer felt like 1994. The Rose Bowl and the Sugar Bowl have been the featured occasions of the day. Washington taking part in in Pasadena and Alabama in New Orleans would have felt extra like proper, however Monday was not a day to be choosy.

That fabulous second-half sundown descended over the Rose Bowl which gave method to a rowdy night time on the Superdome. With the custom of those New Yr’s Day classics, mixed with nationwide championship implications, all the thrill was again from the times when school soccer gamers have been exploited.

Huge performs, huge errors and civic pleasure saved viewers’ eyes caught on the video games like a contraption from the Noticed franchise. These two contests didn’t want edible mascots or coaches getting a model identify product dumped on their heads to provide a recreation one thing for impartial observers to be considering apart from level spreads and over-unders.

Solely the lengthy school soccer halftime present gave viewers time to go away their seats and stretch on Monday night. With the Rose Bowl going into additional time, the Sugar Bowl started virtually as quickly as Jim Harbaugh was executed together with his on-field interview after the sport. The day started at 5 p.m. EST and ended at 12:45 a.m. It was not seven hours of commercial-free soccer, however practically eight hours of continuous adrenaline because the 4 greatest groups within the nation battled for a shot on the title in signature occasions.

Nonetheless, between Alabama knocking off Michigan, and Michael Penix Jr. beginning to launch dimes everywhere in the discipline in a 430-yard effort for the victorious Huskies, a Tide defender supplied a reminder of faculty soccer’s new capitalistic actuality. Dallas Turner is taken into account one of many prime pass-rushing prospects within the nation. He has eligibility remaining, however advised ESPN’s Alex Scarborough definitively that his school profession is over.

“I’m gone,” Turner mentioned to Scarborough. “Ain’t no, if, ands, or buts about it.”

A degree of honesty that he would doubtless not be comfy providing with out school soccer in its present state, and I might have appreciated it extra previously. Don’t give me that canned reply about having to debate the long run with household, coaches and others. Give everybody on the staff a hug and when requested concerning the future, say that it’s time to receives a commission.

New Yr’s Day 2024 had all of it. Rece Davis put his coworkers’ hearts of their throat whereas describing what Milroe means by the acronym LANK, and two of faculty sports activities’ most hallowed traditions began the yr off with a bang. The video games have been nice. The environments have been spectacular. And for just a few hours, sports activities followers received to expertise school sports activities the way in which that it was once with solely the most effective elements of what’s to come back.