Must be a southern thing. I live in a college football crazy town in a college football crazy state (Nebraska) that has won multiple national championships and I never heard that phrase in relationship to college football before today. FWIW around here a “natty” is a Natural Light beer.
Never heard it that way either.
I’m guessing they think it sounds like “we are so familiar with being national champs that we can abbreviate it”? kinda nonsense?
Never heard that in Columbus, OH either.
Imagine jock-ish fratboys looking like Dollar Store versions of Dan Cortese adopting the casual phrase “Natty”, and then a legion of insecure, never-cool George Costanzas on college football message boards jumping in on that full force to align themselves with their mancrushes by carrying said word/phrase forward.
That’s true here too.
I don’t know, I noticed it the first time we played Alabama in the championship too.
Yes, if you ever make the mistake of visiting r/CFB you’ll see “Natty” thrown around freely. In other news…
https://www.ohio.com/news/20190107/goodyear-blimp-being-inducted-into-college-football-hall-of-fame
I remember seeing the Spirit of Akron descending, and my dad finding the right street to head down to get up close on the crash site. The homeowners were none too pleased at 1) the giant blimp that landed in their yard and 2) the mass of people who wanted to see said giant blimp.
I think in college stats getting sacked counts as negative yards for the QB, so it probably hasn’t been too long since a Bama QB had negative yards. Until the last few years Bama played mainly pro style stay in the pocket QBs.
The original impetus for a college football playoff was to make sure the championship was awarded to the best team, as determined by play on the field rather than by a vote.
But now, because we’re faced with 'Bama-Clemson VI in a couple of years, I’m seeing more arguments for expanding the playoffs to make things “more interesting”.
Such as:
So let’s at least make this more interesting. Let’s make it another layer more challenging. Let’s give them a third playoff game they must win. Let’s give them a quarterfinal to spice things up a little.
Let’s borrow from March Madness and introduce the element of surprise.
and:
I’m not complaining, really - I just find the shift from ‘find the true champion’ to ‘give us upsets’ interesting. It is all about entertainment, after all.
Yeah I was in favor of moving to a playoff system, but was afraid it eventually might turn into something stupid like the basketball tourney. I really don’t want a bunch of teams in a playoff that don’t really belong there. I think 4 is good. I’d be open to 8 where the 5 conference champs are in plus 3 at large. There is no way more than 8 makes sense though and even 8 is too much most seasons.
The NBA has a 16 team playoff and it was Cavs-Warriors 4 straight years.
Football is a bit more random since there are fewer statistical trials, but it’s still kind of pointless. Just another set of unintended consequences to deal with.
No - the CFP came about because the BCS formula kept on choosing the “wrong” teams that didn’t maximize the money opportunity. The CFP is marginally better but doesn’t put enough into making sure interesting matchups occurs.
“Common Wisdom” was that Alabama was by far the best team in college this year and that they were going to sleepwalk to another title… and then they got blown out by Clemson, who people argued played a terrible schedule and maybe didn’t deserve to be the 2 seed. With 130 teams and only a dozen games it’s largely educated guessing about who is best since they can’t reasonably prove it on the field. A move to 8 would at least provide some better justification for who gets a chance to prove themselves. You either get invited by being the best team in your conference, or by proving as best you can on the field that losing the conference was a fluke.
The guy above me has it right. 130 College Football programs and you only let four play with a chance to win the title? IMO it’s just a way for them to continue to limit it to the teams they want to play for the title and not those who are qualified to do so.
Eight would, as noted above, also get you the five big Conference champions and three at large choices. That’s fair. It doesn’t need to go beyond that. The NFL lets in 12 teams out of 32. College Football should have eight. Beyond that I would agree that an upset is far less likely.
If the playoff selection committee was focused primarily on the money, they would have chosen Ohio State over Oklahoma. Oklahoma is by no means an insignificant TV draw, but they don’t pull ratings like Ohio State does. I’m not sure how the current system pulls more of a money opportunity than the BCS series did. Looking at the list of BCS championship game participants, only three or four were non-major conference champions and one of those was Notre Dame.
If you had done 8 this year you would have had Alabama, Clemson, Oklahoma, Ohio State, Washington, Notre Dame, Georgia, UCF. All of those teams excluding Washington and IMO UCF have a legitemate case for being there. That seems reasonable to me. You’ll still get complaints and arguments on who the 3 at large should be but there is nothing you can do about that.
Right, and really, the number nine will always create much less crowing about being left out than you have with the likes of Ohio State this year. The five big conferences should be represented in a playoff. The Bowl game structure is already dying and that’s ok. Whatever remains of that can keep on keeping on. Start the playoff after everyone gets one week off from their Conference championship game. Football watchers would eat it up, and feel like the end result is as real as it can be.
Basketball still has the NIT despite the huge swell in interest in the NCAA Tournament. Bowls are the NIT of football anyway and always will be.
Some of the folks at ESPN do this too, so I don’t necessarily see it as southern, just annoying.
Exactly. There’s no way the number nine team will have as strong a case as the one or two teams left out of the current playoff do.
I think that’s a Southern thing tbh. It’s just invading the ESPN speak because they are the home of College Football, and CF is nothing if not very focused below the Mason Dixon line in general save some Big Ten and West Coast schools.
I would really like to see it go to 8 teams. That way the main 5 conferences get a representative, you have room for an independent like Notre Dame, and room for one or two teams from a strong conference and a spot for an undefeated in another conference. Some years back that would be like a Boise State, and the past two years, UCF. That would give them a chance to prove it on the field if they have at least shown some strength during the season.