Why Is College Football So Angry Right Now?

Inside the CFP outrage, opt outs and remembering what college football is meant to teach.

ChatGPT would say that there are roughly 6 fundamental emotions - Anger, Disgust, Fear, Happiness, Sadness and Surprise.

As you watched the College Football Playoff reveal its final rankings am curious which one you felt the most?

I watched the show within the walls of the least talked about and quietly the most dangerous team in the CFP, the Oregon Ducks.

They host a CFP game on January 20th at 4:30 PST as Bob Chesney, UCLA’s new head coach, brings his current/former team JMU to Autzen. I got to spend some time with Dan Lanning talking about his preparation, what it was like for him to take one job (Oregon) while leading a CFP team (Georgia) in the CFP a few years ago, as well as lessons learned from last year’s CFP run in a conversation that will air on Big Ten Network Sunday night.

After our interview I took some time at my favorite cafe in Eugene, Meraki, opened my laptop and started to read the extremely loud, angry, happy, disgusted and surprised takes on-line. Not from only fans, but from well respected journalists and friends who love the game.

One thing was certain–no one was truly happy.

Look, let’s be real, college football has been chaotic since 2020. The pandemic, NIL, realignment, and the portal. Add in buy outs, insane contracts, firings and drama from Oxford and this year has been equally ridiculous off the field. I’d add in Tuesday nights over the past month with the CFP rankings to the uneasy nature of the game in 2025.

It’s almost as if the sport cannot find any quiet space to just ‘be.’ Or as we like to say around here, ‘stay steady.’ It’s an up and down drama and pseudo circus off the field at times. But on the field the games have been everything we hoped for.

This weekend was another example. The Big Ten title felt like the National Title, the ACC had an upset that no one saw coming, the SEC saw domination that is rarely seen in the game and the Big 12’s most expensive roster proved they were legit on the gridiron.

So what do we do now?

I think we need to have an uncomfortable conversation that centers around 1 question: ‘Why are we so angry within college football?’.