CFB adapts in times of major change
— -- College football these days lives in zero gravity. It's not that the playing rules of the game are changing. It's that the rules of intercollegiate athletics themselves are no longer connected to Mother Earth.
In the last week alone, half of the FBS took flight, ready to start delivering more benefits to its student-athletes; one day later, a federal judge in California ruled in the O'Bannon case that football and men's basketball players should be compensated for the use of their names, images and likenesses to the tune of at least $5,000 per year.
The NCAA, like a coach down five touchdowns and unwilling to pull his starters, will appeal the O'Bannon ruling. The changes won't take effect for two years, which is a good thing because, in the immediacy of the ruling, no one is sure about how to implement the most radical change to intercollegiate athletics in recent memory.
Those two events have overshadowed the arrival of the College Football Playoff, otherwise known as the Christmas, Hanukkah and Fourth of July of every college football fan. For the first time in history, the season will conclude with a four-team playoff. That appears to be a cause for public celebration, even if Joe Fan remains unsure of how the College Football Playoff is different from the BCS, or why Condoleezza Rice's opinion of Ohio State is suddenly more important than his.
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