re: College football is dying a slow death

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Welcome to semi-pro football - greed is destroying the sport

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And this is the crux of the matter. Every minor change to the sport since the 80s has led to this. It started with the CFA lawsuit which forbade the NCAA from limiting the amount of televised games a team could play in during a given year. This opened the door for the conferences to sign their own television contracts to bring more money and exposure to their schools. This seemed like a good idea at the time, but this would end up leading to an explosion in the amount of money dumped into the athletics department.

Then you had the rise of ESPN in the 90s and the "Quest for #1" which began with the advent of the Bowl Coalition. It wasn't just enough to beat your rival and go to a good bowl game anymore. Now you had to always be competing for a national championship. The Bowl Championship Series brought more money and exposure to the sport of college football, increasing the amount of money dumped into the game with the assistance of an ascendant ESPN.

Colleges began dumping more and more money into their football program thanks to these sweet new TV deals the conferences made with the television networks. Head coaches saw their salaries continue to rise and, as all of this was happening, everyone started to ask why the student-athletes weren't seeing any returns on the multi-billion dollar deals that were being made on behalf of their play on the field.

College football should have remained as it was in the 70s and 80s. We should have been forced to listen to our favorite team play on the radio with only one or two televised appearances a year to keep us satisfied. If this had happened, all the greed we see in the sport now would not exist.