As regular-season games lose their luster, college football’s power brokers want to have their cake and eat it too

The NFL has everyone beat when it comes to greed, but the power brokers in charge of college football are certainly giving them a run for their money.

While constantly signaling how horrifying it is that football players have financial autonomy now, the people atop athletics programs, universities, conferences, and broadcasting partners have spent the last few decades in the kitchen, figuring out how to make the cake they’re baking as big as possible.

They finally found their way to a playoff and almost immediately set about expanding it (and have signaled that they’ll continue to do so until someone stops them). The conferences have consolidated and turned every major football program (and many of the mid-tier ones) into scurrying rats attempting to outrun the rising waters. And even then, those who hold the microphones on the networks will spend an inordinate amount of time trying to convince everyone that only particular schools are allowed to play these reindeer games while the rest are unworthy pretenders.

Coming off last year’s CFP, we’ve been inundated with messaging about how wins are no longer as important as the strength of your schedule. Nothing, apparently, is more critical than your regular-season schedule being as demanding as possible, so that when the time comes, everyone can rally around the 9-3 SEC juggernaut to make the playoff over the 11-1 media darling with a great story.

All of which has brought us here, to Week 5 of the 2025 college football season. On paper, it’s a college football fan’s dream. As the conferences contracted and realigned, coupled with the ever-increasing demands that teams play the toughest schedules possible, we now find ourselves with a slate of fantastic games with significant implications across the nation.

No. 6 Oregon takes on No. 3 Penn State in Happy Valley. No. 4 LSU battles No. 13 Ole Miss and No. 17 Alabama takes on No. 5 Georgia in SEC showdowns. No. 1 Ohio State and Washington meet in a battle of undefeateds. And there’s also No. 21 USC at No. 23 Illinois, Auburn at No. 9 Texas A&M, No. 11 Indiana at Iowa, No. 8 Florida State at Virginia, and so many more solid matchups.

You’d think college football power brokers and mouthpieces would be ecstatic. That this is the kind of thing they’ve been dreaming about for years.

And yet…

“Wouldn’t it be great if we had a commissioner’s office to just kind of like let’s spread some of these games out,” Kirk Herbstreit said on the SI Media with Jimmy Traina podcast. “I’m talking about the Alabamas, the Ohio States, the Texas, like the big blue blood brands. It makes no sense to have all these games on one weekend.”

Buddy, this is what you wanted. This is what you and the other college football shapers have been building towards for decades. You can’t suddenly say it’s “frustrating” when you finally get what you want.

We can see how Herbstreit and those in his position didn’t realize this is what they had been asking for all along. If you consider the demands and party lines we’ve been given over the years, it’s often been about the outcome. The Big Ten and SEC were only ever concerned with consolidating power. The demands of the playoffs were only ever about ensuring the bluest of bloods were involved. The realignment craze was always about cutting loose the lesser programs that were apparently weighing everyone down.

And so, when those things are your sole focus for a solid decade or two, you end up with weekly slates so chock-full of powerhouse showdowns that it’s hard to know what to focus on. Because you’ve told schools and conferences this is how they have to schedule every week, playing a game against a lowly opponent is akin to failure.

There is nothing a commissioner can do because where are they going to move these games? Every team noted above has at least three or four more games like this one on its remaining schedule. Some have more. There are “empty” weekends anymore.

Back before there was a playoff, this would have been seen as a positive. Because Penn State vs. Oregon in Week 5 would have been a do-or-die showdown. The winner still has a shot at a championship, while the loser can start prepping for Pasadena. Now? It almost doesn’t matter who wins. Both teams may meet again in December or January, regardless.

This is the situation the Herbstreits and the Greg Sankeys and the Paul Finebaums and the Bill Hancocks of the world have always said they wanted, even if they didn’t realize it. Now that they’ve got it, they’re “frustrated” by the abundance they’ve created.

There’s no making these guys happy, ultimately. That’s what greed does to you.