College Football Pick of the News
Round up
College basketball has taken centre stage this week with March Madness up and running. Whilst I don’t mind watching some of it, I am trying to keep my focus on the oval-shaped ball rather than the bouncy one! However, I must admit to a little attention shift and therefore I’ve written a slightly different article, where I go through my pick of recent college football news.
Time Zone Impacts
An interview with Washington Huskies Head Coach Jedd Fisch caught my attention this week where he talked about the impacts of travel on his players. Coach Fisch was flagging that from where Washington are based (West coast) they have to make road trips into Easterly time zones, sometimes across 3.
This might be fine when games are played later in the day. But a midday kick off Eastern time would be 9am for a West Coast Player’s body clock. Working this back further they would need to get players up at “4am” on the road to have their pre-game meal at “5am” to play at “9am” body-clock time!
”Who brought the breakfast muffins??”
Embed from Getty ImagesA schedule like that doesn’t scream “peak athletic performance” and might explain some of the Huskies’ road performances last year, perhaps. This included road losses at Rutgers, Iowa, Penn State and Indiana.
I have never really thought about this as a thing. In UK sports we do not have to deal with timezones and the NFL does not normally have early kick-offs to that extent. Looking at a map of the Big Ten you can see the issue. Please excuse my handwriting once again:
At the time of writing there is a one hour shift between the time zones.
The Pacific Time Club
The Huskies will not be alone in having this issue, as it would also impact Oregon, UCLA and USC. To my point above it didn’t seem to impact Oregon last year, who went unbeaten in the regular season.
Looking at the above, 8 teams sit in the Eastern time zone with 6 in the Central time zone. The above 4 are in the Pacific time zone.
There is some impact on East-coast teams going West (where games will feel later to them) but perhaps with not the same severity.
Sympathy will be in short supply for the Huskies as, along with the other teams mentioned above, they all chose to leave the PAC-12 and join the Big Ten. But the point Coach was making was not so much the travel but the TV scheduling of the games. The influence of the TV rights holders with the conferences was his main focus. Ultimately, they are the ones paying the bills and we see the same in the UK Premier League with some occasional strange scheduling.
If I am reading Coach’s comments correctly, he seems to be suggesting a window of 3pm-5pm kick offs for these cross-time zone games. This is unlikely to fly with the TV scheduling.
What to do?
There was probably a reason the conferences all started off regionally aligned in the first place. Whether you agree or disagree with conference realignment, this is one of the byproducts of that decision.
Should the NCAA give this some thought and step in? One could argue they should on player welfare grounds. The argument being that it is not great getting a young athlete to perform under those conditions. This is unlikely to happen, however.
Could teams leave a day or two earlier? This is not particularly practical. They do leave a day or so before a game but these players still have academic commitments. There are also a large number of support staff to transport to games.
Therefore, the only answer for these teams is to give themselves as much time to acclimate as possible and take away best practices from each trip to ensure they are as prepared as possible..
Spring Games are still a thing!
My last article discussed the gradual disappearance of the spring game so it was nice to hear Coach Fisch state the opposite position that he wants Spring Practice and games to be as accessible as possible. He flagged the fact that fans pay good money to support the team and should be supported in return with as much access as possible. Well done him! Washington’s spring game is scheduled for 2nd May.
In addition, Coach Prime at Colorado announced that he wanted to play an outside team for his Spring Game. He prefers a NFL-style where a visiting team joins training for a few days before a game. Syracuse look keen to take them up on the offer and the pair have approached the NCAA. Watch this space!
As per the Washington position, I do think more access to training and spring games is good for the fans. I agree that teams probably don’t want to play a divisional rival or someone on the schedule in Spring time but there must be alternatives out there.
NIL Payments from EA Sports
The final pick of the news stories was broken by Chris Vannini at the Athletic. It related to NIL payments made by EA Sports to players in the next CFB26 video game.
The CFB video game series, as you can imagine, is the college football version of the EA Sports FC series we might know for football in the UK.
EA Sports have doubled the payment players will receive for participation in the game. My understanding of how this works is that the players apply to have their likeness used in the game. They can take advantage of this by registering (opting in) on an app.
It is reported that EA Sports have invested $16.5m in NIL payments for players, signalling their commitment to do the right thing in the era of NIL. And so they should, given CFB25 was a great commercial success with gamers.
This is great for the players and I like the fact that the reward is spread across all players on the game, albeit there are additional payments available for selected ambassadors.
I have not really written about NIL yet on the blog but will do so in the coming weeks.
