ESPN’s College GameDay has cemented itself as the cornerstone of college football Saturday. It’s become the premiere Saturday morning showcase of the sport’s pomp and circumstance, and it’s also a celebration of what people love about the sport.
Sometimes, however, it can turn into a collection of old Boomers yelling at clouds about “the kids today” and how things were better in their day.
Saturday was one of those days.
College football’s rivalry week contained a lot of highly anticipated matchups that lived up to that hype. It also contained several instances of chippy behavior, flag-planting, and on-field fracases between players.
During and after those incidents, college football pundits shared their disappointment and frustrations.
The College GameDay desk can sometimes be a source of appreciation but other times be a bully pulpit. Saturday, Kirk Herbstreit and Desmond Howard used it to call for change in the sport. However, as they’ve done in the past, they both seemed to be under the impression that none of the issues plaguing the current iteration of college football were present in their day.
As for Herbstreit, the former Ohio State player used his time to call for a “return to civility and just sportsmanship” and floated a rule to prevent flag-planting.
Michigan man Howard shared similar sentiments, though he spent a lot of time presenting a vision of how college football used to be that probably only exists in his head.
“I would have a bigger problem with my players going out there starting a fight… Our teams would never do that because we had too much respect for Coach Schembechler, for Coach Moeller… We just took that ‘L.'” – Desmond Howard. pic.twitter.com/nKgJe9eyUe
— Awful Announcing (@awfulannouncing) December 7, 2024
“I’m all about celebrating, right?” said Howard. “They celebrate everything nowadays. If they get a first down, you would think they scored a touchdown. They scored a touchdown, you think they won a Super Bowl. Then if they win a game, that’s the way of celebrating. To me, that’s the culture now.
“I always have a problem with the reaction. Say if a group of guys go in the end zone and they start to do their thing posing, and say the other team comes in and starts to fight, like what happened with the flag planning, do you say, well, now you can’t entertain the posing in an end zone? No, because they’re not wrong. You may not like what they did. You may not like that they planned a flag, but they’re not wrong. The wrong people are the one who goes and starts to instigate a fight. Those are the guys who are wrong. I would have a bigger problem with my players going out there starting to fight.”
“Our teams would never do that because we had too much respect for Coach Schembechler, for Coach Moeller, for our coaches. So we never do it. We just take that L. But now there’s a culture where, and we’re discussing this, I’m almost like, well, it’s okay that they went out there and started that ruckus.”
Howard then said that he thinks the solution here is to fill the stadium with police officers who can break up any potential fights between teams, which is a whole other can of worms.
“I agree with you 100%, Kirk. I think every stadium’s job is to protect the players. I don’t care how many officers you need to employ. But what happened, especially in Columbus, because that’s the only place where it happened, and they actually used, I don’t know, pepper spray, whatever it was on players, which is over the line to me. You have to have enough officers, security, whatever the case may be, to break up that situation. If it’s planting the flag, if it’s guys want to go out there and pose, whatever it is that causes the ruckus, you should immediately be able to take care of that.”
It’s comical for Howard to say that “the culture now” is over-celebrating first downs and touchdowns. Only someone who never watched college football in the 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s would think this wasn’t the case back then as well. Perhaps Desmond would like to watch The U at some point?
The GameDay crew wields a lot of power in the world of college football. Often they use it for good, but every so often they seem to think they’re responsible for “fixing” the sport. Those fixes usually come in the form of scolding players, who are often painted by Howard and Herbstreit as uncaring, selfish, and too busy texting and/or playing video games.
There’s a conversation to be had about the extent of rivalry and the state of “civility” in the sport, especially in the modern age of player autonomy and billion-dollar TV deals. The solution comes from the players and coaches themselves, not from reactionary rules and surrounding the field with armed cops.
There’s a way to have that conversation that includes players instead of a bunch of old guys yelling at clouds.
[ESPN]
