Randy Smith: College Football: A Glimpse Into The Future

The year is 2050. College football is now a trillion dollar a year business with games being played all over the globe each season. The SEC no longer exists....neither does the Big Ten or the Pac 12. They were all abandoned when the FBS schools broke away from the NCAA several years ago and formed a new Professional League of College Football. The league is made of four groups based upon the area of the country. There is the Northwest Region, the Southwest Region, the Northeast Region and the Southeast region. The top four teams in each region meet each year in the College Football Playoffs forming a field of 16 teams playing in a post-season tournament. The National Championship Game is now played in March, because the regular season has to begin in October due to the extreme heat brought on by climate change.

Nick Saban, now 98 years old is still coaching at Alabama. He now has 33 national titles and has won 512 games. He shows no sign of slowing down.(There are rumors that Saban died years ago but Alabama has propped him up on the sidelines and refuses to admit he is no longer with us.)  Lane Kiffin is now the Commissioner of the Professional League of College Football. He recently announced he is retiring at the end of the 2050 season and will be replaced by a woman who has had a long career of running her own business  and turning it into a hugely successful enterprise. (The league needs a commissioner with a strong business sense because Kiffin had been accused of skimming money from the league, though no one was ever able to prove it.) 

The game has changed drastically since 2040 when running the ball was limited to just 12 plays per game, due to a lack of quality running backs. Points are scored at a very high rate because of Kiffin's rule changes that stated plays had to be run every twenty seconds or penalties would be assessed. A typical game score now is 90-70, with long touchdown passes of 70 yards or longer, counting eight points each. Extra points are now from 35 yards away and defenses can be assessed points for holding teams to negative yardage in a series, though few defenses can hardly stop the game's high powered passing attacks.

In Knoxville, Neyland Stadium now seats 130,000 fans as it has been expanded and remodeled for the twentieth time in 2045. There are plans in place for another expansion in 2055. Each school must now play one game per season in Europe and there are now plans for a 200,000 seat stadium that can be used for soccer or football in England and there are also plans to expand the league to include teams from London, Paris and Athens Greece.

By the way, the NFL no longer exists because players could make more money playing college football than they could playing in the old professional ranks. The league's top players now receive a billion dollars a year or more and they can play as long as they are healthy. (By the way Tom Brady went back to the college ranks years ago and is still playing in his 70s.)

By the way, the 2025 season is just a few weeks away so be patient.