The tradition of bidness

 Just caught up with Kirk Herbstreit's lament on SportsCenter the other day, when he declared college football to be an "arms race" that's "about the money," and that tradition has therefore been beaten senseless by the business of bidness.

It made me realize who Herbie is now.

He's that Japanese soldier who emerged from the jungle on Guam 30 years after the end of World War II, believing the war was still raging.

Like that poor soul, Herbie has emerged from the jungle to bemoan another war that's been over for at least 30 years: The war of money vs. everything else in college football. The Blob sympathizes, because tradition has always been what made college football superior to its professional counterpart, and why the Blob has always watched way more football on Saturdays in the fall than Sundays. But reality is reality, and the reality is there's virtually nothing these days that separates Saturdays from Sundays on a fundamental level.

The NFL is about commerce; college football on the corporate level is about commerce. The rest is just details.

And so when Herbie wrings his hands over the defection of Texas and Oklahoma to the SEC, you wonder just how deep in the jungle he's been all these years. Tradition, except in some precious few cases, has been dead in Power 5 college football for awhile now.

It died when the old Southwest Conference broke up and Texas, linchpin of the 82-year-old SWC, joined the Big 12  25 years ago.

It died when Nebraska, a Big 12 linchpin, defected to the Big Ten in 2011, thereby killing Nebraska-Oklahoma, one of college football's most hallowed rivalries.

It died when West Virginia, another Big East school, defected (rather oddly) to the Big 12, thereby killing West Virginia-Pittsburgh, another traditional rivalry. When Maryland, an ACC school, and Rutgers, a Big East school, defected to the Big Ten because Jim Delany wanted a wedge into the East Coast media market. When Syracuse and Notre Dame and Louisville and Pitt all fled the Big East for the ACC.

And so on, and so on, and so on.

Tradition?

Tradition is when Notre Dame, which used to play all three service academies, dumps Army and Air Force to make room for ACC schools with whom it has almost no history.

Three years ago the Irish, whose football history goes back to 1887, played Wake Forest, a school it had never played until 2011. This year it plays Virginia, a school it has played just three times in 134 years, and never until 1989.

That's tradition now. That's college football, and it has been for a long time.

Welcome to 2021, Herbie. How'd you survive in the jungle all this time?