How does the hell does it work. Why do teams like UAB want to play the number 1 ranked team. How are 40 plus point wins good for the sport?
Shouldnt teams play against their own level?
In: 1
Sometimes bad teams get paid money to play the best teams. Generally teams play mostly good teams within their own conference, but there are a few out of conference games and teams often just want a cakewalk because they already have enough hard games on their schedule to build a good resume.
What bowl you get into at the end of the year depends almost entirely on your record. Good teams want easy games to get them to more prestigious bowls, and bad teams want to get to six wins so they are eligible for a bowl at all.
As for the ones they fly in for these games, they usually get paid to do it, and experience against a superior opponent may help them in future games (but mostly they get paid).
Smaller, weaker programs make a ton of money playing a powerhouse school, so it’s worth it to UAB to get beat by 40 points but make almost $2million. The powerhouse programs often fill their non-conference games with east teams because even a single loss can deny them a chance for the college football playoffs/title hunt.
D1 college football currently has only a 4-team playoff (up from 2 for a long time), so you’ve gotta be ranked in the top 4 to have a chance at the championship. With only a 12 game season, even a single loss can end your championship hopes.
On top of that, there is no preseason or any way to warm up. You practice during the summer, you scrimmage against yourself, but the game is complicated and you don’t know if you’ve put it all together perfectly until you start playing, and the first game matters.
So the best teams will set up their schedule so they play someone they should easily beat even if they’re still working the kinks out. The bad teams get paid something like a million dollars per game, and it doesn’t really matter to them as they were never going to contend for the national championship anyways, all that matters to them are the conference championships and the out-of-conference games don’t count for that.
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