I watched a number of football games during this college bowl season and the thought occurred to me, “If he woke up from a long sleep, would Knute Rockne recognize the game today?”. The game is fundamentally very much the same. Touchdowns, field goals, running, passing, and tackling. Plenty has changed, however. Especially, in the last 10 years.

Offenses deploy many more spread and option features than would’ve been seen 10 years ago. No more 3 yards and a cloud of dust. The defenses have adapted to the offenses and we see more aggressive features. The equipment has certainly advanced. There are some new playing rules (or at least interpretations of the old rules) and adjustments to how the game clock and play clock are run. On average, the players are bigger, stronger, and faster than ever before.

I’m struck, more so, by how the players have changed in recent years. I suppose the game is society in a microcosm. We see more and more individualistic behavior. Shorter attention spans. Greater need for immediate gratification. Players seek attention as much for their affect and personality as for their performance. More posing. More dancing. More talking. It's like old school professional wrestling.

Jersey numbers matter more than they used to. Teams assign the same number to different players to ensure everyone gets the number they want. Single-digit numbers are also a priority. We’ve made the number zero available now to create one more single digit opportunity. The emergence of suffixes and hyphenated names is a phenomenon, too. Why are the proportions of suffixes and hyphenated names in college football so much higher than in the rest of our society? Are there really more “juniors”, IIIs, and beyond that play football? Are they vehicles now for personal statements. Perhaps it all connects to players’ individual brands now as much (or more) than the team brand.

New relaxed player transfer rules have converged with increasing player individuality and the need for immediate gratification to make the transfer portal a huge dynamic in the game today. So much of what is new is player centric. Perhaps a good thing, but it will be interesting to see if these changes help or hinder competitive equity. Will the delta between the haves and have nots shrink or grow (as many predict). One thing for certain is, like so much else today, the game of college football is in a state of constant flux.