The 25 most important college football storylines from the 21st century

Love it or loathe it, NIL has become a vital part of how college athletics have been operating over the last few years. Along with the transfer portal and the elimination of having to sit out a season if you transfer, NIL has given players more freedom than they've ever had.

As it pertains to college football, it has created a unique addition of free agency. Players can find better situations, whether that be financially, playing time or being part of a better program. No longer does a quarterback have to sit on the bench and wait for his turn to start -- he can transfer out and find a starting job elsewhere. Success stories at smaller schools can move up to a power conference. Teams that suddenly see talented players move on to the NFL or in the portal can now go shopping for a quick fix.

Obviously, this isn't a perfect system. The new system of doing things has a wilderness feel to it, where the lines aren't just blurred -- they barely exist. We've gotten to the point where players are demanding more money from schools, and coaches trying to poach players during the season. What was supposed to be the players' ability to earn money from their image and likeness has turned into a pay-for-play culture that wasn't intended. We are still in the early stages of what this could look like when properly maintained, but it is far from happening.

Still, player movement (I'm kind of done with the "student-athlete" moniker) has been the biggest storyline of college football over the first 25 years of this century. How that morphs into a model where players share in the financial stakes with the universities will define the next 25 years. 

While the 1990s certainly saw an upheaval in college football conferences (SWC died; Big 12 born; independents scrambled to join leagues), no one would have believed what would happen in conference realignment now.

The Pac-12 was all but eliminated and remains in a weakened position. In the early 2000s of the then-Pac-10, USC was the power program that looked like it would dominate for years to come, and Oregon was emerging. The league even expanded by two, but that surge was short-lived. Ten of the 12 schools jumped ship and the league will soon be made up of former Mountain West programs looking for a slightly better piece of the pie. USC is now a Big Ten school, along with UCLA, Oregon and Washington. It is one of the more shocking casualties for conference realignment.

We've seen Nebraska leave the Big 12 for the Big Ten, Texas A&M, Missouri, Texas and Oklahoma leave for the SEC. Maryland left the ACC for the Big Ten, while the ACC went after the Big East (more on that later) and now has SMU, California and Stanford as members. The Big 12 nearly died, but was reborn with Pac-12 castoffs looking for a lifeline. And now there is an American Athletic Conference.

Even Notre Dame had to join the ACC for one season, and it keeps a scheduling partnership with the league.

And it isn't stopping anytime soon. The ACC is fractured and could be blown up when the television contracts come up in the early 2030s. The SEC and Big Ten could be pulling away from the structure of the sport for the last four decades. While the players have received a lot of freedom with NIL and the portal, schools and conferences are also discovering their worth and setting themselves up for the next windfall. 

While in 2025 the debates about the College Football Playoff have been about how the teams are seeded and how many automatic bids certain conferences get, let's take a moment to really look back about how we actually have a playoff now.

In 2000, we were just in the first few years of the Bowl Championship Series (BCS) where we began to break away from the bowl tie-in structure so that the two best teams in the nation would face off to determine our national champion. That was a wild concept that was long overdue, and the powers that be in college football fought so hard to keep it in place as shouts for a wider-ranging playoff format grew louder. In 2014, we finally got our playoff with a four-team format that captivated the country just as the NCAA tournament does for basketball.

It has since been expanded in 2024 to a 12-team format and will likely expand in the coming years. It has allowed more schools to have access to playing for a championship than ever and has shifted how college football does business forever. 

The COVID-19 pandemic had far-reaching consequences for our world that massively outweighed any challenges to field a college football season, but it was a difficult time that year, impacting the sport.

From health protocols to no fans at stadiums. Schedules were made on the fly as schools would have to opt out of games as COVID spread through their teams. Some leagues played an 11-game season. Some schools played just one. The Big Ten and Pac-12 initially were going to cancel their seasons while the ACC and SEC decided to play on (the other two leagues changed their minds and began mid-season). It was the wild west of sorts as some rules were made up as the year went along.

The Rose Bowl was in Arlington, Texas. Notre Dame was a member of the ACC and played in the conference's championship game. Schools' budgets were decimated with some still trying to recover. The "Super Senior Season" was berthed as the NCAA agreed to allow an extra year of eligibility for anyone who had to endure the 2020-2021 college athletics season. 

Let's be clear -- the SEC has dominated the first quarter of the 21st century.

The SEC has always been great at college football and is home to some of the great programs in the sport. But in the last 25 years the league has pulled away from the rest of the sport as the premiere football conference.  Since 2000, an SEC school has won 14 national championships (that doesn't include current members Oklahoma and Texas, who won theirs as members of the Big 12).

From 2006 to 2022, the SEC won 13 of the 17 titles. In the 11 years of the College Football Playoff, the SEC sent 10 teams to the national championship game. Since 2004, the SEC has had 20 teams in that national title game and 17 of the last 22 national championship games featured at least one SEC school. The SEC has filled the NFL with draft picks (including nine No. 1 overall selections), nine Heisman Trophy winners and the last 15 games featuring the Associated Press' No. 1 vs No. 2 ranked teams have featured at least one SEC school (six of those were two SEC schools facing off).

While the landscape may be changing a bit (the SEC hasn't been part of the last two national title games) the league is a power player in college football and is leading the way into the future. The SEC is the top dog of the first 25 years of the century.

College football has a rich history of great coaches and legendary programs. Books are filled with tales of Knute Rockne, Bear Bryant, Bud Wilkinson, Tom Osborne and many, many others. But Nick Saban's run in the first 25 years of the 2000s may have blown everyone else's career away.

Saban actually began this century as the new coach of LSU, having guided Michigan State to a 34-24-1 record over five seasons. Saban quickly turned the Tigers around, winning the SEC championship in his second season and winning the 2003-2004 national championship. After a two-year stint in the NFL as the Miami Dolphins head coach, he came back to college to take over a wobbling Alabama Crimson Tide program that just fired Mike Shula.

We all are familiar with what Saban did at Alabama. Six national championships. Nine appearances in the national championship game. A sparkling 209-21 record over his 17 seasons in Tuscaloosa. He built a model program of toughness, expectation, and acquiring a ridiculous amount of talent that overwhelmed nearly everyone they faced. He did that all while navigating the changing landscape of college athletics and the way the game was played. He went from bruising run-centric offenses to hiring offensive coordinators Lane Kiffin, Steve Sarkisian, and Bill O'Brien to open up his offenses, all while rehabilitating those coaches' careers.

Saban was the bar that every other coach and athletic director was trying to reach before his retirement after the 2023 season. And he will be the coach that all future coaches will try to reach for the remainder of this century.

The child abuse scandal that rocked Penn State in 2011 is still shocking today as it was when it was first reported. Nittany Lions head coach Joe Paterno, as respected a coach as you could have in college sports, was a major part of an investigation of sexual abuse of minors by former defensive coordinator Jerry Sandusky over a 16-year period. Paterno failed in reporting allegations that were brought to him, and the program and career he built over 45 years came crashing down.

Two months after Paterno was fired by Penn State, he died of lung cancer at the age of 85.

The legacy of a coach who was among the winningest of all time is forever complicated, and the program he built was destroyed. It has slowly been rebuilt on the backs of Bill O'Brien and James Franklin, but it hasn't regained the status it had under Paterno. Obviously, all of that pales in comparison to the damage done to the young men Sandusky abused and who trusted the leaders of a university that failed to protect them. 

A sign-stealing scandal is nowhere near the disgusting and troubling horrors that came out of Penn State, but it is a major story in its own right. Michigan staffer Conor Stalions was attending opponents' games over a three-year period and videoing their signs and plays and using that information to help the Wolverines win Big Ten championships, reach the College Football Playoff, and ultimately win the 2023-2024 national championship.

The fallout is still going on as current head coach Sherrone Moore will be suspended for two games of the upcoming season as part of the ongoing investigation. Moore was the interim head coach for three games in 2023 when Jim Harbaugh was suspended for his role in the scandal. All this drama was coinciding with the Wolverines' march to a national championship which angered opposing fans (and schools) who wanted the program punished for cheating. 

If you really want to see how much things have changed in such a short time, just look back at Pete Carroll's nine-year run with the USC Trojans. From 2001 to 2009, the Trojans were the top dog of college football. Carroll took over a program that had hit some hard times and made them into an instant powerhouse.

In the middle seven years of his run, USC went 82-9, winning seven Pac-10 titles and two national championships. If not for the legendary performance of Texas' Vince Young in the 2006 Rose Bowl -- one of the greatest college football games of all time -- USC may have won three straight national championships.

The Trojans were oozing with NFL talent, led by Heisman winners Carson Palmer, Matt Leinart and Reggie Bush. USC became Los Angeles' version of an NFL team (the Rams and Chargers were still in St. Louis and San Diego, respectively) and it looked like their dynasty would go on forever. Obviously, that didn't happen.

Carroll left to take the Seattle Seahawks job and continued to have personal successes, culminating in a Super Bowl title. USC struggled to maintain that level of success and had embarrassing struggles with coaches Lane Kiffin, Steve Sarkisian and Clay Helton before bringing on current head coach, Lincoln Riley. In the 15 years since Carroll left, USC has won just one conference title and hasn't come close to playing for a national championship.

What was most embarrassing was the Reggie Bush scandal that helped lead to Carroll leaving. Bush, arguably the best college football player of the last quarter century, and his family were exposed of receiving money and lavish gifts during his time at USC. The school was hit hard with sanctions and separated itself from Bush. Under pressure, he voluntarily gave up his Heisman Trophy. The 2005 Heisman winner was vacated until 2024, when the Heisman Trust reinstated it to Bush in light of the changes in college athletics regarding NIL and the legality of the NCAA's amateur model. 

Boise State entered the 2000s with some momentum. After making the jump to FBS status in 1996, the Broncos reached their first bowl game in 1999 (a Humanitarian Bowl victory over Louisville). Head coach Dick Koetter left for Louisville and Dan Hawkins and Chris Petersen built on his success. From 2002 to 2014, Boise State went 149-22 and won 10 conference championships. They also reached the Fiesta Bowl three times -- winning each year.

The most memorable was the 2007 Fiesta Bowl against Oklahoma. The Sooners were a huge favorite but the undefeated Broncos rushed out to a 28-10 lead. Oklahoma came storming back, which led to an offensive show in the final two minutes of regulation (the teams combined for 22 points in the final 1:26). Down 35-28 and on 4th and 18, Boise State QB Jared Zabransky completed an 18-yard pass to Drisan James, who immediately lateraled the ball to Jerard Rabb who ran the remaining 35 yards for the touchdown with :07 left. After Oklahoma's Adrian Peterson ran a 25-yard touchdown on the first play of overtime, Boise State scored on a halfback pass, then went for the win by running the Statue of Liberty play.

In the postgame celebration televised live by FOX, running back Ian Johnson proposed to his girlfriend, who was a Broncos cheerleader.  

Boise State would reach the Fiesta Bowl as an undefeated team again in 2009, where they beat TCU. They would beat Arizona in the 2014 Fiesta Bowl. The Broncos would make the first expanded College Football Playoff in 2024, where they lost to Texas in the ... you guessed it ... Fiesta Bowl.

Boise State's program began the 21st century as a new FBS program and has turned itself into arguably the best Group of 5 school over the last 25 years. They've moved from the Big West Conference, to the WAC, and the Mountain West. In 2026, Boise State will join the re-birthed Pac-12. Their blue turf is ubiquitous with the program and they've become the football version of Gonzaga basketball. Everything is looking up in The City of Trees.

Tim Tebow had one of the greatest college football careers of the last 25 years.

As a freshman quarterback at Florida, he backed up Chris Leak for the 2006 Gators national championship team, where he was used primarily for gadget plays and goal-line situations. Even though he wasn't a starter in Florida's BCS championship win over Ohio State, he threw and rushed for a touchdown.

As a sophomore, Tebow won the Heisman Trophy, becoming the first sophomore to take home the honor. As a junior, he won another national championship. As a senior, he completed 31 of 35 passes for 482 yards and 4 total touchdowns in the 2010 Sugar Bowl.

Tebow's time in college is most remembered for his fierce leadership and winning attitude. He consistently played through pain and injuries and gave his all on the field. His squeaky clean image, in retrospect, stuck out on a team that featured some players who would have some major off-field issues in later years and Coach Urban Meyer who would go on to make some controversial choices. Fifteen years later, there are still many people who fell in love with Tebowmania.  

There is no game over the last 25 years more shocking than the 2007 meeting between Appalachian State and Michigan in Ann Arbor.

App State, at the time, was an FCS power who were the defending two-time national champions and pre-season FCS No. 1 ... but no one expected them to go into Michigan and compete with the Wolverines. The game was thrown together due to both schools having an opening in their schedules for that date. Up until that time, Michigan had never played an FCS opponent. Vegas placed no odds in what they felt was a huge mismatch.

We all know what ended up happening. Of course, Appalachian State beat No. 5 Michigan, 34-32, on a 24-yard field goal with 26 seconds remaining.

It stunned the sports world, similar to when Chaminade beat top-ranked Virginia in basketball over 30 years earlier. It was the first time an FCS school beat a ranked FBS school -- and it's happened five times since. After the game, the Associated Press changed its rules so it could give votes to FCS schools in its FBS poll. Meanwhile, Michigan dropped out of the AP rankings entirely, becoming the first team to go from No. 5 to unranked in a week in history.

Appalachian State would go on to win their third straight FCS national championship (and receiving votes in the final FBS poll) while Michigan finished with a 9-4 record. App State is now an FBS school itself, competing in the Sun Belt Conference. Their first game as an FBS member was against Michigan. They lost, 52-14. 

Bowl games were once the lifeblood of college football for decades. When we reached the new millennium, the bowls were in a bit of a state of flux as the BCS rotated four games for their national championship sites and the model of conference champion tie-ins were going out the window. There were 25 bowl games and many were still must-see events for fans and an honor for players and coaches.

All that has changed.

The importance of bowl games has changed over the years to the point that some feel they may not survive much longer. With the creation of the College Football Playoff, the most important game of the season -- the national championship game -- is no longer considered a bowl game. The major bowls have been integrated into the playoff where they've been stripped of their identity. Even the "Grandaddy" of bowl games, the Rose Bowl, has been reduced to a site in a rotation for playoff games and no longer is guaranteed to feature a Big Ten vs Pac-12 showdown.

Bowl games aren't as important to the players, either. Over the last decade, players opting out of playing in bowls in order to protect themselves from injury has become the norm. We have 41 bowl games now, with many featuring Group of Five schools playing in front of sparse crowds across the country. With the emphasis on the playoffs, bowl games now don't feature top-level teams and have lost their luster. What once was thought of as a reward for a great season has just turned into a made-for-TV event to sell to advertisers who crave live sports content, featuring two teams whose best players aren't there because they are NFL-bound or already in the transfer portal.

That isn't to say bowl games aren't still fun. Instead of selling power programs facing off in inter-regional showdowns, now we get treated to gimmicky showdowns where winners get doused in mayonnaise or Cheez-Its. 

When the century began, the Rose Bowl had just entered into an agreement to become a BCS Bowl. That means the typical Big Ten champion vs Pac-10 champion wasn't guaranteed to happen every year. That first came to light in 2002 when Miami played in the Rose Bowl and beat Nebraska for the national championship. Oklahoma reached the Rose Bowl the following year. Since then, seven other matchups involved schools from outside the Big Ten and Pac-10/12.

With the dawning of the College Football Playoff, the Rose Bowl will lose its traditional spot on New Year's Day as it will act as a semifinal game every three years and will be played a week later. Additionally, the collapse of the Pac-12 has effectively ended their involvement with the Rose Bowl.

Although these changes are jarring for an iconic event in American sports, it still boasts the best scenery and atmosphere for a bowl game (some even proposed having every national championship game in Pasadena).

We've also been treated to some outstanding games. None were better than the 2006 Rose Bowl where Texas beat USC for the BCS championship. Vince Young became a legend for his performance in that game, beating the two-time defending champion USC Trojans and ending their 34-game winning streak. 

The Miami Hurricanes at the turn of the century possessed an astonishing amount of talent. The 2001 team, who would win the national championship, alone had this roster: Clinton Portis, Frank Gore, Willis McGahee, Najeh Davenport and Jarrett Payton were in the same running back room while their tight ends were Jeremy Shockey, Kellen Winslow II. They also had names like Ed Reed, Sean Taylor, Andre Johnson, Jonathan Vilma, Bryant McKinnie, Vince Wilfork, D.J. Williams, Vernon Carey, Jerome McDougle, William Joseph, Antrel Rolle, Phillip Buchanon and Mike Rumph. The season before they had receivers Santana Moss and Reggie Wayne to go with Andre Johnson.

Over the three-year stretch of 2000 to 2002, the Hurricanes went 25-2 with, curiously, just one national championship. They nearly repeated in 2002 (losing to Ohio State in a controversial ending) and went 11-3 in 2003 before falling back down to mediocrity. They won four Big East championships and went to four BCS bowls. In the 21 seasons since then, they haven't won a single conference championship and haven't really been close to getting to a national championship game. Their move to the ACC after the 2003 season has not been successful on the field. Since 2004, Miami is just 2-13 in bowl games and have hired five new head coaches since Larry Coker was fired in 2006.

The program is a long way from their 34-game winning streak of the early 2000s. 

Deion Sanders is one of the greatest players in college and NFL history, had a nice MLB career, and followed his playing days up as a solid NFL analyst. So when he began his football career, many didn't see it as more than just a great player getting back into the game to satisfy his competitive juices. His stint as a high school coach was peppered with some problems (including his Prime Prep Academy being shut down), so when he took the head coaching job at FBS Jackson State, no one knew what to expect.

Coach Prime delivered. After a rocky COVID-marred 2020 season, the Panthers would go 23-3 over the next two seasons, winning two SWAC championships and losing two Celebration Bowls. Led by his sons, Shadeur and Shilo, Coach Prime turned heads when he flipped the recruitment of Travis Hunter — one of the top high school prospects — from Florida State to Jackson State. In 2023, Sanders brought his sons and Hunter to the Colorado Buffaloes, whose program was lost in the wilderness, and turned them into must-see TV on Saturdays.

While on the field success hasn't been as immediate in Boulder (13-12 in two seasons, though the Buffs won five more games in Year 2), Hunter would win the 2024 Heisman Trophy and the publicity the program received has turned Colorado into the most talked about programs in the country. Some of that is good and some is bad, but Coach Prime is a mover and shaker in college football. 

Doug Flutie's Hail Mary against Miami may be the defining play of the last 25 years of the 20th century, but Auburn's Chris Davis gave us the top play of the first 25 years of the 21st.

Alabama, the two-time defending champion and No. 1 team in the nation, went to the Plains to face their rival Auburn Tigers, who were ranked No. 4. The Crimson Tide held a 28-21 lead with less than a minute remaining when Tigers QB Nick Marshall scrambled and found Sammy Coates wide open for the game-tying touchdown with :32 left in regulation. On Alabama's ensuing possession, running back T.J. Yeldon ran to Auburn's 38-yard line before being knocked out of bounds by DB Chris Davis as time expired. Nick Saban argued to the officials that there was still time on the clock (instant replay showed there was one second remaining). With one final play, Saban attempted a 57-yard field goal for the win.

The kick was short, but Davis stood in the back of the end zone and caught the kick. Davis then returned the kick, and easily made his way around Alabama's blocker-heavy special teams unit. Davis ran untouched into the endzone as time expired for the 34-28 win.

Alabama's quest for a three-peat ended. Auburn would win the SEC Championship the following week and earn a spot in the BCS Championship game. The Tigers would lose to Florida State, 34-31. 

Like all sports, offense sells. College football over the last 25 years has followed that trend with a change from the more traditional power running offenses and into spread-out, air-raid systems that allow for quarterbacks to make quick reads with fast skill players all over the field.

Passing heavy offenses were invented a couple of decades before 2000, but it has become the norm nearly everywhere. Even teams with great running backs complement that with a great passing offense to balance it out. Gone are the days of triple options, multi-back sets where teams just tried to run you over. While we've entered an era of larger arms, the same quarterbacks have demonstrated their ability to make plays with their legs. Whether it is Robert Griffin III, Jayden Daniels, Lamar Jackson, or even Johnny Manziel, the dual-threat QB has ruled the 2000s.

Airing it out isn't just a Big 12 thing anymore. The SEC and Big Ten have also excelled at stretching it out. 

Cam Newton had a roller coaster, albeit successful, college career. He began his career as Tim Tebow's backup at Florida in 2007 and 2008 before announcing he was transferring to just days before the Gators beat Oklahoma for the national championship. He would transfer to Blinn College for one season, where he'd win a JUCO national title.

He transferred again, this time to Auburn, where he'd lead the Tigers to the 2010 BCS championship and won the Heisman Trophy. In typical Cam fashion, a cloud hovered over his eligibility as rumors his dad looked to receive money for his son's services. The week of the SEC championship game saw Newton declared ineligible and reinstated on consecutive days. He played in the title game against South Carolina -- and won, 56-17 -- and beat Oregon to finish off Auburn's 14-0 season and a national championship.

His signature moment of the season may be the "Cam-back" during the Iron Bowl. Alabama led 24-0 in Tuscaloosa before Newton and the Tigers rallied to score 28 of the final 31 points of the game. This game was one of the most heated contests in the rivalry with Auburn fans decorating Alabama's statue of Bear Bryant and the unfortunate incident of an Alabama fan poisoning the oak trees at Toomer's Corner.

Newton finished the season completing 66% of his passes for 2,854 yards and 30 TDs while rushing for 1,473 yards and 20 touchdowns.  There are many experts that consider Newton's 2010 season as one of (if not the) best individual seasons ever due to how dominant he played and how he lifted a team that wasn't filled with talent to such great heights. That earned him the Heisman Trophy and he would become the top overall pick in the 2011 NFL Draft. 

I referenced it earlier that the ACC and Big East had a contentious relationship in the early 2000s. Simply put: it was really bad.

In the early 2000s, the ACC was trying to expand in order to hold a conference championship game. Their big fish was Miami-FL, who not only fit into their geographic footprint but was one of the top football programs at the time and would greatly vault their pigskin profile. The league needed 12 teams to satisfy the NCAA's rules for a title game and settled on Boston College and Syracuse as the next two members. Big East schools sued the ACC and the departing schools, there was pressure from Virginia's legislature to include Virginia Tech in the expansion, and Syracuse's basketball coach Jim Boeheim was vocal in his displeasure of a move.

The ACC would expand to 12 schools with the additions of Miami, Virginia Tech (in 2004) and Boston College (in 2005). The Big East, in turn, added Cincinnati, Louisville and South Florida (Marquette and DePaul were also added as non-football schools). Heads cooled a bit, but not for long.

Six years later, Syracuse and Pittsburgh saw the writing on the wall and left for the ACC. Notre Dame would also leave as a non-football member of the Big East for the ACC, but would end up with a unique scheduling agreement that afford the Irish five games against ACC opponents each year. When Maryland left the ACC for the Big Ten, the league invited former Big Ten member Louisville.

As for the Big East, this created a fracture that was already creating in the league between the non-football schools and the football schools. In its haste to try to regroup with new members as they did in 2004, the invitations to schools like Boise State and San Diego State was met with anger by current members and the seven Catholic non-football schools broke away. The football schools would jump to any invitation they could (West Virginia to the Big 12; Rutgers to the Big Ten) while the rest ended up forming the new American Athletic Conference. The Catholic non-football schools would keep the Big East name and history, even as it ended as a football conference.

Ironically, the ACC seems to be in a precarious situation today. Florida State and Clemson has been open about their displeasure of the financial disparity between the ACC and the SEC and Big Ten. Lawsuits by those schools about the ACC's apparent iron-clad Grant of Rights agreement have made the league on edge about its future with vultures flying around to grab those schools and others (North Carolina, Virginia, Miami) if they become available. 

Coaching changes are a reality in sports, especially over a 25 year period. But let's look at some of the coaches when we reached the 2000 season:

*Bobby Bowden, Florida State
*Joe Paterno, Penn State
*Steve Spurrier, Florida
*Bill Snyder, Kansas State
*Mack Brown, Texas
*Lou Holtz, South Carolina
*Barry Alvarez, Wisconsin
*Frank Beamer, Virginia Tech
*Phillip Fulmer, Tennessee
*Mike Leach, Texas Tech

All have retired, and some have sadly passed away. All are legends who left an indelible mark on the sport.

But new star coaches were on the horizon. In 2000, Nick Saban left Michigan State to take over at LSU. Urban Meyer was a receivers coach at Notre Dame. Dabo Swinney was the receivers coach at Alabama. Pete Carroll was out of coaching after being fired by the New England Patriots. Bob Stoops was in his second season at Oklahoma. Kirby Smart was the defensive backs coach at Valdosta State while Ryan Day was a quarterback at New Hampshire. Jim Harbaugh was Ryan Leaf's backup for the San Diego Chargers.

Those were some of the coaches who would dominate the last 25 years and left their own marks on college football. 

ESPN's College Gameday started in 1987 and truly began its current form in the mid-1990s. But make no mistake: it's dominance was loud and clear during the 2000s despite the many changes in sports and television.

Gameday entered the 2000s with Chris Fowler as the host, with Kirk Herbstreit and Lee Corso as analysts. Fowler went to the broadcast booth in 2014 and was replaced with Rece Davis, while Desmond Howard joined the quartet in 2005. Those four have had various cohorts throughout the 2000s, but the core four have remained a vital part of college football's biggest show.

The show has expanded in length (three hours), and has become a giant party to every campus they visit ... and they've expanded that footprint over the last 25 years. They've gone to FBS sites, they've been much more prevalent on the West Coast, and they visit towns that aren't known as traditional football schools. The Washington State flag streak began in 2003 and the celebrity guest picker became a weekly occurrence in 2009. The show has added Pat McAfee, which added a bit of a younger demographic to the show, and Nick Saban.

Gameday has become a fixture for college football even with rising competitors (FOX's Big Noon Kickoff) and the changing of how viewers consume television shows and sports. They've navigated through all the changes that have come to college football and still produce a show that is able to merge nostalgia (Corso's mascot head picks), with great journalism, with fun antics and a little bit of four-letter words slipping out. They've also had to deal with having a traveling show during the pandemic as well as dealing with Corso's slowing down from a stroke and old age. Corso will make his final appearance at the beginning of the 2025 season.

No other sports show is able to put together all those elements (fans, coaches, analysts, celebrities, students) into event viewing like ESPN's College Gameday has over the last 25 years. It has been an important show in the growth of college football. 

A lot of the off field happenings since 2000 can be traced to one main source: TV. Broadcast rights to game have not only soared over the last two-plus decades but has created a fracture between schools and conferences. The Big Ten and SEC have set themselves apart from the rest of college football with their massive deals with various networks. That has set off the nationwide realignment that has watched teams jump conferences and leagues -- like the Big East and Pac-12 -- to become crushed and left in ruins.

Conference networks became the norm and a major move for money and exposure. Texas' personal Longhorn Network was a sore spot for the rest of the Big 12 as the Longhorns flexed their muscle in the league. The Big Ten Network was a major win for that league and allowed it to keep pace with the SEC and their network deal with ESPN. The ACC's slow pace to launch a network and its lengthy term has been a problem for various members who feel they are lagging behind the other college football powers. The lack of a viable deal led to the Pac-12 crumbling as schools left for the Big Ten, Big 12 and ACC.

While there may be a break from all the movement for now, get ready for it to ramp up again. Most of the broadcast deals will be expiring in the early 2030s which will ignite another round of realignment or blow up the entire system altogether. The Grant of Rights that have tied the ACC together for now will soon be less punitive and that league will likely break apart when it becomes feasible.

That's the umbrella of what's happening overall, but it also means we have access to more games than ever before. College football was mainly a Saturday mainstay but has now come to rule much of the rest of the week.We get the "MACtion" of MAC games on Tuesdays and other Group of Five games on Wednesdays. ESPN's Thursday nights have been for football. FOX's deal with the Big Ten has given us Friday night games and now the Big Noon Kickoff, which puts some of their biggest games early in the day. The SEC left CBS for ESPN/ABC (CBS replaced the SEC with the Big Ten). The Big Ten, ACC, and Big 12's expansion west has given each league access to the "fourth window" of late-night games.  

Broadcast rights have also been a major factor to having and expanding the College Football Playoff. ESPN/ABC has gobbled up much of college football's postseason -- they own the rights to the entire College Football Playoff and all but three bowl games (ESPN/ABC has sub-licensed to TNT two CFP first-round games).

Money talks, and especially in college athletics.  

Really!?!?  A video game?? Um, yes.

EA Sports' NCAA Football was a highly popular video game that differed from the Madden series, as it incorporated the pageantry and playbooks of various college football programs and conferences. I mean, you couldn't run those Nebraska triple-option plays on Madden! All the fun went away in 2013 when NCAA backed out of licensing agreements due to various lawsuits from players about likeness.

Over a decade later, the game was reborn as NIL has allowed players to be compensated for their likeness in the game. EA Sports College Football 25 was released in July 2024 and became an instant hit for gamers. Like Madden, it allows game players to become more familiar with the players for each team and the styles off offenses and defenses they employ. Maybe most importantly, it is an instance where the NCAA, its member schools, and the players all work together in a financial partnership on something. 

Obviously this is a very new story and I'd normally wouldn't put it on a list like this, but Bill Belichick taking the North Carolina head coaching job is one of the wildest stories of the last 25 years.

For starters, the six-time Super Bowl winning head coach (he also won two more as an assistant) decided to take a job coaching college football. And it wasn't at Ohio State or Alabama ... it was at North Carolina. The Tar Heels have been an okay program at times, but they haven't won a conference title since 1980 and haven't particularly been close to be a national championship contender. The university gave a lot of control to Belichick and his staff and are putting their money on building a better infrastructure and NIL collective.

After he got the job, the story got weirder. His 24-year-old girlfriend, Jordon Hudson, became the subject of much speculation and scrutiny for how involved she was in the UNC program and her (seeming) control over Belichick. That led to a spring filled with rumors and hot takes about his competency for the job ... which his commitment to the program having already been discussed. A coach known for being about the job and nothing else was all of a sudden a pop culture story and a possible distraction?

Of course we will see how this turns out. Some feel this is a major win for the Tar Heels, while others believe it is a train wreck waiting to happen. On to 2025!!