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Mike Bianchi: Get ready for a college football season like no other in history

The cover of this football special section has an obvious musical concept with illustrations of LPs, CDs and even an old-school cassette tape.

If you were to plug that cassette into your tape deck, you would undoubtedly hear David Bowie singing the theme song for the 2024 college football season.

“Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes,Turn and face the strange ch-ch-changes.”

The chorus of Bowie’s classic song from 1971 — “Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes” — underscores the stuttering repetition of the word “changes” and represents the difficulty and resistance people often feel toward change, even as they acknowledge its necessity.

College football coaches and administrators can certainly relate. They don’t necessarily love all the massive changes happening in their sport, but they know they must embrace the inevitability of this transformational season.

“For the last two years there’s been more transition in college football than all the years before,” UCF coach Gus Malzahn says. “It’s an interesting time to be a head coach in college football.”

That may be the biggest understatement since the Biblical weatherman told Noah, “Looks like a 30 percent chance of rain.”

It’s not an overreaction to say that we are about to embark on a college football season unlike any other we have ever seen. Locally, regionally and nationally, the Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes are immense and intense.

So immense and intense that the changing landscape at least partially impacted the decision of seven-time national champion Nick Saban — the greatest coach in college football history — to retire. Saban has made it no secret that he does not like how the recent phenomena of unlimited transfers combined with unregulated NIL compensation have turned the game into, as Florida coach Billy Napier calls it, “a land with no laws.”

“I thought we…


Source link : https://sports.yahoo.com/mike-bianchi-ready-college-football-093000633.html

Author : Orlando Sentinel

Publish date : 2024-08-28 09:30:00

Copyright for syndicated content belongs to the linked Source.

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