The college football landscape is evolving, and the Big 12 can’t waste time if it wants to keep up.
Over the past few years, college football has begun to look more like the NFL. With players essentially having a free agency period with the transfer portal, and NIL delivering massive deals to players, the past couple of years have already seen significant changes.
Now, with revenue sharing coming into college sports, the similarities to professional sports are only growing. While those changes have impacted everyone in college sports, there is still one key part of college football that has only been adopted by the top leagues.
Over the past couple of seasons, player availability reports have become more prevalent in college football. With the Big Ten and SEC already requiring these injury reports, the College Football Playoff is the next to follow suit, as reported by CBS Sports’ Brandon Marcello.
These reports have been key in giving teams an idea of what their opponent might look like on the field in a given week and has given fans more transparency on injuries. While college football injuries had been covered up and effectively left up to coaches to report on in press conferences for years, these reports have been a significant move in the right direction.
Of course, that move in the right direction has only been relevant for the two conferences that have implemented that change. For example, any Oklahoma State injury information about a player who could be held out of a game will still likely be covered up throughout the week before fans find out during the game or mere minutes before kickoff.
With the increase in gambling popularity obviously being another factor in these reports being required, it’s apparent which conferences are ready for this era of college sports and which conferences will be left behind due to complacency. Brett Yormark has tried to make his conference one of the best in the country and talked about being at the forefront of change, but the Big 12’s lack of action on this issue shows that the conference might never be capable of being on the same level as the SEC or Big Ten.
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