What does it say about me that news of Texas and Oklahoma joining the Southeastern Conference in a few years was met with a resounding, “Meh,” from me?

The word for that, I believe, is “resignation” — resignation to the fact that the college landscape is beginning to less and less resemble the one I’ve been following since 1995, when my family packed up from Ocean Township, New Jersey, and made its way to Tuscaloosa, Alabama.

I’m not opposed to change; I often embrace it. I’ve been banging the gavel for Major League Baseball to adopt an electronic strike zone for years, and anyone who knows me knows I want baseball’s unwritten rules to die out. I realize realignment has implications for all college sports, not just football; with the season just around the corner, my mind is on football at the moment. In a vacuum, I’m not against SEC expansion. The prospect of two more traditional football powers joining college athletics’ premier football conference admittedly brings with it a certain excitement.

Paired with the numerous changes we’ve seen in just the last decade, though, and I’m not sure the fact I’ve become numb to constant changes is a good thing. When Texas A&M and Missouri both entered the SEC prior to the 2012 season, I knew expansion wasn’t going to be capped at 14 institutions. Eventually, there would be 16-team super conferences, or 18-team super conferences, or perhaps even more.

Make no mistake, the addition of Texas and Oklahoma to the SEC will create yet another domino effect that will further push toward the super conferences. As always, money is the driving factor, with Texas having the most profitable athletics program in the country and Oklahoma also being a top-10 athletic department in revenue. (Furthermore, Sooners athletics bring with it TV eyeballs in the state of Oklahoma, which was the driving force behind the additions of Texas A&M and Missouri in the early 2010s.) 

You can’t blame college athletics for evolving. You can’t blame FBS college football for adopting a playoff model; the fans demanded it. You can’t blame the sport for the targeting rule, as any attempt to prevent the players from developing CTE in the future is an understandable and worthwhile cause. Are we really OK, though, with bowl games all but being rendered meaningless? Are we fine with conference championships not having as much weight anymore, since more playoff slots are coming down the road? Are we ever going to figure out what targeting actually is, since no one — not even college football officials — seems to be able to define it consistently?

Ole Miss head coach Lane Kiffin recently joked about his defense with the line, “We look forward to hopefully making someone punt this year.” The Rebels ranked 118th last year in team defense, so obviously there’s room to improve, but how much improvement is realistic? From a technical standpoint, I can’t sit here and tell you why the sport’s best offenses seem to be invincible to any defense other than it being obvious that offenses are far more complex than they ever have been. All I can tell you is versus the truly elite offenses, defenses in college football don’t stand a chance outside of maybe making a few stops here and there, and I really don’t like that.

When Alabama decided to reduce seating capacity in Bryant-Denny Stadium in favor of corporate spaces, my family friends lost the seats on the second upper deck that had been ours since the 1990s. Going to an Alabama game was an important part of my childhood, yet I wasn’t upset at all that we would no longer have the option to join our friends in those seats. The novelty of attending a game had long since worn off, and I’m not sure that’s entirely thanks to HD televisions and climate control at home.

Whether it’s super conferences or less and less defense or playoff expansion, college football is vastly different than it was 25 years ago, and that gulf is only going to widen with every passing year. I’ll remain emotionally invested in Alabama football as long as Nick Saban is the coach, not only because his run in Tuscaloosa is the greatest thing I’ve experienced as a sports fan, but also because I find his never-ending quest for perfection fascinating from a human standpoint.

Once he’s retired, though? I honestly can’t say for sure I’ll have the same emotional investment. Change will keep happening whether I like it or not, but when the day comes for Saban to step away, am I going to like what college football has morphed into? The fact that I don’t know is difficult to comprehend for someone who has loved the sport for most of his life. 

Drew Kerekes is the sports editor at The Meridian Star. He can be reached at dkerekes@themeridianstar.com.