Jay Norvell, Craig Bohl emphasize the importance of regional rivalries in college football and discuss the potential dangers of conference realignment

LAS VEGAS — College football is changing rapidly due to conference realignment.

Last summer it was announced that Texas and Oklahoma would be leaving the Big-12 for the SEC in 2024. Last month USC and UCLA made an even more drastic move, opting to abandon the PAC-12 and the institutions they had been associated with for decades in favor of a massive TV deal with the Big 10. 

While it’s tough to fault the individual schools for electing to jump ship — CFB has become an arm’s race and having a massive influx of cash is obviously an advantage in that regard — seeing many of the aspects of the game that make it unique and special being wiped out by a bunch of suits, for no reason other than making the rich richer is disheartening to many of the fans that made the product so valuable in the first place. 

As many have written, tweeted, posted, maybe even screamed from the rooftops, what makes college football brilliant is the tradition. It’s always been a game centered around representing your community. It’s about matchups like the Border War, the Iron Bowl, or the Red River Shootout. It’s about winning the Rocky Mountain Showdown and then rubbing it in the faces of your friends that vote for the other side. (Proud to Be). 

Speaking with coaches around the Mountain West, including Colorado State head coach Jay Norvell and Wyoming head coach Craig Bohl, the most recent decisions regarding conference realignment have been concerning. 

“Traditions, rivalries, and regional games are so important in our sport,” Norvell said. “And I just think we have to be careful. I think we’ve got to pump the brakes a little bit on some of these changes. The sport could end up looking very different than what we’ve always known it to be and it’s what made the sport so popular over the years.”

Norvell continued, talking about how on a recent trip to London, the Rams head coach was intrigued by the passion of European soccer fans. He talked about the parallels between the teams from smaller countries across the pond facing each other in soccer and how it resembles the rivalries between various college football teams in surrounding states. 

“It’s just like Oklahoma playing Texas, or Nebraska, or Kansas. So, that’s important to us,” Norvell said. “It’s our regional game and our fan bases are very passionate. If you disrupt that too much, boy, you don’t know what you’re going to end up with.” 

Norvell, who played and coached in the Big 10, in addition to working in the Big-12, Pac-10, Pac-12 and the NFL, all before his five years at Nevada, is about as qualified as anybody in the game to talk about what makes college football special. At this point he has pretty much experienced it all. And in his opinion, getting one or two more premiere TV games is shortsighted. 

Norvell brought up that while everyone is thinking about matchups like USC vs. Michigan, they are overlooking that there will be many other less exciting games as well. Games like Rutgers vs. UCLA, or Maryland vs. USC. 

Norvell also mentioned the student-athletes that participate in Olympic sports, who will be having to make the same trips across the country, but do so more frequently in a season. “I mean, is the softball team supposed to jump on a plane to go play Maryland? When they’re from Los Angeles? It just doesn’t make sense to me,” he said. 

The recent moves in CFB do not sit well with the man that leads CSU’s biggest rival either. Craig Bohl told DNVR that while he does understand the position of being an administrator looking at the bottom line, the reality is there is a loss of some very special things to earn those checks. 

Bohl, the current head coach at Wyoming and an alumnus of the University of Nebraska, said that it is gut wrenching that his alma mater no longer plays Oklahoma on a yearly basis now that they’re members of the Big 10.

“For me, as a kid, as a coach, and as a player, those were iconic games… I think that with these changes, maybe in the short term it could be better, but in the long term I’m not so sure. I mean, I’m looking and going, my old school’s big rival is now Iowa? I think the world of coach Ferentz but come on.”

Bohl also brought up being at the University of Missouri for a non-conference game against the Tigers in 2018 and how weird it was to look down at the field and see an SEC logo. He talked about talking to former Missouri HC and current Arkansas DC Barry Odom, who played for the Tigers from 1996-99, and telling him that it just looked wrong. 

“I went out there on the field and said, I’ll be damned, it just don’t seem right. I said, you’ve got an SEC logo down there on the 20-yard line. What the hell are you guys thinking? That should be a Big-8 logo. So, yeah, we’re changing. College football has changed. There’s going to be ramifications and results of these decisions that are made.”

Fortunately for fans of both Colorado State and Wyoming, the oldest rivalry West of the Mississippi river is safe for the time being. The Rams and Cowboys have been playing annually since the 1890’s and are guaranteed to continue doing so through at least 2025. While the Mountain West did recently announce that the conference would be abandoning divisions in 2023, each team is still being paired with two traditional rivals to face on a yearly basis. Unsurprisingly, Air Force, CSU and Wyoming were all paired together. And that was good news to both Bohl and Norvell. 

“One of the things I think is great about our league is some of the traditional rivalries we have,” Bohl said. “CSU-Wyoming is a huge game. The Air Force matchup is a big game. And so I think that was a really good decision.”

CSU and Wyoming will play this season on Nov. 12 at 5:00 p.m. MT in Fort Collins. The Rams currently hold a 10 game advantage in the all-time series (59-49-5). However, the Pokes have been slightly more successful this past decade, taking home the Bronze Boot in six of the last 10 meetings.