It is the end.
College football stands at a dividing line between something old and something new, and while most of us have had the acute feeling that things are going to be a lot different going forward for a while now, the past week has repeatedly underlined that one era is ending and another is beginning.
Not because Michigan won their first outright national championship since before the Korean War; no one cares about that anymore, because in the past (holy shit) four days the landscape of college football has shifted yet again due to the retirement of one old dude from West Virginia.
Not that Nick Saban's retirement is the sole factor in the end of this current college football era, of course. Bill Belichick and Pete Carroll moseying on/getting canned from their jobs are both huge changes for the NFL, but the league will likely continue on much as it has for the past few decades. Saban stepping down is a little different because of the huge knock-on effects that it'll have for everyone else as schools rush to nab Alabama commits and coaches (and fill in vacancies created by the Crimson Tide's incoming staff), but that won't fundamentally shift what college football is all about by itself.
What Saban's retirement actually means for the larger college football world at large is that it creates a signpost for the future, to let people know that from here on out, everyone would be going in a different direction. His absence isn't the reason for the change, but it is emblematic of it.
What did cause that change, then? Well, determining what constitutes an "era" isn't something that scholars are able to just "decide" all willy-nilly. There's a lot of sociological and historical factors that come into play that have to be properly contextualized, and that isn't easy. It requires intensive study, analysis, and data collection, and should be properly vetted by careful consideration from outside observers.
So, having spent a few minutes thinking about it and consulting absolutely no one, I've come to the conclusion that the semi-recent history of college football can be divided thusly:
The Dynasty Era (???-1998)
I don't call this the "Dynasty Era" because there were more or fewer college football dynasties, I'm calling it that because in an age when the surest way to win a national title was to convince a bunch of football writers that your team was great, creating a perceived dynasty was the best way to capture immortality.
It was an aspirational thing that drove a lot of how teams viewed themselves and each other; Miami, for example, had an incredible run from the mid-80's through the early 90's, and while they flamed out just as quickly as they emerged, "Da U" is something that sticks in our heads because of what they represented for almost a decade.
The Beep Boop Era (1998-2013)
Why on earth should we give mere humans the responsibility of evaluating other humans and whether or not they have earned a national title? Better to give that hefty load to an ever-shifting algorithm that places teams in bowls based on a formula no one can really agree on and that ultimately just makes everyone mad.
Nick Saban was the king of Beep Boop, and ultimately ushered in its death. Alabama won three titles in four years, and suddenly people realized that they didn't actually enjoy the iron-clad logic of the BCS after all and ditched it for teams having to play each other to prove that one is better than the other.
The Cliff Era (2014-Present)
Here's the thing: I really believe that NIL, the College Football Playoff, the transfer portal, and all the goofy stuff that comes with it are just precursors to larger changes that'll take place in college football going forward. Ideas like revenue sharing and paying players will truly change how we view college football and college athletics at large, and for the past decade has begun to set the stage for all of it.
In five or ten years, the conversations that we're having right now about money and transfers might seem incredibly quaint compared to what's coming down the pike. If you're still stuck in the Dynasty Era mentally, the next decade of college sports might break your brain in half.
How Ohio State defines itself in the next few years will determine if it is able to continue to have success in the years beyond, and more than that, if it'll continue to be one of the leaders of the sport that it envisions itself to be. With a young head coach and an incoming athletic director tasked to replace yet another legend in the sport, if the Buckeyes want to stay nationally relevant they'll have to continue to find ways to react and anticipate the big changes that are coming down the pike.
There are challenges, and things can change on a dime, but it's probably valid to note that among the other blue-blood programs: Alabama is in flux, Michigan bet big on one season and doesn't have a plan going forward, Texas has an insane and mercurial booster environment, and Georgia players and coaches can't stop breaking the law.
Ryan Day has to start beating Michigan again and win some playoff games, but if I'm thinking about the future, it's more important that the Buckeyes can continue to evolve with changing times. But hey: if the past is any indication, they'll figure something out. They always have.
