Reason No. 9801 to be excited about the future of college football
With Wednesday's announcement that Georgia and Notre Dame have scheduled a home-and-home in 2017 and 2019, NFL.com college football writer Bryan Fischer sent out this tweet refreshing us all on the list of mega non-conference games slated for the 2017 season.
Imagine being in charge of College GameDay and having to choose where to send your show between these games:
September 2
Florida vs. Michigan (at AT&T Stadium, Arlington, Texas)
Texas A&M at UCLA
September 9
Georgia at Notre Dame
Nebraska at Oregon
September 16
Oklahoma at Ohio State
Texas at USC
That's a dozen programs that have combined to win 9,343 games - including the top six and eight of the top 10 winningest programs in the sport's history...
... win 307 conference championships (and that's with Notre Dame contributing zero)
... appear in 501 bowl games
... claim 65 national championships
... and produce 41 of a possible 79 Heisman Trophy winners.
This is all in addition to interesting non-conference games such as Washington at Rutgers (Sept. 2), Maryland at Texas (Sept. 2), Stanford at Virginia (Sept. 9), Georgia Tech at Ole Miss (Sept. 9), Minnesota at Oregon State (Sept. 9), Northwestern at Duke (Sept. 9), Syracuse at LSU (Sept. 9), Oklahoma State at Pittsburgh (Sept. 16), Arizona State at Texas Tech (Sept. 16), California at BYU (Sept. 16), Ohio State at North Carolina (Sept. 23), plus the growing roster of neutral site games in Houston, Atlanta and possibly elsewhere that have yet to be scheduled.
And this is all on top of regular non-conference match-ups like Notre Dame-USC, Florida-Florida State and the like.
2017 is far enough away that, sure, some of these games will inevitably be cancelled. But it's not in the distant future. Today's freshmen will be seniors when these games are played, to put it in perspective. And with the College Football Playoff's stated emphasis on strength of schedule, Septembers should be jam-packed with interesting games in perpetuity.
College football is already the greatest sport on God's green earth, and it's about to get even better.
