The college football playoff will expand to 24 teams beginning next season, which is precisely the sort of thing that you should expect from a sport that has become increasingly enshittified.
That’s not a figure of speech nor some crassly clever wording.
Enshittification is a very specific process spelled out by author Cory Doctorow in what is one of the better books that I read this year:
Doctorow is a prolific writer and tech critic who coined the term to describe a specific process by which the digital services we increasingly depend on have become incrementally worse over time.
Facebook is an example. So is Twitter. And Amazon. And Uber. Even something like SeatGeek or Airbnb.
And while we don’t necessarily think of subscription television as a “digital service,” I’m going to argue why it has fueled the enshittification of college football.
But first, I need to explain the three specific stages that distinguish the very specific progression in Doctorow’s model of enshittification:
The Golden Age: Delight users
Oh my gosh, I can’t believe there’s this website that allows me to keep in touch with all the people I’ve met over various stages of my life.
Or to share my photos.
Or get a ride without hailing a cab.
Or to buy cheap tickets that might otherwise go unused.
The Shift to Business Customers: Abuse users to court business customers
Uber introduces surge pricing.
Facebook starts selling your data and starts subjecting you to a steady diet of posts from media companies instead of pictures from your friends.
Amazon starts showing sponsored products first, making it more difficult to find the cheapest or sometimes the best option.
The End Stage: Abuse your business customers to hoard value for shareholders
Uber drivers can’t make a living wage. The media companies whose articles Facebook used to promote have their posts throttled. Amazon introduces its own products that undercut and push out vendors that previously used its marketplace.
If you want to read more about Doctorow’s model specifically, the New Yorker ran a great story on it last year:
The age of enshittification | By Kyle Chayka
It’s worth noting that Amazon and Uber and Facebook started out operating as middlemen. They didn’t provide a specific service or product so much as they facilitated a transaction.
These companies — or platforms as they’re often called — connected one party to another. As Uber would describe it, their platform lets you hire an independent contractor to provide transportation. Facebook allows you to see messages and pictures from people you’re interested in.
Amazon connects buyers and sellers.
This relationship changes over time, however. And in Doctrow’s book, he outlines the trend that is often followed:
First, they work well for everyone.
Then the deal gets worse for the users.
Then the deal gets worse for the business customers.
OK. Now let’s get back to college football.
The users are us: the fans.
A dope like me who went to the University of Washington and remains irrationally devoted to its football team.
The business customers are the schools — or, more specifically, the conferences they’re part of.
The platform: subscription television.
🥇The Golden Age
It may be hard to remember, but it wasn’t all that long ago that only a handful of college football games were televised. This began to change rapidly in the late ‘80s; college football games increasingly became a part of cable TV programming, first via ESPN and later with regional sports networks.
This. Was. Awesome.
Sports fans quite suddenly had access to an exploding number of games, most importantly, including those of the team they followed.
The schools, who had once feared TV would devalue live attendance, quickly discovered they’d been wildly misguided. Not only did TV coverage dramatically expand the fan base, but TV companies also paid increasingly jaw-dropping sums for the rights to televise those games.
Everyone is happy.
🤑 The Shift to Business Customers
The clearest example of this was the rising cost of subscription television packages. The two most costly channels of any basic cable package are ESPN and the regional sports network. Before long, conferences offered their own networks in addition to the standard offerings.
In most cases, customers didn’t get an a la carte option. You couldn’t just pay for what you wanted. You had to pay for stations you didn’t want to watch to get the ones you did.
This trend continues today in the increasing fragmentation. Games are split up among an ever-increasing array of subscription services, some of which are mutually exclusive.
All of this was done to benefit the business customers, i.e., the schools and the conferences they belonged to, who were cashing ever-bigger checks.
💀 The End Stage
It wasn’t long before the TV companies started making the schools perform tricks to get their cash.
Football schedules are now constructed to fit the demands of subscription-television providers: 8 p.m. kickoffs and Friday night games.
Conferences became increasingly configured not by geography or history, but by the taste of the television partners. Conferences began actively poaching schools to increase the value of their broadcasting contracts.
The Pac-12 died with little more than a whimper, and all anyone could do was shrug and opine that the conference had misplayed its hand.
I would include playoff expansion on this list, too.
Adding 12 teams is watering down a postseason that is already watered down. It’s also adding another week to a postseason that is already too long.
I know some coaches, including Jedd Fisch, are happy about it, but I think that’s narrow self-interest. Making playoff berths more attainable pads their resume, something they can point to as proof of success.
The party that benefits most? ESPN. It adds another six games to its television schedule—more inventory.
I don’t think that makes this sport better, though. In fact, I’m pretty certain it’s making college football.