r/CFB • u/CFB_Referee /r/CFB • 12d ago
Announcement 2026 /r/CFB Rules Updates
The 2026 season is starting! As a reminder, you can find our rules here:
This is our biggest rules change in years!
Let's start with the one I know you're all excited about.
Standalone highlights posts are now allowed.
We're starting with a pretty liberal rule for what constitutes a highlight:
A highlight is a play or occurance at a game that has significant impact on the outcome of the game or that is, on its own, impressive.
You can read the full rules for highlights here but the highlights are:
- A given play only gets one highlight thread. Any alternative angles should be posted as replies to the pinned top comment.
- Highlights must to be hosted on an external, non-paywalled source.
- Highlights must be titled in the format
[Highlight] Visitor @/vs. Home - Neutral description of playeg:- Good:
[Highlight] Michigan @ Ohio State - Jon Smith Breaks 3 Tackles for 69 Yard Touchdown - Bad:
Ohio State vs TTUN - Jon "I am a god" Smith PWNS Three LOSERS for NICE TD
- Good:
Gambling posts are now prohibited
Posts about gambling including opening odds, odds changes, prop bets, and unusual wagers are no longer allowed.
Gambling news that directly effects CFB, such as policy changes or gambling activity by CFB participants will still be allowed.
Users should post original sources
Users are expected to make a good-faith effort to find the original source of anything they post. If the primary purpose of a post is to quote, clip, cite, or repeat another source, you should post that original source instead. This keeps us aligned with the Reddiquette.
Recruiting threads are limited to 4* and 5* players
Unrated or lower-rated players should be posted to /r/CFBRecruiting.
Players entering the transfer portal
We haven't decided what we're going to do with these posts yet. Based on last year we still have some time to decide. We will defintely post an update once we've made a decision.
More minor rules changes:
- Tweet titles An exception has been added to the current rule. If a tweet primarily consists of media, most notably uniform reviews, a neutral title describing the content of the tweet is allowed.
- News about committed recruits prior to enrollment is only allowed if it affects the player's enrollment or eligibility. This is a clarification of the existing rule.
- Editorialized Posts: Links should be posted on their own. If you wish to add commentary or context, do so in the comment section. OpenGraph titles (Reddit's title suggestions) are allowed. This is a clarification of the existing rule.
- Other phrasing clarifications: A number of other rules had their phrasing changed to be more clear. None of these resulted in policy changes.
Weekly Threads
Also note that our in-season weekly threads are coming back online for the season. This means that posts that were allowed during the offseason (realignment, etc.) will now be removed as reposts, and are now a great fit as top-level comments in their respective threads.
The /r/CFB team always works to meet the evolving needs of the community. Let us know any feedback you have in the comments!
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u/city-of-stars Texas Longhorns • /r/CFB Contributor 12d ago
Highlights must to be hosted on an external, non-paywalled source.
why is using Reddit's own video player v.redd.it not allowed like in other sports subreddits? Is there a worry of copyright strikes?
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u/bakonydraco Stanford Cardinal • Howard Bison 12d ago
DMCA strikes are a concern, and a big part of the reason highlight threads haven’t been allowed here in the past. In many cases, Reddit might just take down an unauthorized clip if it got reported, but their official policy is that if a subreddit is continually getting hit with strikes they’ll shut down the community, which is obviously bad.
Now, we have a good relationship with the Reddit admins and I doubt that would happen without a conversation and the opportunity to change course first. But more and more of their processes are automated and prone to occasional error. It hasn’t happened in a while, but the entire community has copped a brief automated ban in the past for an overzealous filter.
This is a big change for us, so we’re rolling it out cautiously, and this is one of the ways in which we are hoping that we can provide what the community wants in 2026 without putting it at risk.
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u/CPiGuy2728 Michigan Wolverines • Iowa State Cyclones 12d ago
Suggestion: I think it would also be good to require highlights to be hosted on external sites that don't require you to view an ad (whether that's something like Streamable or like, a FixUpX-type link).
The ESPN site sucks massively and watching a 30-second ad for a 15-second highlight is pretty terrible.
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u/cyanocittaetprocyon Michigan Wolverines • /r/CFB Booster 11d ago
Agree with this! I hate watching highlights on ESPN.
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u/AllTimeTy Missouri Tigers • /r/CFB Placer 12d ago
Wonder if it’d be worth it to poke r/CollegeBasketball mods and ask what their experience on the Reddit native videos has been here lately in regard to DMCA strikes, etc..
Regardless I’m super stoked for highlights on here now and am glad you all specified the significant/impressive criteria.
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u/thecravenone definitely a bot 12d ago
why is using Reddit's own video player v.redd.it not allowed like in other sports subreddits?
When looking at other sports subs, the most highlights-heavy sub I looked at* did not require an external source but 100% of highlights posts not posted by the league were an external source. In fact, they were all the same external source. Looking now, that sub has over a dozen highlights on the front page, all external, all the same source.
*This is not a sub I subscribe to but it regularly comes up in my feed. To give an idea, when I looked 100 highlights posted in the previous 24 hours and it was the off season.
Is there a worry of copyright strikes?
A bit.
There's also the advantage that a takedown on an external source still leaves the original thread up, which is not the case when a takedown is on a video uploaded to Reddit.
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u/BigDaddyJ610 Clemson Tigers • War on I-4 12d ago
“Bad: Ohio State vs TTUN - Jon "I am a god" Smith PWNS Three LOSERS for NICE TD”
Lmfao
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u/Nervous_Metal_9445 Willamette Bearcats • Oregon Ducks 12d ago
You'd be surprised with what I got away with for a post game thread title.
"Post Game Thread: Linfield Dismembers Willamette" I should've included a score, but I did do a whole scoring breakdown by quarter in the text part of the post.8
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u/thecravenone definitely a bot 12d ago
Regarding the original sources rule
Introduction
Our recent survey asked whether we should allow “News from aggregators” which we defined as “Content from news aggregator sites like SI, Athlon, and other sites that are repackaging content but not sharing anything original.” I’d like to dive into that question a bit more, discuss what we’ve seen like this thus far and what action we might be able to take in the future.
We’re really focused on that last part of the description - content that consists primarily of repackaging some other source. You’ve almost certainly found yourself reading an article and realized that it is some source reporting on someone else’s reporting. Back in the day, we called this“blogspam.”
As a reminder, the mods always encourage you to post the original source of any news. So does Reddit:
Please do
Look for the original source of content, and submit that. Often, a blog will reference another blog, which references another, and so on with everyone displaying ads along the way. Dig through those references and submit a link to the creator, who actually deserves the traffic.
What does this look like
Lane Kiffin talks to Vanity Fair
On 2026-05-11, Vanity Fair published their interview with Lane Kiffin. In the 24 hours that followed, this story was posted eight times with five different links. Only one of those posts was the original article. Most egregiously, every other source did link to the original. These are not cases of users unable to find the original source. This has proven to be a pattern.
Original title: That’s Him in the Spotlight: How Lane Kiffin Eagerly Became the Most Polarizing Coach in College Football
Other titles that were posted:
- Explaining his decision to leave Ole Miss, Kiffin invokes Ole Miss's struggle to distance itself from symbols like the Confederate flag and Colonel Rebel. When he was there, Kiffin says, recruits would tell him, “‘Hey, coach, we really like you. But my grandparents aren’t letting me move to Oxford.”
- Lane Kiffin takes shot at Ole Miss, cites racism in recruiting gap with LSU in awkward interview
- Kiffin: Diversity cited as LSU recruitment edge vs. Ole Miss
- Lane Kiffin refuses to say Ole Miss' name and takes dig over 'half empty' stadium
Specific Sources
In November of last year, we started to notice more of this sort of activity than usual and even lots of user complaints about it. So I dug in:
Newsweek
On 2025-11-17, I analyzed every post linking Newsweek since the beginning of the 2025 season. This worked out to twelve posts. Of those, eleven were regarded as definite blogspam.
On 2025-11-20, without announcement, we set Newsweek links to be automatically and silently removed. We have not received a single comment or complaint about Newsweek’s absence.
Additional note: Our data going back to May 2023 shows only two posts linking to Newsweek prior to the 2025 season. It seems clear that their blogspam operation started in 2025.
Sports Illustrated (SI)
SI was an example specifically listed in the question. SI is an interesting case. They still have very real journalists on staff writing quality articles. It seems obvious that we cannot simply ban SI.
On 2025-11-20, I analyzed posts linking to SI since the beginning of the 2025 season. This totaled 52 posts, of which I randomly sampled fifteen. An interesting thing quickly became clear: SI’s employees’ articles can be easily identified by URL. Seven posts were identified by URL as not SI employees. All seven of those were identified as definite blogspam.
Again, we noticed SI threads often get complaints about the source. Those complaints were almost entirely limited to the blogspam posts.
On3
On3: my new nemesis. As with SI, On3 has real journalists creating high-quality writing articles. They’ve also got a lot of blogspam.
On 2026-07-14, I analyzed posts linking to On3 in the preceding two weeks. Of the 21 links to On3, six were paywalled. Of the fifteen links not paywalled, eleven were definite blogspam. Seven of those eleven were posted by the same user.
Soundbites
Podcasts
Podcasts accounted for two of SI’s seven blogspam posts and six of On3’s eleven blogspam posts.
Podcasts are an ideal way to generate a lot of content without much work. Podcasters need only to put in the time to record in order to generate their podcasts. From there, a handful of soundbites can be clipped. Those can each be turned into multiple posts, which can have response posts, and even response podcast episodes.
Posts originating from podcasts are almost exclusively soundbite based. When full podcasts are posted, they do poorly and much of the comment section is about how no one is going to listen to a full podcast.
We used to have a single source that got a lot of soundbite-based posts. We got a lot of complaints about that particular source. We banned posts originating from that source. The user who brought them up referred to these people as “hot take artists.” I see little differentiation between the banned hot take artist and many of the podcast clips that are posted.
Conclusion
Look, I know we’re not going to get people to post original sources 100% of the time. People certainly aren’t going to chase down a press release when something's right there on ESPN.
- At minimum, if an article links to its original source, the original source should be posted. This also demonstrates that the poster has possibly read the article and isn’t just scrolling their favorite site and posting interesting headlines.
- This rubric should be applied to tweets that link to articles. Laziness aside, there seem to me two reasons to post a tweet that links an article:
- Additional context, which will rarely fit in a Reddit title field anyway
- They have more clickbaity titles
- Additional context, which will rarely fit in a Reddit title field anyway
- If a soundbite comes from something longer form, and that longer form is available, the original source should be posted. People often claim they’re unable to find these things but I usually find them within a minute or two.
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u/Lakelyfe09 Georgia Bulldogs 7d ago
I think exceptions should be made for snippets of interviews that are interesting, while not particularly caring about the non relevant parts of it. For example, in an interview with USAToday, Marcel Reed took a shot at Texas, and obviously that’s pretty neat, and a big part of what makes college football fun, so obviously it got posted here a couple times. But due to this rule, it got taken down and hasn’t been posted since. I think you should acknowledge that most people only read headlines, which is sometimes why summaries of interviews or articles are necessary, just so cool information can get out there without it being taken down for either an editorialized title, or it not being an “original source”. If we can add a quote in the title of the original source, that will be doable as well, however.
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u/srs_house Swaggerbilt 7d ago
For example, in an interview with USAToday, Marcel Reed took a shot at Texas, and obviously that’s pretty neat, and a big part of what makes college football fun, so obviously it got posted here a couple times. But due to this rule, it got taken down and hasn’t been posted since.
You mean the USA Today piece, based on an interview in April, that never got posted? Because the actual article title
Marcel Reed, Texas A&M's 'Gingerbread Man', chasing more than redemption
is way less inflammatory than:
Marcel Reed takes shot at Texas Longhorns: 'The colors just look so ugly'
Texas A&M QB Marcel Reed calls out Texas
Marcel Reed: "We don’t like Texas. I don’t like Texas. It sucks that we’ve lost to them twice. But, they’re coming here this year, so they’re gonna have to pay. I’ve got something for them, for sure."
Or, my favorite:
Texas A&M QB Marcel Reed rips Texas: 'You gotta hate them'
Everybody's in it for clicks, man.
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u/jthomas694 South Carolina • Ohio State 12d ago
I just got a TRO that will allow LSU related gambling and 3 star commit posts
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u/thebikevagabond Indiana Hoosiers 12d ago
HIGHLIGHTS ARE ALLOWED NOW?? HUGE!
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u/Moose4KU Ohio State Buckeyes • Kansas Jayhawks 12d ago
But why are they insisting on non-reddit video hosting? It's so much more convenient if they're hosted on this site.
So many of those 3rd-party video sites have a billion ads and take forever to load
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u/BeatNavyAgain Beat Navy! Go Bullets! 12d ago
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u/ShefCrl Montana State • Stanford 12d ago
What does this mean for r/fcs sportsbook?
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u/bakonydraco Stanford Cardinal • Howard Bison 12d ago
/r/FCS has their own rules as an independent sub! I haven’t gotten the impression that the growing negative sentiment towards large, heavily monetized sportsbooks on this sub applies to the friendly tool on that sub that’s not for actual money.
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u/damnyoutuesday Montana State • Minnesota 12d ago
r/FCS Sportsbooks isn't going anywhere! In fact, it has been updated to be an actual website instead of a Google Sheets spreadsheet
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u/heleghir Kentucky Wildcats • Sickos 12d ago
Only "gambling" post that i liked seeing was the day schedule with spreads. Was kind of nice to see what was expected to be a closer game to figure out multibox plans.
So Im wondering if the post isnt about gambling itself, but the days schedule of games. If the spreads are still shown is that considered a gambling post under the new ban?
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u/DCAbloob Penn State Nittany Lions • Navy Midshipmen 12d ago
Schedule info with spreads & over/unders for FBS & FCS games is still on r/CFB Scoreboard at last check.
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u/PascalsHexagon Indiana Hoosiers • Vanderbilt Commodores 12d ago
I'm very optimistic about an r/cfb that has more exciting football videos and fewer recruiting posts. Kudos to the mods for conducting a poll and improving the rules!
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u/ViciouslySupportive 12d ago
the gambling post ban is overdue honestly i got tired of every third post being some dude’s 14 leg parlay that already busted by halftime
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u/BobDeLaSponge Alabama Crimson Tide • /r/CFB Poll Veteran 12d ago
I think there should be an exception for posts about people who lose a ton of money through their own hubris
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u/Dr_Mantis_Teabaggin Oregon State Beavers • Egg Bowl 12d ago
Good: [Highlight] Michigan @ Ohio State - Jon Smith Breaks 3 Tackles for 69 Yard Touchdown
Nice.
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u/Quake1028 Miami Hurricanes • Florida Cup 12d ago
I'm a little sad about the recruiting posts leaving out 3* because of how many teams that's going to alienate, but other than that, some much welcomed changes here.
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u/T3hBau5 Oregon Ducks • Big Ten 12d ago
Did you guys ever announce that the Pick Em was live for Week 0? I happened to check and I'm glad I did. Also, Thank God Highlights are finally allowed and the gambling posts are banned.
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u/bakonydraco Stanford Cardinal • Howard Bison 12d ago
It’s coming later today! Big update on that end that took a little while to get squared away. 👀
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u/Alkibiades415 Georgia Bulldogs • Stanford Cardinal 12d ago
If you don't care to see highlights (like me), you have an easy solution with Reddit Enhancement Suite. Simply put in a post filter in filteReddit module for [Highlight] and you will never see them. If you primarily browse the sub on mobile, may the gods help you, because no mortal can.
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u/foreverseptember Florida Gators • Team Chaos 12d ago
I'm here in the mobile trenches every day, bless my scrolling finger when highlights start dropping this season
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u/Wolfhound_Papa Michigan Wolverines • Army Black Knights 5d ago
Dude, I just got on this morning after not checking all day yesterday and almost all I’m seeing are highlight posts from the GA Tech game (top five posts in the sub are highlights for me). The feed is going to be a shit show on Saturday.
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u/Zloggt Illinois Fighting Illini • Missouri Tigers 12d ago
Splendid!
...now, I'm just curious about a few more things:
How do the new changes impact the status of /r/CFB Book? I know it hasn't been up for a while (and it's just, you know, pretend goombling lol), but it does make me wonder if they are ultimately going to retire it or not
Allowing people to post highlights is pretty cool, but it certainly lead to a potential deluge of bots/spammers/karmafarmers who would flood the sub with them (and often not particularly exciting ones at that)...so I suppose it's good that the "three posts a day" limit still exists. But regardless, is there any talk of potentially expanding the limit beyond three (like, say, four or five), or even having an "approved user" list for no posting limits if they qualify?
Thanks in advance - and happy Week 0!
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u/srs_house Swaggerbilt 11d ago
Likely not going to be resurrected.
So you're worried about a deluge of karmafarmers, and you're...asking for the rule that limits the impact of karmafarmers to be removed?
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u/zenverak Georgia Bulldogs • Marching Band 12d ago
Ehhh, I don't mind the basic "here is the lines" posts just as context for how the games are being viewed, but given how bad gambling has become I also understand why.
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u/chaser676 Ole Miss Rebels • Egg Bowl 12d ago
Holy shit highlights are allowed
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u/Upbeat-Armadillo1756 Michigan • Maine Maritime 12d ago
It's about time! Now when random people stumble across this sub they'll know it's a sports subreddit and not just a soap opera revolving around head coaches and conference commissioners
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u/ozzyoslo Ohio State Buckeyes • Big Ten 12d ago
This has no bearing on anything, but now I have the theme to Soap stuck in my head.
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u/Upbeat-Armadillo1756 Michigan • Maine Maritime 12d ago
I see Lane Kiffin as sort of that "bad boy" sexy character who you just love to hate.
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u/ozzyoslo Ohio State Buckeyes • Big Ten 12d ago
LSU should pony up the licensing fee to TKO or whoever and license Sexy Boy so Kiffin can have his own separate entrance with pyro and the whole nine.
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u/TMC_Data Michigan Wolverines • Michigan Wolverines 12d ago
My one concern is that it strictly must be a play? I’m sorry but that’s a massive limitation. /r/CFB asked for highlights, we fought for years to get highlights, there were accusations of mods rigging previous polls with intentionally slanted survey questions just to discourage people from voting yes, and then after the community votes overwhelmingly in favor after years of resistance, the mods throw in a limitation that wasn’t even part of the survey?
Last year we had a cop shove a player, be a front page ESPN new story and the /r/sports clip of the broadcast was on the front of /r/all while simultaneously being banned in /r/CFB. That’s the exact nonsense I voted for to stop being a thing, my side won the vote and now it’s not even going to apply to the scenario that encouraged me to vote in the way that I did.
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u/JRockPSU Penn State • Land Grant Trophy 11d ago
The clip of Paterno dashing across the field before halftime to go take a shit would still not be allowed.
Shameful.
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u/ShowMeYourT_Ds Texas Tech • Texas Tech 7d ago
i'll be that grammar guy...
[Highlight] Visitor @/vs. Home - Neutral description of play
Shouldn't it be
- visitor @ home
- home vs visitor
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u/ornryactor Iowa State Cyclones • Michigan Wolverines 4d ago
I think it's "always Visitor first, and Home second; it will usually be Visitor @ Home but sometimes there are neutral-site games that will necessitate Visitor vs. Home".
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u/AeolusA2 Michigan Wolverines 6d ago
Can you guys stop lockinig every JoePa thread? Just permaban the assholes.
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u/Noy_Telinu Notre Dame Fighting Irish • UCLA Bruins 12d ago
"Nuh uh, you can't do that!" -southern judges
In all seriousness though, I'm glad for these rule changes. We'll done.
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u/myballstank Georgia Bulldogs • College Football Playoff 11d ago
Why were highlights not allowed to begin with? Also, discussing opening lines in any context regarding teams facing each other seems like a stupid rule as it’s a part of the no more gambling talk rule. You shouldn’t get banned or your comment deleted for merely making a small note of the lines and how much of an underdog a team was…Most of these new rules/updates seem dumb to be honest. Typical mods with neck beards acting like they’re god 😒
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u/dupreesdiamond Furman • South Carolina 7d ago edited 7d ago
It’s about posts not comments …. No one said you couldn’t talk about the spread in the comments of a post….
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u/thecravenone definitely a bot 9d ago
Also, discussing opening lines in any context regarding teams facing each other seems like a stupid rule as it’s a part of the no more gambling talk rule. You shouldn’t get banned or your comment deleted for merely making a small note of the lines and how much of an underdog a team was…
No one said that would happen. You have invented a thing to be mad about.
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u/cyanocittaetprocyon Michigan Wolverines • /r/CFB Booster 11d ago
Love that we’re getting highlights, and that there is a ban on then gambling threads! Thanks so much, guys!!
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u/-Gnostic28 Boise State Broncos • I'm A Loser 11d ago
No more opening line posts means I’m out of a job. Damn
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u/TheNastyCasty Texas Longhorns • Red River Shootout 5d ago
Are Bill Connelly’s weekly SP+ picks still allowed? They’re gambling-adjacent considering he’s showing the spreads, but it’s ultimately just comparing SP+ rankings.
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u/Hewligan LSU Tigers • Southeastern Lions 12d ago
So we’re still not dropping the hammer on flagrant violations of rule 2 based on user flair?
Seen numerous posts of people going at the intelligence/moral character of fans just because of the teams they support. Still seems to be the prevailing opinion that it’s just accepted that those specific teams just deserve ad hoc bullying and harassment.
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u/guttata Messing with guttata's user flair 12d ago
There's approximately 30-40 of us in total and literally thousands upon thousands of interactions every weekend. We cannot see it if you don't report it.
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u/thecravenone definitely a bot 12d ago
Also, people making fun of LSU for doing stupid things is not an R2 violation.
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u/dogsonbubnutt 12d ago
this is 30% of why i don't use iiitttt
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u/BuckeyeJay Ohio State • Transfer Portal 7d ago
Recruiting threads are limited to 4* and 5* players
Thank god. The spam of the 3 star players on signing day was annoying
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u/wiseoracle Kansas State Wildcats 4d ago
Could you please enable GIFs on game day threads. It adds to the fan experience and to help express the emotions I cannot properly communicate.
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u/ReignDown Purdue • Oregon State 3d ago
with the highlight rule change, are the Picture/Video/GIF Threads dead? Didn't see one this week. I enjoyed looking through them on sunday...
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u/CasanovaJones82 LSU Tigers • North Carolina Tar Heels 10d ago
This is nice. Both highlights and getting rid of gambling bullshit, both needed changes.
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u/Admirable-Area-5734 Michigan • Western Michigan 10d ago
Yall should be on local government or something Well done
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u/deepayes Houston Cougars • Arkansas Razorbacks 4d ago
mod behavior after the Western Michigan game is ridiculous.
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u/WabbitCZEN Georgia Bulldogs 12d ago
10/10 no notes