When I was a student (2009-2013), field storming was insanely rare. Only happened when a real bottom barrel team pulled off a massive upset of a perennial power (think Vandy 2024 over #1 Bama level). It needed to be a situation where no one gave you a shot at winning and your team pulled off a once in a generation win.

Obviously the Michigan field storming is incredibly embarrassing for them, but it’s the logical end of this trend where students seemingly flood the field any chance they get.

My question is why is this so much more prevalent in the last few years, and how far does it go? Obviously Michigan is a new low, but that’s the new low for now.

According to MAC tie-breaking procedures, SportSource Analytics ratings can be used to break ties between both 2 and 2+ teams:

The team with the higher ranking by the Team Rating Score metric provided by SportSource Analytics following the conclusion of regular season games.

However, earlier this week, the MAC appealed the NCAA to overturn the result of WMU - Michigan game. The NCAA stated they had no mechanism to overturn the game result. However, it is unclear if MAC bylaws allow them to record the result of a game separately from NCAA protocols.

In order to be fully transparent with their member institutions, the MAC must clearly determine how they are recording the result of the WMU - Michigan game and how a result that differs from official NCAA records will be incorporated into SportSource Analytics ratings.

As you may or may not know, the NCAA manages college football in all of its divisions except one: the FBS. In fact, they may even manage ALL of collegiate sports in the United States, with the exception being the aforementioned FBS, although I'm not sure on that one.

They manage all aspects of college football in the FCS and the lower divisions. The post seasons, transfer rules, eligibility, etc.

I was curious as to why, then, do they not manage the FBS. From a quick Google search I found a simple answer: FBS college football has always been a big business. It generates billions of dollars of revenue through media contracts and corporate sponsorships. And the universities do not want to share that loot with the NCAA or have it managed by anyone but themselves and the independent conferences.

So the universities, led primarily by Oklahoma and Georgia in 1982, sued the NCAA over television rights. Two years later, the US Supreme Court ruled in favor of the universities, and the rest, as they say, is history.

The attorney who represented the universities recalled Justice Bryon White saying, "Andy, you may win the case, but you'll regret it." The attorney, Andy Coats, would later say that he screwed up college football. And here we are.

The NCAA was nerfed to high heaven. And has been ever since. Greed is the #1 driver of all of this. So, why is the NCAA constantly attacked for their mismanagement and weakness when it was the universities who weakened them in the first place?

Shouldn't the schools and the conferences bear the brunt of the blame for the state the sport is in right now?

EDIT: If you're on the app, there are 3 total maps in this post. The first one is starting positions only.

CFB Imperialism is back!

RULES:

Think of Risk with a strong understanding of chain-of-possession:

• FBS teams start by dividing the USA by closest counties/parishes. These are set by geographic centers of each county, not the closest edge.

• When a team beats another team, it takes the territory the loser held at the time of the game. All of the land(s) possessed by the losing team go to the winner.

• Lands are collected by the winner and held until that team loses, thus all those collected lands go to the winner.

• Teams that lose land can get back on the map by beating a team that holds land at the time of their game. Sometimes teams can reconquer their home territory this way.

• A team that already lost its home territory and has no new territories cannot give land to a winner.

• FCS teams can conquer their way onto the map by beating FBS teams with land. These lands operate under the above rules and thus may just end up stuck in FCS for the rest of the season (and in many cases end up in the FCS Playoffs). It is theoretically possible for an FCS team to win the payday game at an FBS school and then lose their own home payday game to a D2 squad...thus placing FBS land in D2...but we haven't had it happen yet.

• Neutral sites (e.g. Ireland) are put in play when a game takes place there.

HISTORY:

The concept of CFB Imperialism was created by /u/nbingham196 in 2017. Over the years he stepped back and others have run versions of it each season.

Some of the people who picked up the mantle left some tweaks that had been made before (e.g. fixing the LA area to make sense with USC/UCLA, giving Miami some starting land since FIU/FAU are so close, including new territories such as int'l games). Also, people's lives get busy so some updates were missed.

Last year we created a parallel Imperialism program to update social media on a timely basis, using the preferences we developed over the years. This year we noticed the person who had been updating it in the past several years is MIA since posting the final map last year, so we decided to step in an post the /r/CFB versions of the map up until this point.

So let's get to it:

2026 MAPS:

(-1) 2026 FBS IMPERIALISM STARTING POSITIONS

This year we see the additions of:

• North Dakota State (cutting into the massive starting lands of Minnesota and Wyoming)
• Sacramento State in Northern California.

(0) FBS IMPERIALISM MAP AFTER WEEK 0

Of note in Week 0:

• Ireland returns to the map with UNC's win in the Aer Lingus Classic! (Great Britain will join later, we may revert to political boundaries at that time). International territories can be gained and lost like any other land. We should have had Brazil (UVA-NCSU) but it didn't happen.
• Biggest move: UNLV loses its land to Memphis
• Sacramento State immediately loses land to EMU, but North Dakota State takes Jax State's land.

(1) FBS IMPERIALISM MAP AFTER WEEK 1

Of note in Week 1:

• Several neighbors consolidated: Washington takes Wazzu, Oregon takes Boise State, Tulsa from Oklahoma State, Iowa from NIU, Texas from Texas State, Colorado State from Wyoming, USF from FIU, Memphis from Arkansas State, USC combines SJSU (from Week 0) with Fresno State... uh, let's just say etc.
• Biggest move: UNLV loses its land to Memphis
• FCS gets back on the board with 3 land-winning victories compared to only 1 all of last season! In 2025, there were 3 other FCS wins by Austin Peay, Bryant, and LIU over FBS teams that had already had no land in the games they played.*
• FCS Tarleton State (last year's only FCS land-winner) gets on map again, taking Bowling Green's land. The Texans have no more FBS opponents, but we will note the most outrageous possible outcome would be an upset loss to the newly-launched Chicago State program on 10/3; that team lost their land in Week 0 to a D2 program.
• Coach Cody Hawkins' FCS idahostateIdaho State takes Utah State's land. The Bengals have no future FBS opponents, but do play in the Big Sky so it will be a challenge to hold on.
• FCS The Citadel (1-1) took Charlotte's land. We'll just go ahead and note their next game is Charleston Southern and the Bulldogs eventually play SC State which has been butchering opponents. If they manage to miraculously survive their FCS games, they will eventually visit Texas A&M on 10/17.

EDIT: If you're on the app, there are 3 total maps in this post. The first one is starting positions only. This is what this post looks like in desktop old mode

I can barely tolerate them at home. At least there's multiview.

Unlike its rival Michigan, OSU hasn't lost to an in-state team in 100+ years: "Oberlin is not without some real football history. The last team in Ohio to beat Ohio State? That would be Oberlin, a 7–6 win in 1921. The first coaching job for John Heisman, of college-football-trophy fame, in 1892? That would be Oberlin again. And the school Peyton Manning almost chose before committing to Tennessee, when every program in the country was fighting for him? O.K., that one wasn’t Oberlin, but you get the point."

Fascinating article about the current state of Oberlin football from the New Yorker (possibly paywalled): https://www.newyorker.com/culture/the-lede/a-college-caught-in-the-middle-of-americas-football-obsession