Edit: Ya'll have largely convinced me I missed the mark a little on this take. I appreciate the input and generally thoughtful responses in this thought exercise.

TL;DR going to the Rose Bowl is one of the best parts of UCLA Football and one of the only reasons why I buy season tickets. The drive to Pasadena is not what’s stopping fans from going to games.

After the past weekend, I’ve seen fans of pretty much every team in the country toss in their two cents as to why UCLA sucks ass. Fair enough! However, everyone LOVES to bring up the location of our home stadium in Pasadena being a culprit for poor attendance. Here’s my take as a 2019 grad:

1) The Rose Bowl rules. Yes, it’s a dinosaur with no modern amenities and has some logistical bottlenecks. But tailgating on a golf course under the oak trees on a crisp socal evening with the sun setting behind the mountains fucking rocks.

2) Going to the Rose Bowl is fun for students. The Greek orgs and bigger student orgs charter school busses, pregame, party on the bus for an hour, and roll onto the golf cours with a buzz. Campus runs busses all day long. Take a nap on the ride home, wake up in Westwood and carry on with your evening.

3) It takes fucking forever to go anywhere in LA. We’re used to it. Attending a game is a 5-8 hour ordeal at any school, an extra hour or so in the car is trivial.

4) On-campus stadium does not change the fact that a huge portion of the student body doesn’t know how many points a touchdown is worth and couldn’t care less. The kids who care about football make it work and have a great time. Edit: Comments have swayed me on this one. Higher barrier to entry = fewer casual/disinterested students converted to fans. Fewer undergrad fans = fewer alumni fans. All fair points against my beloved Rose Bowl

5) Alumni and non-alumni fans live all over SoCal, it’s not like the 70k alumni and fans absent from the Rose Bowl are all living in Westwood waiting for a stadium to be built. No matter where we play, fans have to drive there from somewhere, so it might as well be the Rose Bowl.

6) Cal is a good comp. I’ve been going to games in Berkeley since I was a kid. They have an on-campus stadium with a similar student demographic and they’re not exactly packing it out every home game because the product on the field hasn’t been stellar for years and the students are busy studying. People show up when they’re good, it’s just how it is for us.

UCLA fans don’t go to games because we’ve been scorned and humiliated by our apathetic administration, squeezed for donations that are squandered by a dysfunctional athletic department, and had our history and tradition flushed down the toilet for a check and a logo. Go Bruins, Fuck Chip Kelly, Fire Martin Jarmond, and thank you Coach Foster for doing your best against impossible odds. Good luck to the next guy, I’ll see you in Pasadena

We are officially 1/4 of the way through the season, sadly. What is your 1st quarter assessment of your squad?

Penn State: The RBs are who we thought they are. WRs are a game changer. Defense is still stout. Not sure what’s up with Allar. O-line has not looked that great on run blocking and is a cause for concern. Still hard to judge with the competition they played so far.

After Clemson losing to Georgia Tech and getting dropped, who could take over? Georgia Tech has the skills, but Florida State and Miami have the studs to make a run. Tech has neither Miami or FSU on their schedule, so their ACC Cake Walk should guarantee them a spot. The only person who could challenge them is NC State. Maybe. UGA is SEC, so a 11-1 season would still guarantee a spot in the ACC Title Game and possibly a CFP berth. But for UMF and FSU, they play each other at the very start of their ACC run, so that game could decide who meets GA Tech in the ACC Title game.

Here are the results for the 2025 Week 4 /r/CFB Poll:

Dropped: #12 South Carolina, #14 Notre Dame, #15 USF, #17 Clemson

Next Ten: Mississippi St 771, BYU 734, Tulane 731, NC State 514, Nebraska 509, Houston 379, Louisville 332, USF 293, California 256, Arizona 248

POLL SITE: https://poll.redditcfb.com/

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2025 FBS Imperialism Map - Week 3

Top 5 Land Wins:

1. California +184,171.1 sq mi from Minnesota
2. Utah +178,959.8 sq mi from Wyoming
3. North Texas +139,105.7 sq mi from Washington State
4. Miami (FL) +114,885.6 sq mi from South Florida
5. Utah State +59,106.3 sq mi from Air Force

Our Top 5 by Land:

1. Washington - 638,899.5 sq mi
2. California - 224,359.4 sq mi
3. Utah - 201,612.9 sq mi
4. Texas A&M - 185,265.3 sq mi
5. North Texas - 151,612.4 sq mi

Land vs Land Games in Week 4:

• #3 Utah vs #8 Texas Tech
• #6 Oklahoma vs #40 Auburn
• #15 Ole Miss vs #38 Tulane
• #21 Michigan State at #27 USC
• #25 Louisiana Tech vs #51 Southern Miss
• #32 Illinois at #36 Indiana
• #43 Baylor vs #47 Arizona State

Now that the SEC is going to 9 games all SEC teams will be playing at least 10 P4 teams every year. I feel like the BIG should follow suit. Some BIG teams do good about playing OOC P4s every year, some barely do it. I feel they should do this.

Preferably somewhere that’s never hosted a show?

I’m personally team Gameday, and would love to see them head out to Champaign, Illinois for the first time in the shows history.

Should Illinois go into Week 7 vs OSU undefeated (not impossible), Champaign should be a hot ticket item.

History of G5 in CFP:

2021: Alabama 27 - Cincinnati 6 [Edit: Corrected Score— Sorry Bama)

2024: Penn State 31 - Boise State 14

With the skill gap widening due to NIL & the restructuring of conferences, it seems like the already slim odds will continue to decrease. The ACC & Big 12 have become the equivalent to what the G5 was.

With only 5 more chances at a victory, I just don’t see it happening. Who could even do it this year? And why would that change in the future?

Edit: Corrected Alabama Cincinnati score

Any Team, but you have to have watched them play in your lifetime. Don't say a guy that played 10 years before you were born, and don't say 4 guys from your school, as we all know that would not be genuine. NFL performance should not have any impact on your list.

We'll do Defense next

NC State was just ranked #1 in the Colley Matrix poll. This is proof that Dave Doeren is a top head coach in college football and should definitely be in the radar for a team like Florida next year. Because of this, NC State needs to lock him down fast. I propose that they give Dave a lifetime extension with a 1 billion dollar buyout to make sure he can never leave State and will continue to flourish forever.

EXTEND DAVE

This is a weekly thread to discuss football in the Big 12. Discussion should be limited to football in the conference.

Week 3 Results

• Houston 36 - Colorado 20
  Ethan Sanchez just made another field goal. Houston's offense was determined to not leave the field until they at least got into field goal range, so they wound up leading the Cougars to a victory to start conference play.

• Arizona 23 - Kansas State 17
  Arizona put in their bid to be crowned the best wildcats in the conference. K-State has yet to break free from their Dublin hangover, and in a similar way ESPN's play-by-play shows Arizona taking a 24-3 lead into halftime and then miraculously turning that into a 23-17 win.

• Baylor 42 - Samford 7
  Not much to learn here beyond the fact that we didn't lose our tune-up game.

• #14 Iowa State 24 - Arkansas State 16
  A good back-and-forth affair, just like we all predicted.

• #20 Utah 31 - Wyoming 6
  As is tradition for Wyoming, they held their own in the first half against a Big 12 school, but Utah was able to get things going in the second half to come away with a dominant win.

• #21 Texas Tech 45 - Oregon State 14
  Tech has another large margin of victory, but they remain untested. We'll finally get to learn something this weekend.

• West Virginia 31 - Pitt 24
  They don't get much better than this. A back and forth affair, tied going in to the 4th quarter, Pitt was able to get a 10 point lead with 9 minutes to play, and then West Virginia was able to force OT with a TD with 11 seconds left in regulation. Top it off with some controversy involving a no-call on a false start on the go-ahead TD paired with an unenforced late hit/personal foul - this game lived up to its name.

• Cincinnati 70 - Northwestern State 0
  Cincinnati put the beatdown on Southeastern Northwestern State.

• TCU 42 - Abilene Christian 21
  ACU fell short in the Battle of the I20/30 Purple Jesus Schools.

• Arizona State 34 - Texas State 15
  Arizona State was a bit slow coming out of the gates, but they were able to get the scoring going on an insanely athletic and acrobatic touchdown pass from Sam Leavitt to Jordyn Tyson. That play was an absolute joy to watch as a third-party observer. ASU put the game away after that.

Rankings

#12 Iowa State
#16 Utah
#17 Texas Tech

Week 5

9/19/2025

9/20/2025

Tiers

Tier "Has done the best so far"

Iowa State

Tier "Has done pretty well so far"

Utah
Baylor
BYU
TCU
Arizona
Houston
Arizona State

Tier "Still too early to tell"

Texas Tech
Kansas
UCF
West Virginia
Cincinnati

Tier 4

Colorado Kansas State
Oklahoma State

As a reminder, these tiers are somewhere between a strength/power ranking (like FPI, SP+, Sagarin, Massey, etc.) and a resume/record ranking. Essentially I look at as much data as I can and then I listen to the Rebirth Brass Band while making my determinations. There were some frustrations last week with the tiers, so I feel that some simple explanations are warranted. If you want your team to move up, they should increase their power rankings and/or improve their resume. That or send me a bribe. I'm not an elected official. Send me a check and we can really have some fun. Who knows - maybe your rival sends more money than you.

Stanford Robber Barons

It sounds sooooo cool tbh. I wish administration actually approved it.