I watched a great number of the games on NYD along with the KSU-LSU game. I am not sure that the quality of play declined that much with the optouts. IMO, it actually added a degree of drama and interesting variables. (Arkansas PSU game - can PSU take advantage of mess ups in thin Ark secondary? Can Ark continue to pound the rock against depleted PSU D, with marginal passing effectiveness).
I'd really like to get football back to more improvisation and emphasis of coaches on working and winning with they players they have.
Nothing has made me angrier than when we've gone through the two decades of coaching changes and someone walks in and says we need better players and we can't succeed until we get them. And their coaching was worse than the players we had, IMO. "It is a poor craftsman who blames his tools..."
An old ball coach once said a great coach was one that can beat you with their players, and then if you swapped players would beat you with your players. It was either Bear Bryant or Bum Phillips, and it was far more folksy than what I wrote (and hard to follow)...