“That’s three Saban commercials in a row,” I say to the guy in the LSU cap next to me.

“Huh?”

I am wearing my Alabama cap and it’s a game day. I gesture to the TV mounted above the coffee bar, where we have both been waiting for a while.

“Oh, yeah, he’s everywhere,” he agrees. “I don’t blame him for getting out. This is an entirely different game than it was two years ago.”

We strike up a conversation—Saban and DeBoer and how The Process doesn’t work when players are jumping from team to team instead of building trust in each other.

There’s plenty of time to chat. The point-of-sale system is glitching up. Apparently, this requires both baristas to fix, which is why the espresso machines are idle.

We look at the TV again and see two announcers flanking the ugliest photo I’ve ever seen of Lane Kiffin. His face looks like an acid-washed scrotum.

“You don’t accidentally pick a photo like that,” I say. “You’ve got to really hate someone to find a picture that bad.”

LSU guy agrees and adds, “but he doesn’t care. He just wants the attention, good or bad.”

“Like the whole NFL player thing,” I say.

“Exactly,” he says.

We continue talking about college football. Specifically, how NIL rules and the transfer portal have transformed the game, and not for the better. And how the old system was flawed, but the new one is more so.

Eventually, the POS system is fixed and our coffee gets made. We part ways, wishing each other’s teams luck in their respective games that day. We didn’t mean it, of course. Rivalries, y’know.

It wasn’t till later that day that I realized we hadn’t discussed a single player, game, or ranking. The game itself is little more than a MacGuffin. The bullshit of college football is now the narrative of college football.