New Realities Of College Football Have Climate Change Lessons Too

MIAMI GARDENS, FL - DECEMBER 30: Malaki Starks #24 of the Georgia Bulldogs tackles Caziah Holmes #26 of the Florida State Seminoles during the Capital One Orange Bowl game between University of Georgia and Florida State University at Hard Rock Stadium on December 30, 2023 in Miami Gardens, Florida. (Photo by Perry McIntyre/ISI Photos/Getty Images)

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It’s the most wonderful time of the year for people like me. It’s the start of the college football season. My beloved Florida State Seminoles take the field this weekend, and my equally beloved Georgia Bulldogs play next week. I am a three-time FSU alumnus, and a long-time professor at UGA. I often have converging thoughts in my mind. This morning is one of those moments. The world continues to experience extreme heat domes, flooding, tropical cyclones, drought and wildfires. The tragic events at the China - Nepal border, a place warming extremely fast, are fresh on my mind. While coming out of slumber this morning, an analogy hit me. The changing landscape of college football is also an analogy for climate change realities.

New Normals In College Football

It’s not the perfect analogy but go with me. If you follow college football, you know that it has changed. Fan bases, university leaders, players and families are adjusting to a “new normal” that includes NIL, transfer portals, and forms of player compensation. At the Orange Bowl a few years ago, I sat next to a woman at the Florida State - Georgia game. She lamented the current landscape and romanticized the college football days of the past.

Tennessee defensive lineman Daevin Hobbs poses for photos with a handful of props during Learfield and the university's first NIL content production day in Knoxville, Tenn., July 23, 2026. (AP Photo/Teresa M. Walker)

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Many people define a “normal” college football landscape by players staying at the same university for four years, playing bowl games and taking academic scholarships as compensation. Those days are over. Changes are being discussed or proposed, but the current system allows players to be paid for the use of their name, image or likeness. Players can also transfer to other teams with a degree of frequency that is a bit uncomfortable for many people. Many players also choose to sit out the bowl games to prepare for the professional ranks.

This new landscape has also created anomalies or things that may be surprising to long-time college football fans. Indiana University won the National Championship last season and celebrated the Heisman Trophy winner. “College football is experiencing its own form of climate change. The environment is shifting faster than many of its institutions were designed to adapt,” said Kendrick Scott, PhD in a message to me. Scott, who is a leadership scholar, college-athlete consultant, and founder of Couch Free, Inc., a wellness and functional beverage company, is no stranger to any of this. He won a national championship and is a former team captain at Florida State University. “NIL, the transfer portal, conference realignment, and increased athlete empowerment have created disruption, but they have also created an opportunity to build a more transparent, equitable, and sustainable model for the future of the sport,” he continued.

INDIANAPOLIS, IN - DECEMBER 06: Elijah Sarratt #13 of the Indiana Hoosiers strikes a Heisman pose with Fernando Mendoza #15 after the Big Ten Championship Game against the Ohio State Buckeyes on December 06, 2025 at Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis, Indiana. (Photo by Joe Robbins/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)

Icon Sportswire via Getty ImagesHow Is This Connected To Climate Change?

We now experience a “new normal” climate system too. The analogy is rooted in normalcy, expectations, and natural cycles of events. People understand that weather and climate have natural cycles. It rains. Winter comes and goes. Ice Ages happen. El Niño, like the strong one we are in right now, appears every two to seven years. Hurricanes are features of late summer months. By the way, Tropical Storm Dolly is headed towards the Leeward Islands right now but is expected to eventually weaken as it nears Puerto Rico.

Even with these natural aspects, human activities related to carbon emissions, land surface changes, air pollution and urbanization are rapidly, relatively speaking, changing the climate. Studies continue to point to the signatures of climate change in downpours, heatwaves, tropical cyclone intensity, drought, wildfires, and reduced extreme cold events. A 2026 report by the National Academies provides the latest assessment of extreme weather linkages to climate change.

People take photographs and videos of the swollen, debris-choked banks of the Trishuli River after a flash floods in Nepal's Nuwakot district on Wednesday, Aug. 26, 2026. (AP Photo/Niranjan Shrestha)

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Yet, some people still utter the same things to me when they find out that I am an atmospheric scientist. “Dr Shepherd, the climate changes naturally and always has." That’s one of the most common ones. I promise you that someone with a doctorate in physical meteorology didn’t miss that climate changes naturally on time scales ranging from minutes to thousands of years.

As I have written many times, it is not “either/or.” It is “and.” Our climate changes naturally, and human activities are contributing to changes. Grass grows naturally, and it grows differently when you fertilize the lawn. Baseball players can hit homeruns because of natural ability or training, and performance-enhancing drugs led to inflated homerun numbers in Major League Baseball.

(3/2/04Boston, MA) Steroids and baseball. (030204stermjs-staff photo by Michael Seamans. Saved in photo Wednesday/cd) (Photo by Michael Seamans/MediaNews Group/Boston Herald via Getty Images)

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People have lived within a certain weather or climate context that shapes their perceptions and understanding. I often hear things like, “I survived Hurricane D, so I am not leaving this time.” The problem with that statement is Hurricane Y this year may not be like anything that person has ever experienced with Hurricanes A, B, C or D in the past." The “new” climate is fueled by warming oceans and increased water vapor in the atmosphere. These things are what MyRadar Meteorologicst Matt Cappucci calls “storm fuel.”

The flash flood in Nepal is perceived to be an anomaly. Triple-digit heat in Europe is called unusual. Hurricane Melissa hit Jamaica and is one of the strongest hurricanes we have ever witnessed. Yet, studies have warned for years that extreme weather events would be a “calling card” for climate change. It’s all here, so I do not talk about climate change impacts in the future tense anymore.

The Psychology Of It All

The new college football landscape has produced outcomes that may be perceived as anomalies too. They probably are not anomalies. They are new realities. “When change challenges our established beliefs and behaviors, we experience cognitive dissonance – a psychological state of tension that arises when our actions don’t align with our expectations (Festinger, 1957),” wrote Christopher Zoboroski. “This internal conflict can lead to negative feelings, making it harder for us to adjust to new situations,” He went on to say in his blog.

I see such cognitive dissonance all of the time with climate change and extreme events. I also see it with college football fans too. To be clear, I am not writing this piece to endorse or condemn the current college football landscape. It is what it is right now. That same statement holds for our climate too. In both cases, there are probably more changes coming.

Are you ready for some college football? Yep, me too.

Billion-dollar weather-climate disasters in recent years. The U.S. has already experienced 12 of them during the first half of 2026.

Climate Central

This article was originally published on Forbes.com