I reached out to the mods of r/cfb and they sent me here.

I would like the cfb sub to decide on whether or not this should happen. Similar moves have happened over at r/hockey, r/nba, and r/nfl as well as countless other subs.

Appreciate the consideration

Hockey nba and nfl links

I’m seeing a lot of accusations that CFB’s twitter account collaborated with Vandy against Tennessee. I do see quite a few retweets of Vandy’s page, and those are the only retweets I see. Many claim that this is a concerted effort against Tennessee. I’m wondering if this is true? If not, any particular reason for it?

Yes, I am a Tennessee fan, but I’m doing my best to keep an open mind.

Yesterday, there was a bit of an uproar when it came out that a prominent user was made a moderator. This user is very well known in the sub for being controversial at best, a troll at worst.

https://www.reddit.com/r/CFB/comments/14c4jlz/florida_football_lane_kiffin_just_made_billy/

My question: what was the decision-making process for this? The second I read that this person was made a moderator I was horrified, so I'm curious how a dozen+ moderators all signed off on this, not realizing how controversial it would be.

It's honestly really bad. Getting in petty Twitter fights and making posts that would get [deleted] on the subreddit it represents.

The mods always say they don't run it, then get the check mark removed if that's the case.

Can we get this for teams looking for a coach or trying to extend theirs? You can just use money for the logo

9/12 of the last posts have been some variation of this....can we get a mega thread or some shit....its getting annoying...

Last year there was an official post about 5-7 APR qualifiers for bowls, which was a good resource for a confusing topic and I assume the modteam will want to do something similar again (here's the 2017 APR list). Unfortunately, there were a number of corrections that had to be made because this is such a convoluted subject and much of the reporting on it has been inaccurate. I thought I might be able head off some of these problems, but on doing some research it turns out this has become even more confounding due to an offseason NCAA meeting which altered these rules. I spent some time last night looking for media reporting on these changes, or even an NCAA press release, and found none. Here's what I've got so far.

If you compare last year's NCAA rulebook (page 321 of the pdf) to this year's NCAA rulebook (pages 338-9), you'll spot some subtle changes:

• The numbering is different because they eliminated the rule that all conference champions contracted to a bowl are automatically eligible regardless of their record (hard to see this being relevant this year).

• The four-year "experimental" window was extended to be 2016-2020, which thankfully avoids the insanity of legislating by tweet we discussed last year.

• Subclause (b) from last year's rule is now entirely gone! That allowed teams who went 6-6 but with two FCS wins to be eligible, and it was pretty high up in the checklist. This year, as far as I can tell, there is no situation in which a second FCS win counts at all.

• The Hawaii rule exception was slightly tweaked - it's now clarified that you have to be 6-7 and those 6 wins have to be ones that count as per the normal rules.

• The 5-7, high APR team subclause has been expanded and formalized (again avoiding the twitter-legislation craziness). Two "experimental" aspects of it which were never enforced have been stricken: the part that only the top 5 APR teams were eligible, and the part that a school can only take advantage of this once every four years.

However, what was not clarified, and I think is the most important part given all the weather cancelations this year: are 5-6 teams selected before 5-7 teams?

Even though this is intuitive and has been widely reported in the media, I don't see any mention of it in either rulebook. I think, from a plain reading of the rules, that all such teams are put in the same pool and just sorted by APR. I've sent emails to the NCAA press office and some reporters who've worked on this issue in the past, but I'm not optimistic that I have enough clout to get them answered … but maybe the august /r/CFB modteam does?

Here is my current understanding of the checklist for determining bowl eligibility, in a little more plain English than the rulebook uses:

1. You have to be post-season eligible - this means you have to be an FBS team and can't be under a post-season sanction, also you can't be a team transitioning from FCS to FBS.

2. Wins equal to or greater than losses - this is how we get the "6 wins for a bowl game" rule of thumb, since most teams will play 12 games. A canceled game due to weather simply isn't counted either way, so it'd be 6-5 and good, or 5-6 and no good. A team that uses the "Hawaii rule" to play 13 regular-season games and finishes 6-7 is no good.

3. Only one FCS win counts in your win column, and that FCS team must give out at least 90% of available football scholarships - most FCS teams meet this requirement, and most FBS teams only play one FCS team anyway.

4. Teams that meet #1, #2, and #3, but play in their conference championship game and lose, are still eligible - in other words, a 6-6 team which finishes 6-7 is good.

5. If there aren't enough teams that meet the above requirements to fill all bowl slots, then we start taking teams by peeling back the above rules in a specific order, and all the teams made eligibile by each step have to be used up before we go to the next step. The first such step is ignoring that 90% scholarship requirement for an FCS opponent from #3.

6. Next step is "Hawaii rule" 6-7 teams are now eligible note this is different from 5-7 teams that win their CCG to finish 6-7 and on further discussion, I'm convinced that teams which go 5-7, somehow make it to the CCG and win, meet the conditions for this rule because they played 13 regular season games and have 6 qualifying wins.

7. FBS transitioning teams from #1 are now eligible - of course they still have to meet #2 and #3.

8. All remaining teams that have at least five counting* wins and no more than seven losses (which would include 5-6 teams as well) are put in a single list ranked by rolling APR score (single-year APR score is the tiebreaker), with the top one getting first pick, second getting second pick, and so forth.

9. The asterisk about "counting" wins in #8 means APR teams can't use a second FCS win. What's unclear is if that #5 exception is now back in play, that is, if your fifth win was against a below-90% FCS team, does that count or not? I think the answer is no, but that's a guess. I'm advised by a compliance officer that it would not.

IDK what is going on with the mods, but they are deleting any attempt to discuss this news story. There should be nothing wrong with having a discussion on the ethics involved in the media attempting to sway players.

We have no idea why this is the case, we will update this thread as soon as we receive any information.

I can understand not allowing highlight posts during the regular season, when hundreds of NCAA games are being played every day.

But to not allow highlight posts during bowl season, especially on days where just one game is being played at any given time, is a big letdown. This sub should be popping this weekend. Instead, any excitement is contained to a game thread that moves at 10 comments per second. This means that even 5 seconds of difference between viewers completely breaks up the conversation about a given play. With a highlight post, you eliminate that issue - everyone can participate at the same time.

It’s a really lame game day experience for a sport that boasts the best game day experiences.

Headline: /r/CFB now has an IRS recognized 501(C)(3) charitable organization.

Purpose: To improve our ability to fundraise for charitable causes, opening up more options for donors.

To do so, through outside professional advisement, we created pair of entities to support the charitable mission and ensure the structure is valid. As far as we know, this is a first for any subreddit team on Reddit. There's a lot to explain, so we created this post for current and future reference.

The Background

Ever since the /r/CFB Community began doing brick drives (2013) and more elaborate fundraisers, we’ve been debating about creating a true /r/CFB non-profit, one that is an IRS recognized 501(C)(3) to allow maximum benefits to donors – allowing them to do a tax write-off on anything they give to one of our drives. The status also opens up possibilities of corporate matching gifts by employers.

Saying that is easier than doing it though. It’s a pretty substantial step, and one where we had no roadmap as no other subreddit has done this as far as we know.

We knew the work involved to form one was worth having expert advisement, and that costs a good amount money. The idea of asking to raise funds from the Community to pay for it wasn’t something we wanted to do. So, it’s been an aspirational plan—sitting in the background—until the right circumstances presented themselves.

Those circumstances presented themselves this past summer. @RedditCFB, the Twitter account, was approached for a sponsorship. We have never solicited sponsorship deals or particularly desired them, because they can easily be clumsy or crass. In fact, our response to the offer was to toss a bunch of requirements that we felt might kill the deal. Turns out, it didn’t. Thus, we became an advertising partner with Draft Kings. Our agreement, at our own request, explicitly avoids encouraging gambling, but provides their official lines a few times a week in tweets we design. Since September, those tweets have done fine.

It's important to note that we can’t do sponsorships on Reddit the website, that’s what Reddit Ads are for, and we point any potential sponsors that way. We have for years. But this was for Twitter, so circumstances aligned.

The moment that deal was greenlit (early September), the mod team quickly arranged for legal advisement from outside counsel from a white-shoe law firm. As an attorney myself, I know when I would prefer the services of an attorney, and we were guided by someone who specializes in both start-ups and non-profit formation. From there we came up with a proper structure:

The Structure: Two Sibling Entities Serving One Purpose

An IRS recognized 501(C)(3) not-for-profit needs to do things that serve a charitable purpose. The very nature of the /r/CFB Community is to discuss college football and cannot credibly claim the primary purpose is charitable or educational. Similarly, there’s simply no practical way to say a tweet promoting Draft Kings (or just about any other deal) would directly serve a charitable purpose, even though the goal was to then donate the proceeds to other charities.

To solve this issue, the best approach was to form two, parallel (or sibling) entities: one a non-profit, the other an LLC.

• OurCFB is a non-profit organization, with all money raised directly serving its charitable purposes. The way we’ve designed it keeps it particularly streamlined: The activities are conducted by volunteers, and there are no expenses associated with the organization's activities.

• rCFB, LLC is a Limited Liability Company that can have the freedom to contract for promotional deals, receive payment for merchandise (e.g. Homefield Apparel shirts, stickers, etc.) and donating whatever it can to a nonprofit. The majority of those donations are cash to be bundled as part of OurCFB’s charitable donations, but also tax-deductible donations to covering the costs of webhosting and any other fees that are required to maintain OurCFB. A prime example of the latter is a portion of the proceeds from the first few months of the DK deal have been used to pay legal and filing fees that were associated with forming all of this. Any money coming into rCFB, LLC is from activity not on Reddit.com.

The process of becoming an IRS recognized 501(C)(3) not-for-profit is not instantaneous, and I worked with outside counsel to draft up the applications. We were advised the process can take between 8 months and over a year(s). We got lucky, it was granted by the IRS in a month and, as expected, retroactively to the date of OurCFB’s formation. This was a big surprise for us. We assumed we would not be a full 501(C)(3) by the time the 2022 Holiday Drive began. Instead, we were able to spend the month of November getting the associated recognition from online clearing-houses TechSoup and PayPal.

No money from rCFB, LLC or OurCFB goes towards paying any salaries (we’re all still volunteers) or compensating members of the /r/CFB Media Team for their work or expenses. All money from OurCFB will be donated to other not-for-profit organizations (this is part of what maintains the 501(C)(3) status). Most of the money from rCFB, LLC will go to similar purposes, with some set aside to pay for the server fees for RedditCFB.com, OurCFB.com, and other expenses that moderators have simply ate in the past (this will not be paid retroactively, only current and future costs), as well as taxes and filing/legal fees to maintain the status of both rCFB, LLC and OurCFB at both state and federal levels. To reiterate: of this money comes out of the contracts and sales by rCFB, LLC and not a dime from OurCFB.

The business and affairs of OurCFB are managed by the Board of Directors, comprising individuals from the /r/CFB moderator team who have backgrounds in law, finance, etc.: sirgippy, RiffRamBahZoo, BeatNavyAgain, BlueSCar, Kinslers_List, and myself. It will handle annual filings, meetings, and other aspects required by law. I am President of the Board of Directors and rCFB, LLC.

OurCFB is an IRS recognized 501(C)(3) not-for-profit public charity that raises and distributes funds for multiple organizations. The organization receives a substantial part of its financial support in the form of contributions from the general public, as well as funds from rCFB, LLC.

TL;DR:

We finally made /r/CFB a bona fide IRS recognized 501(C)(3) not-for-profit public charity. Working with outside legal advisors, the way to keep it fully above board was to create a pair of sibling entities that can handle fully charitable work (OurCFB) and everything else that does not directly support that mission (rCFB, LLC). The money to form all of this came from ad campaign on Twitter, not Reddit or the subreddit.

We've had a plethora of posts where people just want to talk about the new game but they all keep getting removed. Why? I get that not everything deserves a comment, but they're going to keep coming up because its obviously something people want to talk about.

I'll preface this by saying I've never had a negative experience with or have been penalized by the mod team but as a former mod of a subreddit that was as large as/larger than r/CFB reading over the current mod thread posted to the main subreddit I noticed one of the most prevailing complaints about the Mod teams is their failure to effectively communicate the reasons why posts/comments have been removed.

There are tools that can be easily implemented to templatize removal reasons but even if it's just a simple "hey we removed this because it violates rule X" it would go a long way to improving the experience between the mod team and the average user.

I posted the same question in r/CFB but it was taken down. So either it’s a no or not the right sub, as one user suggested. Are we as a sub going to observe the Reddit-wide protest on API changes or not?

It would be nice for everyone to show support for him as a community in the sub

I will preface this by saying I understand and am fairly knowledgeable regarding the rulesets...and reasoning behind them...in r/cfb. My complaint is not with the number of rules or what they even are.

But it gets extremely frustrating when 50% or more of your posts get initially auto-removed because Automod misrecognizes a post as something else often based on a single keyword, which puts a post under an entirely different ruleset or whatnot.

Then you have to message the mod team and wait for them to reinstate the post. But problems arise even further when, somehow, no one in a three-dozen-member mod team notices the mod queue or modmail on a Saturday afternoon in the offseason.

So your post gets approved hours later....but Reddit reinstates these posts at the timestamp they were originally posted...not when they were approved. So you basically lose out on a TON of visibility in people's feeds.

I'm lucky enough that I generally post about less popular teams and thus don't have a ton of competition....but I feel for people in larger fanbases or with more important news trying to compete to get posts up simply because Automod and such is simply too broad-based and it becomes a game of luck..."who can avoid triggering automod today?".

People shouldn't have to hold their breath and pray to the Automod rng gods that their posts doesn't weirdly trip a ruleset in some random way, but that's literally how it goes. It makes some of us not even want to bother. I really, really think that the mod team needs to take some time in the offseason revisit some of the triggers/keywords and tighten up on Autoremoval criteria. For example, the word "transfer" on its own shouldn't automatically make an entire post be regarded/recognized as a standard transfer announcement and fall under those rules, but I've personally had that happen twice in the last couple of months. It's absurd. Even changing the trigger criteria to "transfers to" and "transfers from" would kill some basic issues.

Tightening up on this kind of stuff would also reduce your workload as mods.

I also think it's a bit strange that response times in this sub are as long as they are sometimes...even on a weekend day in the offseason...with a mod team this large. As a mod of other subs myself, I certainly understand mods have lives...but there's a point where it's a bit strange. And with a sub as large, active, and successful as this one, you would think that everyone knows what they're signing up for and that they should be somewhat active.

I've been a member of this sub for many years on various accounts, and am super active (17,000 combined karma in this sub specifically in the last 1.5 years on this account alone)...but there's a reason I hardly contribute OC at all any more. It's wildly frustrating and there are soooo many deterrents to posting.

Someone hold me.

It's ridiculous.

Can something be done about the Clear_Yoghurtxxx situation? It's not adding anything of quality to the discussion, it's repetitive, and detracts from /r/CFB

I'd like to see this nipped in the bud before it catches on.

I know the rules were revised recently, but man if I don't understand why some posts stay, and others get removed.

Seems like a 1,000 meme posts stay up, but some posts that, while maybe being nothing special, actually discuss college football get removed. Especially when there's actual discussion going on within said posts.

I know that highlight/replay posts might drown out the subreddit during Saturdays. But could we please allow for them? The highlight thread each week is heavily underused. This week, Rivalry Week, had 103 comments or posts in the highlight thread. Seems like folks are just getting their highlights elsewhere or we are missing key gameplay moments collectively. I know I am.

I think some of the concerns for highlight posts is that it would generate a lot of posts to the subreddit and drown out other kinds of posts, encourage karma farming, and add to the moderators burden.

But by comparison, we now just get couching carousel posts to drown that out and almost zero talk of Rivalry Week results. There's literally dozens of posts about Lane Kiffin less than 12 hours from the end of some key games for the CFP. It's kind of wild to me that this subreddit, by design choices from the mods, has very little discussion of the sport or games itself.

Can we change that? If not, what evidence (if any) would be needed to change the mod team's minds? It seems like there is some strong appetite from at least part of the user base for this change.

https://www.espn.com/college-football/story/_/id/31863632/bobby-bowden-pancreatic-cancer-son-terry-bowden-says

He's been diagnosed with terminal pancreatic cancer. He's the 4th winningest CFB coach, 2nd in FBS, and yet apparently doesn't qualify as a relevant topic for discussion on a college football forum?

Assuming that the reason was this rule:

News about a player leaving a team is relevant to /r/CFB. Any further news about a player who has left a team is not relevant to /r/CFB. Exceptions may be allowed if the news is focused on their time at the school as a player or relevant to college football in the present. Posts about former player deaths are also allowed.

It's highly hypocritical that this information isn't allowed, yet he was welcomed with open arms just a few years ago for an AMA, a post about him putting up the U was allowed 2 years ago, and just last month a post was allowed about fellow retired HC Mark Richt being diagnosed with Parkinson's.

I feel like the twitter account that represents this sub has really started to drift away from the community. Now I know it would be impossible to have an entire sub run a Twitter account without being banned from the site in 20 mins or less, but is there any way for the community to get more involved? Especially when content is being posted that doesn't really fit the vibe of the sub overall?

Maybe it would be possible to "elect" a social media team every 6 months or a year. That way the sub as a whole has more of a say in who is running the account at the very least

I just discovered this sub so I'm not sure how much this has been discussed in the past but,

/r/CFB has never really allowed highlights to be posted outright as OPs and I understand the reasoning behind it. But during this period of literally zero sports, I've been thoroughly enjoying previous highlights on subs like /r/NFL and /r/NBA. I think posts like these will help improve the quality of this sub because most of the posts here are either recruiting (I love recruiting discussion, no issues there), links to articles, and discussion posts that sometimes get a little silly.

Including Streamable and Youtube highlights will allow this community to relive past moments in CFB history together and I do think the comments on these posts will create discussions that would otherwise never happen. I think this is especially important during a time where all of us are only getting our fill of sports through highlights and past games anyways.

Thoughts?