The 2010 NCAA Division I FBS football season, or the college football season, began on Thursday, September 2, 2010. The season progressed through the regular season and bowl season, and (aside from all-star exhibition games that follow the bowl games) concluded with the Tostitos BCS National Championship Game on Monday, January 10, 2011.
During the first half of 2010, and especially starting in May of that year, several conferences were widely speculated to be considering expansion, and a number of schools were believed to be seriously considering conference moves. Due to conference notice requirements, no changes announced in 2010 will take effect until at least 2011.
The first change to be officially announced came on June 10, when the Pacific-10 Conference announced that Colorado had accepted that conference's invitation to join. At the time, it was not yet known whether Colorado would officially join the Pac-10 in 2011 or 2012; in September 2010, it was confirmed for 2011.
The following day saw two schools change conferences:
Nebraska applied for membership in, and was accepted by, the Big Ten Conference, in a move to take effect in 2011.
In the following days, it was widely speculated that the five public schools in the Big 12 South Division (Texas, Texas A&M, Texas Tech, Oklahoma, and Oklahoma State) would leave as a unit for the Pac-10. A&M was also reported to be flirting with the SEC. However, a last-minute deal announced on June 14 saw Texas cast its lot with a truncated Big 12, with the remaining schools also pledging their support for the conference. Rebuffed by the Big 12 schools, the Pac-10 shifted its focus to the Mountain West, extending an invitation to Utah on June 16 to join effective in 2011. Utah officially accepted the next day. When Utah and Colorado join, the Pac-10 will officially become the Pac-12.
Two months later, reports surfaced indicating that Brigham Young would leave the Mountain West Conference to become an independent in football, with its other sports rejoining the school's former conference, the WAC. On August 31, BYU pulled a surprise, indeed becoming an independent football team, but instead joining the West Coast Conference for the 2011-12 season. The MWC responded on August 18 by inviting current WAC members Fresno State, Nevada, and Utah State. Utah State declined the MWC offer, but the other two accepted later that day. After threats of legal action by the WAC and the Fresno State-Nevada pairing, the two schools agreed to stay in the WAC through the 2011-12 season in exchange for a greatly reduced exit fee.
Realignment activity then shifted to Division I FCS for several weeks, although rumors continued to swirl regarding potential movement in several conferences. The Big East Conference also announced that it had extended an invitation to Villanova, a founding non-football member, to upgrade its football program to FBS level and join in that sport. On November 11, the WAC announced that Texas State, currently a member of the FCS Southland Conference, and UTSA, which planned to launch an FCS program in that conference in 2011, would upgrade their football programs to FBS level, join the WAC in 2012, and become full FBS members in 2013. On November 29, the next major domino fell when TCU announced it would join the Big East in 2012 (less than a year later, on October 10, 2011, TCU announced that it would not join the Big East and would join the Big 12 in 2012 instead).[3] The MWC replaced TCU for football only with Hawaiʻi on December 10; Hawaiʻi's other sports will join the Big West Conference.
Records[]
Penn State football coach, Joe Paterno, in his 45th season, has achieved a feat that no coach in major college football history has ever reached: the 400-win mark. Paterno already holds records for the most wins in major college football history as well as the most bowl wins (24) in college football history.
Kyle Brotzman of Boise State set a new Division I record for most career points by a kicker. His 439 career points surpassed the former record of 433 by Art Carmody of Louisville.
Miami (Ohio) became the first team in FBS history to win 10 or more games after losing 10 or more games in the previous season.
New and expanded stadiums[]
No new stadiums opened in the 2010 season. However, expansion projects at several stadiums were completed in time for the season:
Michigan: Michigan Stadium once again claimed the title of largest college football stadium. The new capacity was officially announced on July 14 as 109,901.
Texas Tech: Renovations to Jones AT&T Stadium increased the capacity to 60,454 and a new building on the stadium's eastern side added an additional 26 suites and 500 club seats.
Notes[]
This will be an unranked season for USC in USA Today's football coaches' poll because the school is under major NCAA sanctions and prohibited from playing in a bowl.[4]
2010 will see the Versus Network broadcast several top 25 teams due to its college football contract with the Pac-10 and Mountain West Conference[5]
The University of Texas reached an agreement with ESPN to distribute the Longhorn Network on cable systems in the fall of 2011. The deal is for 10 years and guarantees Texas $12 million annually on top of the TV revenue UT would receive as part of the Big 12's current television contracts with ABC/ESPN and Fox. The Longhorn Network would be the first sports-centric network for a university and would have third-tier programming, but UT men's AD DeLoss Dodds has asked the Big 12 to be allowed to air one football game, and a smattering of men's basketball games.[1]
November 26, 2010 – The CBS telecast of the Iron Bowl (Alabama vs. Auburn) earned a 7.5 rating, the highest for any game of the 2010 college football season through week 13.[7]
Ten most watched regular season games in 2010[]
1. November 26 - Iron Bowl - CBS - 2 Auburn vs 9 Alabama - 12.5 Million viewers
2. December 4 - 2010 SEC Championship - CBS - 1 Auburn vs 19 South Carolina - 10.1 Million viewers
3. September 6 - ESPN - 3 Boise State vs. 5 Virginia Tech - 9.9 Million viewers
4. December 4 - 2010 Big 12 Championship - ESPN on ABC - 13 Nebraska vs 10 Oklahoma - 8.98 Million viewers
5. October 2 - CBS - 7 Florida vs 1 Alabama - 8.6 Million viewers
† – Conference champion and BCS representative as top 000non-AQ school to meet automatic qualification criteria As of January 11, 2011 • Rankings from AP Poll