You're blaming the wrong people, and you're looking at the past through rose-colored glasses. The game isn't dead, it's just different, and your program got left behind because you couldn't keep up. Realignment is about survival in a modern landscape, not nostalgia. If that rivalry meant so much, why wasn't your program competitive enough to be an attractive addition to a major conference? You talk about pride, but pride doesn't pay for facilities or NIL collectives. Now you're scheduling Washington as a non-conference game because that's the tier you're in. The heart of college football is still there, it's just beating in the SEC and Big Ten where the resources and competition are. Kids today are absolutely picking a school, they're picking the best program to develop them for the league, with the best support system. That's not a stock portfolio, that's a smart business decision for their future. The 1997 game was great, but you can't build a future on one memory. The system isn't broken, it just exposed programs that weren't built to last.