I've been saying this for a long time.
The best thing college football had going for it was every major metro, most small metros and something like 45 states had a team in the SEC/B10/B12/Big East/ACC/Pac/MWC when all 7 of those conferences were doing well in late 90s/early 00s. Places that have/had no pro sports have or had a team that was in a conference that was reasonably comparable to the best.
Nobody outside of the southeast is going to give a flying **** about minor league football in the south if the SEC finds ways to radically outpace the rest of the sport. I mean I'd rather watch countless other sports than minor league southern football as someone who has barely stepped foot in the south. Absolutely no connection or rational for me to ever care...unless they are an opponent (in a system where they are realistically on a similar level, not multiple levels above) of my team from Iowa that I do have a lifelong connection to.
We're seeing the first steps where it's really becoming less of a local thing, the strength of the sport. It's hitting the west coast the hardest because that's where the fandom is the most "meh", but the northeast could likely be next pretty easily for similar reasons. If interest fades in the programs that are now in B12 or gravitating toward B12, college football will have lost the key strength that it uniquely had over pro sports.