College football’s rosy cheeks are flush with money. The game’s family looks healthy. But the appearance hides a systemic—and life-threatening—illness.
The sport has never been more popular or more lucrative. Media contracts continue to inflate and expand, with no signs of bursting. Coaches have become corporations, complete with CEO-size compensation packages. Players enjoy freedom from forced poverty and freedom of movement.
Changes have been made and wrongs have been righted. But in the process, college football is now living in a vacuum of chaos, angst and even lawlessness. The ultimate team sport is now played by transactional, lone-wolf free-agents. That goes for conferences, schools, coaches and players.
Rah-rah is now ruh-roh.
And not even Scooby Doo has a clue as to how to fix this.
Nobody can be convicted of cheating, because there are no rules. No rules mean no order. No order means no future.
There are only two loose tenets that are supposed to guide NIL and transfer portal procedures.
- NIL money and opportunities are not supposed to be used as recruiting incentives. Think about that for just a moment and then start shaking your head. Now could NIL opportunities NOT be used to attract top recruits? How do you take that out of the equation?
- Schools are not supposed to target and raid the rosters of other programs. Except that it happens hundreds of times every single day.
Despite its violence, college football is a very romantic sport that drives some of our sweeter and better angels. Teammates. Brothers. All for one. One for all. Never quit.
Unless you get a better offer. Unless a coach yells at you during Tuesday’s practice. Unless you drop a notch on the depth chart. Unless your backup is making more NIL scratch than you are.
We’ve never really wanted to look behind the curtain of college football. We’ve never really wanted to know, for fear of what we would see.
But now even the most naïve fan is taking a blow to the spirit and a forearm shiver to the chin. Our fantasies are no longer sustainable. And that will inevitably damage the sport, perhaps beyond repair.
NFL teams hire “capologists” to manage the salary cap. College football teams are already adding “portalogists” to their staffs to keep track of who’s coming and who’s going.
Head coaches hardly have time to coach. They spend most of their time re-recruiting their own players every day. They have no idea what their rosters will look like a month from now, let alone a year.
Player camaraderie? Hell, that guy wasn’t here long enough for me to learn his name.
Nobody wants to return to the days when players were taken advantage of and even abused. Nobody. But this is insanity that will serve nobody except two dozen or so “elite” (see filthy-rich) programs.
The biggest flaw in the college football model has always been the huge gap between the haves and the have-nots.
That gap is now a gulf, and it will widen even further. Conferences and individual programs will become completely non-competitive and will collapse like dwarf stars.
College head coaches at traditionally good programs are now resigning to become assistant coaches in the NFL. It’s safer there. There’s more time to coach there.
I used to roll my eyes when somebody would ask me whether I preferred college football or the NFL. That was like asking which of my grandchildren I love the most.
Now? I don’t hesitate. The NFL. It’s much purer.
