Whew, if you think college football is a hot mess right now, this column by Ross Dellenger will confirm your thinking — if not leave you even more unsettled than you previously were. If you didn’t know any better, you might think that the NCAA is trying to blow up football by how quickly things have become unstable, and how bleak things look for the future. In just a matter of a few years we have moved from traditional conferences, manageable seasons, and improving (though still lacking) attempts to financially assist student athletes, to what we have in this moment: power conferences of 20+ teams, schools playing upwards of 17 games, and incoming freshmen earning millions of dollars before playing a single down. Can this new hybrid amateur/pro model make it, or is it about to crash and burn before really getting started?
“How the industry got here is quite simple: Schools and their leaders, generating billions in television revenue and ticket sales, delayed sharing wealth for so long that federal judges and state lawmakers forced them to do it.”
The above quote really nails what has happened in college football, and with better leadership what likely could have been avoided. Much of the previous allure of college football was the organic nature of it all — geographical conferences with established rivalries, manageable seasons where every game counted, and even the fun controversies that accompanied rankings and polls long before the current playoff system. Granted, college football wasn’t perfect, and there are countless stories of players being paid under-the-table while holding “amateur” status. Still, everything about it was fun, and largely untouched from the rampant greed that now drives literally every decision.
Apparently, it simply wasn’t enough to enjoy a really great thing the way college football used to be, particularly how football was in relation to the overall college experience. Great traditions between schools drove interest and enthusiasm, and the innocence that accompanied these rivalries made them especially fun. Today, football dominates with respect to its place within the overall college experience, as most coaches make exponentially more than their own university presidents. While some traditions still exist, most are overlooked as we pay attention to standings, playoff implications, and even gambling. As you look around at schools today, your powerhouse programs have facilities even nicer than professional teams. It’s all money, money, money driving every decision, and the previous amateur way of doing football is changing into something that literally nobody can predict. Will the dollars level off at some point? Will there soon be a commissioner of some kind, and reasonable limits on things like NIL, transfer options, and even the amounts of money colleges pay in coaching salaries? If there is a greater good to preserve (college football), then all of these questions deserve serious attention.
Final thoughts
College football has changed so quickly and dramatically that even proponents of these changes initially are now having second thoughts about the long-term damage that may come about. While fans continue to pony up and buy tickets and streaming services, the game that they watch is currently broken if you listen to coaches (as well as those who have recently retired). Coaches and student athletes are transferring at record rates, longer seasons are impacting the health of student athletes, and the blurry rules around the ways in which student athletes can be paid will only continue to make things chaotic until more serious leadership steps in and rights the ship.
drstankovich.com
