College football is dead. I wrote this to a friend (long)

May 3, 2022, 10:57 AM

in an email back on December 14.

College football as we know it is dead. The death certificate has not been issued but it is dead just the same. There are three contributing factors that all share some of the blame for taking the greatest sport in America and killing it.

The first killing factor is conference realignment. To be sure the underlying cause of realignment is television contract money that destroyed some now extinct conferences. Those conferences held and preserved regional rivalries that captured the attention of fans and filled stadiums. Those rivalries have been replaced with games between teams with no history, straining the travel budgets for some teams, and making it nearly impossible for fan bases to follow their teams to away games.

At the heart of this is the beast known as ESPN. In search of more “national draws” they have inserted themselves into the creation of super conferences. They are attempting to create continued revenue streams by collecting the “best of the best” in one conference. What they have effectively done is to make the college football playoffs irrelevant to all but a handful of fan bases. The call for expansion is not a call for more deserving teams to be in. rather it is a plea to make the playoffs once again relevant in places like Los Angeles California, Seattle Washington, and Eugene Oregon. Collectively, a huge television market, the west coast, is tuning out the premier event of college football, the playoffs. ESPN may soon find that they have killed their own goose that lays their golden egg.

The second factor that has killed college football is NIL. NIL stands for name, image, and likeness. It allows players to benefit financially from the sale of their persona to the highest bidder. On the surface this appears to be a good thing. College teams have been raking in huge amounts of money, building massive complexes, and paying coaching staff’s exorbitant salaries that depend on the performance of the players.

For years the argument was that in exchange for their performance colleges provided players with a free college education. For players headed to the staggering riches of the NFL, a college degree is relatively meaningless. For others extending their football careers four or five years after high school, the degree indeed is a reasonable reward for their efforts. What college football does provide for the NFL bound is a venue to hone their skills and gain recognition on their way to a draft day notice that their dream of playing football at the highest level will be a reality. The NFL is reaping the benefit of a free place to grow talent and draft star power without spending a single dime in the development of that talent.

What the NCAA and now state legislators around the country should have envisioned was the death of the institution that their NIL laws helped to kill. Is it really surprising to anyone that NIL is now being used to recruit players to teams with a large number of graduates, existing in large markets? What that means is the years of NCAA regulations to create and maintain a level playing field have now been destroyed with little concern for the effect on the product known as college football.
What will now happen is the product of college football will now flourish in a few large markets. Only those markets will have interest in the product and what was once a product in demand in every state in America. That product will now become a product of interest to only those markets. The NFL figured this out years ago and expanded into smaller markets. Teams like the Jacksonville Jaguars and the Carolina Panthers are the result. When you shrink your customer base a shrinkage of your revenue naturally results.

The third factor that killed college football is the transfer portal. Coupled with a one-time exemption for players to transfer without penalty, the NCAA opened the door for players in mass to forego their NLI for the greener pastures of the NIL. College coaches share some of the blame for this. For years, coaches have pushed players out the door when they were able to out recruit them at their position. If a coach signs a four star athlete and the next years signs a “generational talent” five star at the same position, it becomes a known suggestion to the four star that perhaps he could find better opportunities elsewhere. This opens up a scholarship slot that allows the cycle to perpetuate itself.

College football is dead. The genie is out of the bottle and there is no putting her back. What must happen and must happen quickly is for the NCAA and a national task force to reign in the untamed beast they have created. College playoff expansion that guarantees teams from every major conference a dog in the fight is a must and it needs to be in place next year. The NIL cannot be a cash free for all that allows large market teams to lure eighteen years olds with the promise of millions if they matriculate to their chosen institution. Finally the commitment between college and player must be re-examined. Both sides need to pony up to a longer term commitment than the weekly minutes played and the next recruiting cycle. Perhaps it can be saved but the clock is ticking before lack of oxygen to the collective brain kills an American institution.

Message was edited by: revmarkg®

Message was edited by: revmarkg®

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Great post!

One big step which would diminish the popularity of the Portal and thereby limit NIL ho's from cashing in and essentially forgoing their college education would entail:

Colleges policing each other (via conference affiliations) to (1) do away with junk majors; (2) refrain from phony grading standards / grade inflation practices; (3) elevate the admission standards for athletes to that of the general student body; and (4) eliminate the acceptance of transfer students who do not meet the overall academic performance by which transfer students are allowed to enroll.

AAU + R1 schools would be a great standard: List of major FB conferences AAU and/or R1 schools:

The B1G schools: All of them are either AAU and/or R1.
AAU / R1 from B1G: All except Nebraska are in the AAU
AAU / R1 from SEC: Vanderbilt, FL, aTM, Missouri, AUB, LSU, MS State, Bama, Ark, GA, KY, MS, TN
AAU / R1 from Pac 12: USC, UCLA, Standord, Cal, Oregon, WA, Colorado, OR State, WA State, Utah .
AAU / R1 from the ACC: Clemson, BC, UVA, N.Dame, Duke, UNC, Pitt, GA Tech, NC State, SYR, Lou, VT
AAU / R1 from the Big 12: TX, Kansas, K-State, Baylor, IA State, TT, OK, WVU

University presidents and alumni would be embarrassed if they could lose status by being kicked out of the AAU / R1 schools because they sold out their academic standards for FB / BB glory via the Portal / NIL ho's.

Just a thought ...

College football is dead. I wrote this to a friend (long)

well dang.. u could have told me this before i wrote the

Re: College football is dead. I wrote this to a friend (long)

Disagree about NIL and have a solution

Re: College football is dead. I wrote this to a friend (long)

Cash has a way of out resonating everything.***

Re: College football is dead. (?) partial way out (?)

Just like it was dead when teams could

Naive much?

Re: Just like it was dead when teams could

At least we got to enjoy some great years recently before it passed.

Re: College football is dead. I wrote this to a friend (long)

Agreed.

Re: College football is dead. I wrote this to a friend (long)

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