In new era of football, ‘wrong’ is redefined

Fifty years after the epic clash known as the “Game of the Century,” a few things about college football have changed. For one, after Oklahoma and Nebraska played on national TV this time, sports writers seeking to interview players weren’t allowed to go knocking on dorm room doors.

For another, in 1971, Johnny “The Jet” Rodgers had 55 million people watching him turn on his afterburners, but not a single product to promote on Instagram.

It’s enough to make some members of a certain generation nostalgic, and not only in Nebraska. For instance, when TCU coach Gary Patterson spoke to a group of business leaders this week at a schoolsponsored name, image and likeness (NIL) event, he made it sound like the race to compensate players has turned the sport into a free-for-all.

“The rules have changed,” Patterson said, according to a report in the Fort Worth StarTelegram. “There is no wrong anymore.”

A more accurate way to put it would be to say that the definition of the word “wrong” evolved, and almost certainly for the better. When Nebraska beat Oklahoma in 1971, the TV audience represented 26.5 percent of the American population, almost what a Super Bowl gets today. And yet it would have been unthinkable for Rodgers — who returned a punt for a touchdown that day and would go on to win the Heisman Trophy the next year — to make five bucks for selling his autograph.

Saturday in Norman, Okla., the same two programs didn’t quite live up to that standard in a sloppy 23-16 Sooners victory. But this time, when all the car commercials were over, the guys on the field were allowed

to peddle not only their own signatures, but T-shirts and chicken strips.

Patterson has a point. What was wrong in 1971 isn’t wrong anymore. But in that evolution there can be opportunity for a lot of people, including in unexpected places.

Take, for instance, two programs separated by 80 miles, millions of dollars and 100 years of tradition here in South and Central Texas. If they get it right, who stands to make a more significant jump thanks to NIL rules — Texas or UTSA?

You might want a minute to think this through.

Granted, the Longhorns dwarf the Roadrunners in terms of their fan base and their revenue stream. But for the most part, UT — like Texas A&M, Oklahoma and Alabama — already gets its choice of the best recruits in the region. It’s not like NIL rules will allow those powers to amass many more of them. After all, each team still is limited to 85 scholarship spots.

But a program like UTSA’s, on the other hand, has plenty of room to improve on the recruiting trail, as well as a chance to build on the momentum generated by what’s shaping up as a breakthrough season under coach Jeff Traylor.

Red McCombs has a statue at UT, and his name on multiple buildings there. But if you navigate to the website or the Twitter page of McCombs West

Ford, you’ll find images of a new paid spokesman, UTSA safety Rashad Wisdom.

That might mean something to a high school senior trying to weigh a scholarship offer from the Roadrunners against those from more established conferences.

If anything, the NIL era provides upstarts with more ways to compete against the big boys, not fewer.

This was why Patterson was spending an evening during the football season talking to Fort Worth business leaders in the first place. In his remarks, he painted a bleak picture about how other programs are threatening to raid his current roster because they’re supposedly

guaranteeing players NIL deals if they transfer. But he also recognized that the Horned Frogs had an opportunity to capitalize on the new free market.

“In taxes, do you do short form or do you do deductions? I can promise you there’s nobody in this room that does the short form,” Patterson said, according to the Star-Telegram. “That’s what I’m talking about in recruiting.

Everybody lives in the gray area. Everybody in this room lives in the gray area. The bottom line to it is we’re going to have to live in the gray area if we want to keep up.”

It perhaps says more about 1971 than it does about today that the idea of allowing people to choose the best offer for their services ever was considered “a gray area.” That perception is fading fast, and not a

moment too soon.

Somebody is going to take advantage of it. It might be TCU. It might be UTSA. It might be some other out-of-nowhere superpower. And if so?

It won’t be because “there’s no wrong anymore.”

It will be, at least in part, because one was righted.

Charles Rex Arbogast / Associated Press Programs such as UTSA might benefit even more from new NIL rules than national powers who already have their pick of top recruits.