CHAOTIC TIMES, THRIVING SPORT
College football is crumbling, and by the way, here's a news item: A 129-year-old program that went 5-7 last year just set a school record for season tickets sold.
These new transfer rules not only are driving fans away, they're ruining everything people loved about the sport. In an unrelated development, Fox and ESPN just sent the Big Ten and the Southeastern Conference two giant blank checks, along with their Zelle passwords.
As for all of the college kids driving sports cars and buying extravagances like video games, restaurant food and gas with their name, image and likeness (NIL) money? It's completely unsustainable.
We know this because the football coach making 80 times as much in state money as the governor told us so.
Then again, maybe the whole world isn't crashing down on the poor, overworked multimillionaire conference commissioners, nor is it crashing down on the multimillionaire athletic directors who no longer get to collect all of the alumni donations themselves, nor is it crashing down on the multimillionaire offensive coordinators who now have to spend precious parts of their workdays concerned about player satisfaction.
Maybe — and just hear me out on this — the trend of fivestar quarterbacks and AllAmerican pass rushers deciding to switch schools like regular college students is a problem not quite pressing enough to require the intervention of the United States Senate.
Crazy talk, I know.
But maybe college football needs to stop railing against the winds of change and learn to start living with them.
What's clear now is the doomsday preachers were wrong all along. Compensating players for cost of attendance didn't bankrupt athletic departments. Loosening transfer rules didn't kill fan interest. Allowing NIL payments didn't make college football any less lucrative as a whole.
By all accounts, the game is more valuable than ever, even if some of the current circumstances have turned it into a bit of a mess. Coaches aren't wrong when they say that the NIL era has left a sizeable gap between the rules that are on the NCAA books and the rules the NCAA actually is able to enforce. They also aren't wrong when they point out the constant churn of players through the transfer portal probably needs to be addressed in some way.
But the answer isn't to go back in time. As Dan Wolken of USA Today noted in a column this week, the most obvious endgame here is one in which the programs collectively bargain with the players, while acknowledging what's been clear for decades — that the players are working as university employees.
Once that happens, there can be negotiated limits on movement between teams, and there won't have to be any debate about whether a player is being paid for dubious NIL endorsements, or simply to suit up.
And if that's where we're headed, then the two groups of U.S. senators who reportedly have floated ideas about college sports legislation are wasting their time.
Some coaches, commissioners and college sports administrators think it's a good idea, and are begging for the help. They say things are going to get worse if Congress doesn't step in.
But as Wolken wrote, “(I)t's difficult to reconcile the notion that everything is awful and in need of Congressional rescue when the Big Ten is about to sign a media rights deal that could distribute $100 million annually to its members and $5 million is considered an insulting coaching salary in the SEC.”
The business of college football might be chaotic right now, but it's thriving nonetheless.
And there might not be a better example of that than what's happening in Austin, where a Longhorns team that lost more than it won last season keeps generating interest, keeps racking up recruits, keeps piling up NIL money for its players, and keeps adding to the financial coffers of one of the country's richest programs.
On Friday, the Longhorns announced they'd sold more than 7,000 new season tickets in 2022, pushing them over the 2019 record of 63,279. In fact, when UT hosts Alabama on Sept. 10 at 100,000-seat RoyalMemorial Stadium, there won't be any way for fans to purchase a single-game seat. The only way in will be through a season-ticket package, or by going through brokers on the secondary market.
As of this weekend, lower level tickets near the 50-yardline were available on StubHub for more than $2,000 apiece. And when people pay that price, and show up to the stadium in September?
They'll be shocked to see how college football has crumbled.