Does anyone actually think with how NIL currently exists that it is good for college football long term? Interesting is dwindling in recent years, players dip out at the earliest sign of inconvenience like they are divas owed the world when they haven’t proven anything, or chasing a check vs developing in places. At some point the hunger and talent level of dudes going into the NFL will dip. How much longer can it go on in its current state before there is some kind of correction? Having a 4.5mil transfer offer is insane. If it continues the $20mil roster Ohio State showed up with this year will look like a bargain.
Interest isn't dwindling. Throughout the regular season, ratings were as high as ever.
I'm totally on the same page with you. I never thought that I would age into the old guy, "things used to be better the way they were" but here we are. It's great these players are getting paid but the lack of structure is frustrating to a lot of old schools fans. I used to follow recruiting pretty closely but I don't care anymore because I know half of these guys won't be in the roster in 2 years.
I hate players being recruited off of other rosters, I hate that every player in the nation is a free agent every single year. No other sports league functions this way. It makes it impossible to build things over time. If you are a G5 team and you have a successful season, your reward is every player on your roster transferring up to a P4 school. The argument to this is "well coaches have been able to do this for generations", which is true but it still sucks for fans.
With players being paid now, the value of coaching goes down. The best players in every professional sport make multiple times what the best coaches do because players are more important than coaches. At the college level, most of the most successful coaches are not successful because they are elite X's and O's guys, they are successful because they get the most talent. The logical thought process should be "let me spend less money on the best coaches and put that money towards just getting the best players and hopefully get league average coaching".
That being said, I don't expect a market correction. People had the same thought process when it came to coaching salaries and buyouts but even a decade later, we still see coaching salaries go up and we still see schools give gigantic buyouts to mediocre coaches. It just doesn't make sense but it still happens.
At the end of the day, we won't see any structure around college sports until players are recognized as employees. When they are recognized as employees, they get unionize and once the unionize players can collectively bargain. Once we have collective bargaining we can establish it a league calendar, transfer windows, enforceable contracts, eligibility limits, etc.
Of course it has been the NCAAs mission for generations to not classify college athletes as employees so here we are
The natural next step for the current state of college football is that players will sue to have eligibility limits removed completely and we will see some college athletes (The ones without professional futures) keep playing college sports for a decade.
Everyone is making the same amount of money they were making 5 years ago. 10 years ago. 25 years ago.
It's just not in bags or briefcases now.
Tweaks will be made, but the sport will live on just fine.
This is objectively untrue. Top recruits were not making millions of dollars coming right out of high school. 5-stars were getting a couple hundred thousand and other benefits (nice new car, apartment, job for their parents) but they weren't getting this type of money. If you believe the rumors, every SEC starting QB is making well over $500K per year. It wasn't this way a decade ago. Not even close.
Donors are being hit up more and more, in a way that they never were in the past.
