The experts will kill college sports as we once loved it

Speaking for myself, I’m already starting to lose interest.

THE TRANSFER PORTAL BLUES: Alabama cornerback Trey Amos played behind two likely 1st-round NFL picks and was expected to start next season … but still entered the Transfer Portal … just like starting safety Caleb Downs. New Coach Kalen DeBoer might not have any players his first year at UA.

What I was afraid would happen to college football - my favorite distraction from that monster known as the “real world” - is happening.

New NIL rules and unlimited transfers are achieving what I once thought was impossible - namely, I’m rapidly losing interest in a sport I’ve followed religiously since I was 6.

In my opinion, every reform that was touted as being “pro-athlete”  will end up harming far more college student athletes than they help - and probably end up killing a good number of college athletic programs, which certainly won’t help athletes … because some of these schools will no longer have athletes.

“My team” is Alabama and in recent days I can’t read the sports page without learning that yet another key member of my team is entering the dreaded “transfer portal.” (I’m sure these athletes have their reasons, but it seems odd any football pastures would be greener than Alabama’s.)

Go on, take the money and run …

Seemingly overnight, what happened in college football is that star players no longer had to wait until they were 20 or 21 to become instant millionaires in the NFL. 

The most talented athletes can now give themselves a big pay raise in their remaining one or two years of college football by “testing the market” and transferring to programs whose NIL funders can boost their college salary by XX thousands of dollars a year.

Conventional and politically-correct wisdom tells us this is a long-overdue “reform” and will benefit athletes who, allegedly, have been “exploited” for 100 years. (I’ve always wondered why so many former college athletes seem to have such fond memories of the days when they were being exploited).

There’s no doubt College Football’s New Normal is helping the financial bottom line of certain athletes. Basically, the new protocols are benefiting the cream-of-the-crop athletes who’ve already proven they have the Right Stuff and can help their new teams get to the next level.

But looking at the Big Picture of college sports, a contrarian can see that the Law of Unintended Consequences will soon be kicking in.

For example, I’d estimate maybe only 1,000 football players are benefitting from this NIL windfall. This pool of athletes might consist of, say, 20 top players on any of the 50 elite programs in the country (plus, the smaller college stars who are now in great demand).

Other beneficiaries of the NIL paradigm might include a couple basketball players on each of the prominent basketball programs.

Who’s not benefitting are the hundreds of thousands of athletes who play in any of the other 15 minor, non-revenue-producing sports from Division III, II, I-AA, junior college and the smaller D-I programs. 

That is, the star player on the Troy University (or Alabama) volleyball team isn’t getting offers of $30,000 to transfer to another school. 

Whatever the field, always follow the money 

The real concern is that, in coming years and decades, many athletic programs are going to be losing even more money than they’re already losing. (One of the great myths about college athletics is that colleges are getting rich from “exploiting” athletes. In truth, only a tiny percentage of athletic programs make a profit from athletics). 

As usually happens in the Real World, the rich will probably get richer … and the poor are going to become even poorer. The gap between the “haves” and “have nots” is going to grow even wider.

I’ve already noticed that paid attendance at most sporting events has been declining for years. (An easy “work-around” for rampant inflation is to stop buying season tickets or attend fewer sporting events in person).

Conference re-alignment, orchestrated by ESPN (Disney) …

Another massive change in college sports is conference re-alignment. Colleges are scrambling to join the mega conferences that get the mega TV broadcasting deals.

Again, this is great for schools in conferences like the SEC and Big-10 (which, I think, is now the Big-18), but not so great for teams in the Sunbelt or Mid-American Conference.

Not too long ago, teams like my alma mater (Sunbelt member Troy) could count on one or two “pay-check” games against teams from the rich conferences. Per my crystal ball, those games are going to become much rarer. (The Big 10 already mandates nine conference games and the SEC will soon follow.)  

Furthermore, teams in top-tier leagues are scheduling at least one game with a high-profile team from another major conference. 

This is all being done to justify the big TV contracts as ESPN doesn’t want to pay out billions of dollars unless it can televise games with broad TV appeal. (Middle Tennessee vs. Alabama doesn’t generate enough TV ratings).

The loser in this scheduling arrangement will be teams like Troy, which will find fewer SEC teams willing to pay the Trojans $1 million to play a game. (Teams like Troy make more money from these “money games” than they make from all the home games on their schedule.)

Teams like Troy are already bleeding money and require massive tax-payer subsidies to even field Division I athletic programs. Once the Troy’s of college sports start to lose those $1 million checks, where are they going to make up this lost revenue? Answer: Nowhere.

Those checks probably fund a good portion of the girls sports program or the men’s golf and cross country programs.

The Big Guys are looting the Little Guys’ best players …

In addition to losing future pay-day games, the smaller programs are watching helplessly as the big programs pilfer their best athletes.

Why should, say, Texas A & M’s head coach take a chance on an unproven high school prospect when he - and his cadre of NIL boosters - can easily recruit a proven all-conference player from a program like Troy?

Not only is “my team” Alabama losing star players, so is my other favorite team, Troy.

Once upon a time, fans pulled for our teams because - over the course of four years - we felt like we knew the players on “our” team. We’d watched athletes go from redshirts to standouts. 

Fans thought these athletes stayed at our school because, like us, they actually liked and cared about the same school.

Now we’re learning how naive we were. Today’s elite players simply want the best NIL deal they can negotiate. School pride or loyalty might have mattered to The Gipper or Tim Tebow but not to today’s gridiron hotshot.

These days, it’s hard to keep up with who actually plays for “your” team.  Massive roster turnover has been happening in college basketball for many years, but now it’s happening in football too.

Fewer fans who know the names of his team’s players is not a recipe for long-term growth in the old fanbase.

The SEC has now added traditional juggernauts Texas and Oklahoma. Most SEC fans think these additions are great, but, in my opinion, all this conference expansion is going to do is ensure that “our” team has more losses most seasons.

In the past, fans were overjoyed if their team won 10 games. Now, they better get used to those stellar 8-win seasons.

In most respects, college football is becoming like pro football except, unlike in the NFL, college free agents can leave any year they want.

There’s a reason top college coaches make the big bucks. First, they have to recruit high school players, then re-recruit all their best players so they won’t leave and then, once they do leave, raid the rosters of other teams to replace the defections.

A Sad Prediction …

The non-blue-blood programs that don’t have the lucrative TV contracts or can’t schedule as many money games are going to have to survive as best they can.

At some point, the rubber bouncing ball will hit the financial road and “adult-in-the-room” board of trustee members will grow tired of throwing money into a pit of every-expanding red ink. 

“Hardly anyone’s paying to come to our games anymore and we don’t have a TV contract so, sorry, girls softball players or boy’s hurdlers. Those expensive full scholarships that are going to tennis players from Brazil and Switzerland are now going to be used for … professor salaries or to pay debt service on the new student fitness center.”

But 1,000 football players are now making five or six figures from their NIL deal and ESPN is still paying big bucks to televise games … at least for the top 60 programs in the country.

But all the other programs might be closer to making some tough decisions. For all the student athletes who are playing minor sports at minor schools … I guess there’s always intramurals.

Those “long-overdue changes” that were going to help exploited student athletes will probably end up hurting more college athletes … and turning off even more former fans.