Who is most responsible for college football being so screwed up?

[05GTCorndog]

 

[GTCrew4b]

It’s the culture. Too much value on sports and entertainment.

 

[Skydog]

So you’re saying EA Sports started the domino effect when they started releasing Bill Wash’s College Football in 1993 along with 2 NCAA basketball games by other developers for PC and Super Nintendo?

basically. i mean really think about it. would we be here without video games?

 

[USCJacket]

basically. i mean really think about it. would we be here without video games?

Very well may not have started the snowball rolling. But it’s hard to think something wouldn’t be in place. Not to the extent of the absolute mess that is CFB right now. This double transfer rule is already being used. Heck, by next year it will be 3 transfers without sitting.

 

[midatlantech]

Very well may not have started the snowball rolling. But it’s hard to think something wouldn’t be in place. Not to the extent of the absolute mess that is CFB right now. This double transfer rule is already being used. Heck, by next year it will be 3 transfers without sitting.

I have a problem with all this…. The players are being given everything. Have them pay for tuition, fees, coaching, training, food, etc and see how many opt out of the nil garbage.

Regarding the conversation, the real problem and cause is that some schools and conferences use and encourage professional football players while others have true student athletes. Imagine the NFL where teams would be so differently constrained.
The SEC was by far the conference of cheaters for decades. The NCAA didn’t constrain them, ESPN chose to look the other way-and they were off. Today, there is no real hope and I know that because the clear second tier ACC had an undefeated champion, beat two SEC teams… there was a clear opportunity to choose someone else than the bully who has been given every key to every car to drive. ESPN chooses an extra viewer here and there instead of building country wide.
The only thing the money leaders know to do today is pluck and create more chasms, destroy. And ESPN is the one making it all happen. They have chosen to create a new 32 team NFLB.

 

[GT65_UGA89]

 

[CornerBlitz]

Everyone is to blame, if it can really be called "blame". It's tough to keep money out of something so enormously popular. Everything happening now was inevitable once the sport got saturated with money.

These are essentially my sentiments and why I blame the school presidents and ADs. They could have shown leadership by defending the amateur student-athlete concept, however myopic this may sound.

Amateur athletics isn’t capitalism, as the profit motive is removed…in theory. I would say greed and opportunism won the day and there is now a new class of millionaires that have greatly benefited from the influx of TV dollars, largely from ESPN.

College football will never be the same. For some people, that’s fine. I prefer watching student-athletes that go to class, regional rivalries, and the underdog having a chance. This concept is essentially dead at the D1 level. I’m still watching because I love this sport and GT, but not sure how long I’ll make it.

 

[M39Buzz]

NFL, because they should have started a parallel minor football league, just like MLB has, and kept College Football an Amateur Sport... Mom, Apple Pie and Alma Mater!

 

[spellingbee]

Hello comrade.

I didn't say I'm against capitalism; I'm not.
While greed and corruption can ruin a good thing like the what we all knew as amateur college football, it's the nature of a system and I'm for that. I can choose to continue to participate as a fan or not.

I should have followed with "consumerism is what has driven the changes". No matter the product or service, if folks ain't buying then the production stops. True that the factories have steered the ship.

As others have said, it's not just one entity. It took all of them...especially Vad Lee.

 

[Tampa Jacket]

Capitalism is to blame for the mistake CFB has become. But it doesn’t make it right.

 

[GTRules]

So ESPN who PAYS the ACC deal has “slanted the playing field” you say? I guess ESPN also destroyed the P12 and inflated the B1G who they will no longer broadcast? Just like ESPN has “slanted the basketball court” over the last 30 years towards the ACC, right? All notions are bad takes with no absolutely no proof.

Results on the field, attendance in the stands with great environments are all any network cares about.

Does ESPN pay the ACC the same amount they pay the SEC? If not they’re slanting the playing field.

 

[33jacket]

Lawyers.

 

[77GTFan]

I do support market capitalism and free enterprise. That is why NIL could have been a good thing but has instead become a disaster. If you are giving money to a collective then you really are supporting a communal model of distribution as opposed to free enterprise. The coaches and AD’s want control and therefore quickly supported the collectives. Saban was the first I heard to decry the potential pitfalls of NIL if individuals made deals with athletes and called for the quick creation of collectives. Do you think this was because he thought the collective model would be the best way to perpetuate Alabama’s competitive advantage? This led to a pay for play approach.

The NIL should have simply allowed athletes to financially benefit from their market value due to their status as an athlete. It would have been uneven, messy and awkward. But the “invisible hand” of the market would have eventually led to some stability. Savvy athletes like the LSU gymnast would have competed in the market and struck it rich. Good for them. Sure, Saban would have had to hear from some Tuscaloosa businessman who spent big on a QB that Saban has on the bench. Fine, he makes enough to deal with that problem.

The schools should have stuck with providing scholarships and living expenses and the NCAA should have come down hard on the school itself offering NIL deals. And, the greedy schools should have settled way back in the O’Bannon case on a fair sharing of revenue from using the NIL of athletes to sell video games and jerseys.

The Presidents, AD’s and coaches showed they are no different than corporate America. They really hate the ideas of free markets and competition. What they love is corporate welfare, monopoly protection, and barriers to competition. They are addicted to spending other people’s money and desire to keep the wealth in the hands of those at the top as opposed who do the work.

 

[GTRules]

NFL, because they should have started a parallel minor football league, just like MLB has, and kept College Football an Amateur Sport... Mom, Apple Pie and Alma Mater!

This is the correct answer. The only thing that will “fix” college football (and basketball) is having a separate professional minor league.

 

[ElCidBUZZingFAN]

The NCAA isn’t giving our contracts or creating a facilities arms race either. They are an organization without power or influence, and will soon be very much separated from major college football.

NCAA should have stepped in decades and decades ago when bowls started paying, buying, and horse trading teams. I think history will say that was the beginning of it all. A December Madness built and executed like a March Madness that grants participants and conferences shares in that stake the NCAA runs for them. A playoff system would prolly be into the 24 or 32 range by now. No split titles ever. They would have established management and kept order as things like conference tie-in to bowls, AP/UPI polls, BCS, CFP, etc. created the Wild Wild West environment they have zero hope of ever getting back into the bottle. CFB is in a place where it badly needs a commissioner or executive with the power to wrangle control from the multitude of parties that pull it in a multitude of directions.

So, for those history buffs, the NCAA ruling CFB via their own Articles of Confederation method are to blame, in my opinion.

 

[PM Gold]

The issue with College Athletics is like a commercial airline crash. It's usually not one thing that led to the accident but a series of poor decisions or failures.
Regardless of how we got here this is where we are.
Dang that Vad Lee.

 

[DinnerJacket]

It’s the culture. Too much value on sports and entertainment.

Hard to believe there was a time in the country where sports was simply viewed as entertainment, nothing more. In fact if you were a pro, you were kinda looked down on as not being fit to have a real job - which is one of the major reasons Bobby Jones never turned pro.

 

[andrew]

I do support market capitalism and free enterprise. That is why NIL could have been a good thing but has instead become a disaster. If you are giving money to a collective then you really are supporting a communal model of distribution as opposed to free enterprise. The coaches and AD’s want control and therefore quickly supported the collectives. Saban was the first I heard to decry the potential pitfalls of NIL if individuals made deals with athletes and called for the quick creation of collectives. Do you think this was because he thought the collective model would be the best way to perpetuate Alabama’s competitive advantage? This led to a pay for play approach.

The NIL should have simply allowed athletes to financially benefit from their market value due to their status as an athlete. It would have been uneven, messy and awkward. But the “invisible hand” of the market would have eventually led to some stability. Savvy athletes like the LSU gymnast would have competed in the market and struck it rich. Good for them. Sure, Saban would have had to hear from some Tuscaloosa businessman who spent big on a QB that Saban has on the bench. Fine, he makes enough to deal with that problem.

The schools should have stuck with providing scholarships and living expenses and the NCAA should have come down hard on the school itself offering NIL deals. And, the greedy schools should have settled way back in the O’Bannon case on a fair sharing of revenue from using the NIL of athletes to sell video games and jerseys.

The Presidents, AD’s and coaches showed they are no different than corporate America. They really hate the ideas of free markets and competition. What they love is corporate welfare, monopoly protection, and barriers to competition. They are addicted to spending other people’s money and desire to keep the wealth in the hands of those at the top as opposed who do the work.

I disagree with you that the nil collectives are not free enterprise. For the most part, they are very efficient at finding the market value for players and directing the money in that way.

Yes, every so often we hear about some collective that will give a set amount to every player regardless of how good they are. But much more often, collectives will bid against other collectives for individual players based on their worth on the football field.

Although different than what NIL was nominally supposed to be, what we've ended up in is a system where players get paid based on:

1) How much value they have on the football field as determined by different teams bidding with each other
2) How much customers (fans) value winning and are willing to spend on it

With few regulations to artificially inflate or deflate what individual players can earn or teams can spend. That's about as free market as you can get.

In fact, the problem with the current system is that it's too free market compared to other pro sports, which generally have salary caps, predefined revenue splits between owners as a group and players as a group, etc.

 

[The Champ]

NCAA should have stepped in decades and decades ago when bowls started paying, buying, and horse trading teams. I think history will say that was the beginning of it all. A December Madness built and executed like a March Madness that grants participants and conferences shares in that stake the NCAA runs for them. A playoff system would prolly be into the 24 or 32 range by now. No split titles ever. They would have established management and kept order as things like conference tie-in to bowls, AP/UPI polls, BCS, CFP, etc. created the Wild Wild West environment they have zero hope of ever getting back into the bottle. CFB is in a place where it badly needs a commissioner or executive with the power to wrangle control from the multitude of parties that pull it in a multitude of directions.

So, for those history buffs, the NCAA ruling CFB via their own Articles of Confederation method are to blame, in my opinion.

The NCAA is powerless because they don’t control money. TV Networks, Bowl Games, Sponsors, Schools, Large donors are all moving around huge sums of $$$.

And yes, college football will need to be organized like any professional league In the long term. I think that will happen in the next 15 years, with a few dozens schools breaking their programs off from the NCAA and other affiliations. I think the tipping point will be if/when a single TV network controls the B10 and SEC. Or when LIV buys all of college FB and starts broadcasting games that are 3 quarters long on the CW.

 

[Nehru Jacket]

I do support market capitalism and free enterprise. That is why NIL could have been a good thing but has instead become a disaster. If you are giving money to a collective then you really are supporting a communal model of distribution as opposed to free enterprise. The coaches and AD’s want control and therefore quickly supported the collectives. Saban was the first I heard to decry the potential pitfalls of NIL if individuals made deals with athletes and called for the quick creation of collectives. Do you think this was because he thought the collective model would be the best way to perpetuate Alabama’s competitive advantage? This led to a pay for play approach.

The NIL should have simply allowed athletes to financially benefit from their market value due to their status as an athlete. It would have been uneven, messy and awkward. But the “invisible hand” of the market would have eventually led to some stability. Savvy athletes like the LSU gymnast would have competed in the market and struck it rich. Good for them. Sure, Saban would have had to hear from some Tuscaloosa businessman who spent big on a QB that Saban has on the bench. Fine, he makes enough to deal with that problem.

The schools should have stuck with providing scholarships and living expenses and the NCAA should have come down hard on the school itself offering NIL deals. And, the greedy schools should have settled way back in the O’Bannon case on a fair sharing of revenue from using the NIL of athletes to sell video games and jerseys.

The Presidents, AD’s and coaches showed they are no different than corporate America. They really hate the ideas of free markets and competition. What they love is corporate welfare, monopoly protection, and barriers to competition. They are addicted to spending other people’s money and desire to keep the wealth in the hands of those at the top as opposed who do the work.

Your last paragraph is the best summary I’ve ever read on what went wrong with the NIL and college football.