COLLEGE FOOTBALL 2021: START BY DROPPING THE “COLLEGE” PART
Say hello to America’s newest professional sport, which can pay $1 million to an untested QB and form a three-conference “alliance’’ to slow program-poaching wars — all at the expense of academia
So, college football begins without a clue where it’s going. Oh, as usual, there are imperiled coaches to ziggy (Jim Harbaugh, Clay Helton) and new quarterbacks to micro-analyze (at Alabama, Clemson, Ohio State), just as there are tailgates to visit and team colors to wear and legal wagers to lose. People always will be true to their schools, with a nod to the Beach Boys, a band most 18-year-olds associate with grandparents’ bingo games and hearing losses.
But the sport itself? No GPS device can help college football as it hurdles into the unknown. All the virtues that should be taught on campuses — trust, humility, morality, health — have been strip-sacked by a cartel of university presidents and power donors no longer concentrated on academia or COVID surges. They have green-lighted a musical-chairs conference realignment game, complete with overt program-poaching that won’t stop until ESPN’s College Football Playoff deal expires in 2025, which will spark broadcast bidding wars for untold billions in an expected, 12-team playoff expansion.
College football? Hell, there’s nothing collegiate here beyond marching bands and Tom Rinaldi’s weepy essays on Fox, which stole him from ESPN, which is well-experienced in the art of thievery having conspired with the SEC to snatch Oklahoma and Texas in the dead of night. The heist prompted 41 other schools, alarmed by the SEC’s bloated influence, to impose their own power play: an alliance between the Big Ten, ACC and Pac-12, intended as a strength-in-numbers rebuttal to those dirty Deep South rascals.
“What it signifies is there’s still a lot of goodness in college football,’’ Big Ten commissioner Kevin Warren said. “Hopefully, this will bring some much-needed stability to college athletics.’’
Yeah, until the Big Ten raids the Pac-12 for USC. As Pac-12 commissioner George Kliavkoff acknowledges, “There’s no signed contract. There’s an agreement among three gentlemen. There’s a commitment from 41 presidents and athletic directors to do what we say we’re going to do.”
What is this, a night at the Improv? Make me laugh. An “agreement among gentlemen’’ in 2021 is a knife in the back in 2022.
The sport is bursting with blurry volatility and raw capitalism, having been pushed into a pre-NFL portal of professionalism by a Supreme Court decision. If it’s about time that young athletes, exploited by the system for much too long, finally can make money from names, images and likenesses, has anybody considered how this bag-grabbing will be monitored now that the NCAA has been emasculated? The new recruiting ballgame is all about assuring players the most lucrative compensation opportunities. Inevitably, it will lead to the rich getting richer and the same-old/same-old programs dominating seasons. The arms race already extends to Hollywood agencies, which are hotly pursuing high-school freshmen with goals of long-term representation. They’re certainly not directing kids to Arkansas and Wake Forest, but they do love a telegenic place such as USC, where quarterback Kedon Slovis has a deal with Klutch Sports, the firm overlorded by Rich Paul and his longtime pal, LeBron James.
Can you imagine a 14-year-old from Paducah, whisked by a CAA agent to a Beverly Hills party? Imagine anything, because anything is possible moving forward … and sideways … and every which way. Forget about the scene where a famous coach stands in a living room and pleads to a kid’s parents, “If you send your son to our university, we will take care of him like family.’’ Now, the famous coach brings the local Porsche dealer and an alumnus who happens to be the CEO of a Fortune 500 company. And it’s all legal, much to the shock of even renegades in the industry. When asked about Bryce Young, the Alabama quarterback who has thrown exactly 22 college passes yet is assured more than $1 million in NIL endorsement money, Ole Miss coach/badboy Lane Kiffin was astounded.
“That number just blew me away. You didn’t prepare me for that. That’s amazing,’’ he said. “You’re gonna make a million dollars and haven’t started a game yet? Wow. I don’t even know how to respond to that.’’
Oh, and did I mention how this applies to transfers from other programs? The minute a star player becomes the least bit disillusioned, he can call up Nick Saban and plug right in as a starting linebacker. That’s what happened in the case of Henry To’o To’o, who led Tennessee in tackles last season but entered the transfer portal when the Volunteers fired head coach Jeremy Pruitt. Before you knew it, To’o To’o was taking his skills to Tuscaloosa and signing an endorsement contract hawking PSD underwear, alongside NBA stars Jimmy Butler and Ja Morant. As it is, Saban is the most accomplished coach in college football history, favored this season to win his eighth national championship.
How is anyone going to knock off Alabama when he has new pipelines to talent and glory? The assignment will be left to wealthy folks such as Dan Lambert, the Miami booster who has offered $500-a-month deals to every player on the Hurricanes roster to promote his mixed-martial-arts gym. See where this is going? Derek Stingley Jr., LSU’s star cornerback, has secured the services of a Dallas marketing firm that landed him a sponsorship deal with a restaurant, just as Clemson quarterback D.J. Uiagalelei has a deal with Bojangles and Georgia quarterback J.T. Daniels has one with Zaxby’s. A freshman defensive end at Ohio State, Jack Sawyer, is driving a new NIL-allowed truck from the auto dealership of actor Mark Wahlberg.
All of which can create a haves/have-nots division inside a locker room. So far, most teammates seem happy for the newly minted. But at some point, jealousy will take over, as Saban senses. “It is my biggest concern. I haven't heard any (complaints) so far,’’ he told ESPN, which is only financing and enabling the college football enterprise. “I told our players, ‘When you play in the NFL, everybody doesn't make the same.' Everything in college has always been the same. That's not going to be the case anymore. Some positions and players are going to have more opportunities than others, but there's no sense in being envious about that. You have to create the most value you can for yourself. I don't know how it's going to affect people."
The only reminder that this is still college football: Games are played on campuses. But while fans are back inside stadiums — witness the orange swarms in Champaign for Bret Bielema’s successful debut at Illinois, at the expense of another endangered coach (Nebraska’s Scott Frost) — the Delta variant could cause more COVID chaos and superspread dangers. The teams with the highest vaccination rates will have a competitive advantage, and, unlike last season, the Big Ten, ACC, Pac-12 and Big 12 have announced TV-protecting forfeiture policies for teams unable to play games. The SEC has issued a similar warning.
If everything you’ve just read smacks of pro football, that’s because it IS pro football. So much for the “bridge to adulthood,’’ the “student-athlete experience’’ and all the long-held myths of big-time collegiate athletics. Another symbol of Americana — an autumn Saturday on campus — has become the antithesis of amateurism, to the point even Tom Rinaldi can’t hide the mega-fortunes with poetic goo.
Jay Mariotti, called “the most impacting Chicago sportswriter of the past quarter-century,’’ writes sports columns for Substack and a Wednesday media column for Barrett Sports Media while appearing on some of the 1,678,498 podcasts in production today. He’s an accomplished columnist, TV panelist and radio talk host. Living in Los Angeles, he gravitated by osmosis to film projects. Compensation for this column is donated to the Chicago Sun-Times Charity Trust.