College football is broken, fan interest is waning

It’s been an unusual season as far as college football is concerned.

 

Need proof?

 

The coach of one of the four finalists in the College Football Playoffs has been suspended not once, but two times during the 2023 season. That forced Michigan boss Jim Harbaugh to miss six games.

 

A highly recruited blue-chip player with a great football pedigree played in two games for the Texas Longhorns (yes, a college team) this season and earned a $3.2 million paycheck. OK, colleges like to call this NIL (Name, Image and Likeness) money. You be the judge if Arch Manning deserved that kind of money.

 

Ohio State quarterback, Kyle McCord led the Buckeyes to an 11-1 regular-season record with victories over Notre Dame and Penn State, both top-10 squads when they played the Buckeyes. But after losing to Michigan, McCord didn’t even wait until the end of the season to enter the transfer portal. He already was a Syracuse

Orangeman when the Buckeyes mastered ineptness in a Cotton Bowl loss to Missouri on Dec. 29.

 

But what really caught my attention was sports business reporter Darren Rovell’s Dec. 29 report that the University of Washington had a hard time selling its allotment of 20,000 tickets to alumni and donors to a College Football Playoff game against Texas. The playoffs have been such a financial boon the field has been expanded from four teams to 12 beginning next season.

 

Is interest in college football waning, which Rovell’s report might suggest? I think the answer is yes, and I think it’s because of NIL money and the transfer portal are turning fans off – completely off.

 

And both issues involve one topic: loyalty.

 

Did you ever question a college coach’s loyalty for bolting from one team to another? If you did, your head must be spinning with 1,300 players entering the transfer portal from Dec. 4 to Jan. 2.

 

As a sportswriter since the early 1980s, I always preached a student-athlete should attend the college they would choose if sports weren’t on the table. Now, you are going to have college student-athletes attend two or three universities in four years. Do you think any of these student-athletes will really make progress toward a college degree?

 

Quarterback JT Daniels played his freshman year at Southern Cal, his sophomore year at Georgia and added stops at West Viriginia and Rice. That’s four college in six years. 

 

I love college football because up until a couple of years ago, you followed recruiting and knew who was going to be on campus for three or four years. Now, it seems like some players stay on campus three or four months.

 

But the biggest turnoff for fans is the money college football players can make.

 

I graduated from The Ohio State University and had to laugh when oft-injured Buckeye running back TreVeyon Henderson was offered a reported $7.2 million to stay at Ohio State for his senior year. By the way, the average salary of an NFL running back is about $1.8 million per season.

 

Henderson’s teammate, the incredibly talented wide receiver Marvin Harrison Jr., was offered anywhere from a reported $20-25 million to remain a Buckeye for one more year. The money offered Harrison was equivalent to what he probably will get as a signing bonus.

 

And, this is only beginning. Wait ‘til the NIL money has hit the high school level. 

 

According to The Hill, once the NCAA allowed NIL money, California became the first state to allow high schoolers to get NIL deals. Since then, about 30 states have passed legislation allowing NIL money.

 

NIL money is already allowed in Georgia and has been debated in South Carolina.

 

And here’s something to debate if and when NIL money becomes reality in the Palmetto State: Do we have a high school athlete’s best interest at heart if we allow them to change high schools three or four times to chase what is a pipe dream for most teenagers?

 

Stay tuned.