The snow is still on the ground and the temperatures remain below freezing. It’s the best time of year to make a fire and watch football.
Next Monday night will be the college football championship between Ohio State and Notre Dame, two legendary gridiron programs. I will be watching.
One hundred fifty years after its inception, college football remains the most quintessentially American sport: the regional rivalries, the outrageous mascots, the petty hatreds. (In what other sport would a five-minute brawl occur thanks to one team trying to plant a state flag on the other’s 50-yard line?)
The game between the Buckeyes and the Fighting Irish represents the best of this tradition: the school which symbolizes Midwestern stolidity and grit versus the inimitable history of the Irish Catholic church. It’s more than a game, folks.
But there are dark clouds on the horizon. The last few years have seen a brutal reorganization in college athletics: first, through the demise of athletic conferences and, second, through the sudden rise of an unregulated “pay for play” system through “name, image, likeness” (NIL) deals.
I’ve talked about the first factor and its corrosive impact. The second has taken college sports from an ostensibly amateur undertaking (you play sports, you get a scholarship) to an unrestricted free market where a player can “enter the portal” for any reason: not enough snaps, not enough exposure, not enough dollars. Unlike professional sports, there are no contracts. You show up, you play (or don’t), you leave when you want.
A month ago, Dave Clawson of Wake Forest — one of the most respected coaches in the nation — tapped out after a decade at one of the ACC’s smaller schools. (I’ve known Dave from the 1980’s at Williams College, where he played basketball and football). The message was simple: I can’t keep recruiting young men, coaching them into top players, then see them leave to the highest bidder.
College basketball is seeing the same defections. Late last year, Tony Bennett of UVA and Jim Larrañaga of Miami (and before that, our beloved coach at GMU) both decided to retire. Again, the reason was the same: I came to coach and develop young men, not negotiate with their agents. Yet the modern era has athletes walking out the door if they don’t get “big money.” And the coaches who found and developed their talents have no way to stop them.
Not sympathetic with coaches earning seven figures? Understood. But what about those athletes who are not securing the big NIL money?
The overwhelming percentage of college athletes will not play professional sports. They need the academic degree, life skills and connections you develop in college in order to succeed in life. Yet one of the features of the modern era is athletes who show up on campus with a scholarship, excited to attend that university, then are pushed out the door when a transfer shows up. (Yes, I’ve talked to the parents).
There is a solution, and it must come from Capitol Hill, as it is a national problem. Here are some basic concepts;
1. Mandate regional conferences, which will greatly improve the lives of athletes, fans and parents. (No, we don’t need Cal or Stanford in the ACC).
2. Protect student-athletes by limiting the ability of institutions to revoke awarded scholarships.
3. Establish a pay scale and make it transparent, so everyone knows who’s getting paid what. In return for getting paid, players can be bound for a term of years (This is how pro sports works, not to mention the military). If necessary, enact a salary cap to protect competitive balance.
4. Have lower tiers of athletic conferences where true amateurs can compete on a level playing field.
College sports represent the best of America. Nobody does it like us. However it requires a neutral body with disciplinary authority to apply universal standards, and the NCAA has become useless.
Let’s save it while we still can.