It's not the NCAA. The big culprits are a two/three misguided legal decisions plus the idiot programs that thought packaging NIL with recruiting was a good idea. It was a terrible idea--a stupid idea, as I have many times pointed out.
I do recall Vol fans and others being elated at the judicial ruling that put a temporary halt to the NCAA's effort to ban NIL in recruiting. Many fans think NIL in the recruiting of high school prospects and existing college student-athletes is wonderful. It's not---and it's not going to lead to more parity.
What we have now makes a complete mockery of "college" sports. I mean, owing to rampant commercialism it has been trending this way for a while--but now we've got an absurd circus that has turned most student-athletes into greedy mercenaries, coaches have to almost completely rebuild their rosters every year, rampant transferring--all in the name of want to do more for student-athletes already getting a free four/five year academic scholarships plus other bennies PLUS an annual payment of a few/several thousand dollars a year now, I believe. When it all leads to Dartmouth basketball players--Dartmouth basketball players!---voting to unionize, you know somebody let the monkeys out of the cage.
The fact that nearly all of the NIL deals are kept secret is an indication that the sport--the athletic directors and others---don't want the public to see what college FB/BB have become--bribery contests for players, with the payment amounts all kept hidden, the players jumping yearly from one program to another for more money, etc etc. Conference expansion and realignment is also a freaking joke---what exactly is the point of conferences with a ridiculous 18/20 members? Inevitably we seem headed to CFB with one mega-conference comprising 50 or so quasi-professional programs that have opted in to shelling out big money to their players (formerly know as student-athletes) while all other schools stick with college sports as they used to be.
College is college: It is not supposed to be professional. But it got big, with bigger and bigger TV deals--and then they idiot activists jumped in with their nonsense about players being exploited. The usual "give us free money" crowd. The student-athletes are already getting free money--a free college education, which is worth a lot of money, but because it's not cash in pocket, the activists (who are not big on education) pretend that the student-athletes are getting nothing. They're getting a lot.
The legal decisions are also a bit perplexing--and have further opened Pandora's Box.
And it doesn't help when a bunch of morons decide that we need a bigger playoff. No, we don't. It's just greed--by the conferences, athletic directors, school presidents and networks masquerading as "giving other programs a chance." It's a con job on fans, essentially---the same con that we've seen in the steadily expanding playoffs in pro sports. "Your .500 MLB or NFL team, or your 20th ranked college football team, has a chance to win the Big Taco because....it's made the playoffs!" It's the same reason some clowns are pushing to expand the NCAA BB tourney--every team deserves a chance to play in the NCAA! More teams, more games, more money! Your middling team is not going to win--but that's ok, because that's entertainment!
hailfloridahail.com
.
