We may be crossing the event horizon of college football. And like that of a black hole, we’re all going to get spaghettified.
No sport — in America or abroad, past or present, real or imaginary — has managed such a potent mix of cultural importance and profitability with total incompetence and graft. Despite its unrivaled history, brilliant connection with its fans, rivalries, fantastic players and endless entertaining narratives, Division 1 college football has become the wild west, unable to control itself, its priorities and its own self-destructive excesses. This upcoming college football playoff is emblematic of all of it, and will be the game’s greatest reckoning as well as its celebration.
College football is, today, one part legalized Ponzi scheme, two parts economic-structure-of-a-drug-cartel, one part half-hearted exploitation of students and 57-parts illogical. The recent college football playoff selection included an ACC tiebreaker situation that, because 2-10 Boston College beat 3-9 Syracuse, 7-5 Duke wound up playing in the ACC championship, beat the University of Virginia, threatened to freeze out the entire conference from the College Football Playoff, allowing two non-power-conference schools — James Madison University and Tulane, winners of their conferences and higher ranked than Duke — into the playoff despite them lacking a little thing called “a chance.”
Despite setting their own tiebreaker procedures that got us into this mess, the ACC managed to finagle their actual-best team Miami into the playoff (despite finishing third in their own conference), icing out Notre Dame and BYU, the former of which proceeded to throw an all-time temper tantrum which brought to light a memorandum of understanding that would guarantee Notre Dame a spot in the playoff if they are ranked inside the Top 12, since they do not have a conference championship to play for. The CFP Committee and ACC, recently disregarding said conference championship, had to feel a bit awkward.
Because of that situationship, we now have Ole Miss favored by 17.5 over Tulane and Oregon favored by 21 over James Madison… in the playoffs. Ole Miss, by the way, is missing their head coach (probably the single most important person in a college football program) because the NCAA’s hiring window and transfer portal start date happen during the playoff, meaning Lane Kiffin was forced to bail on his team to go coach their main rival right before they began their national championship chase. For those whose heads are spinning, just imagine if the Los Angeles Rams made the playoffs and, right before playing San Francisco in the Wild Card round, Sean McVay had to go take the Seattle Seahawks job because he needed to get ready for the draft, which was the same day as their game.
None of that even touches the financial crimes that are going on every day in college football, with top programs in the Big-10 and SEC securing $100+ million revenue-sharing checks, despite still not paying players — NIL, which is funded by a separate account, is simply a backdoor to avoid sharing any of the real money with the people doing the work. The Playoff is infinitely expanding (it could be 16 teams before we know it), to ensure that the angry Notre Dames and Florida States of the past become the miffed Vanderbilts and UNCs of the future. Before we know it, the Playoff will be 64 teams, with everyone debating if App State or Kent State should be the last team out. But there’s too much money going around to miss out; oh, but did I mention most of these schools are non-profits?
None of it makes any sense; conferences are now meaningless, as is strength of schedule. A Playoff larger than eight teams is impossible to make fair — at least with four teams, you could justify shadowy back-room deals to get the four most exciting teams in there for maximum TV revenue. Now with 12, we need things for teams to play for to break the ties… but nobody plays the same teams… and Notre Dame isn’t even in a conference… and everyone knows an actually competitive playoff would have like seven SEC teams in it… but that wouldn’t be fair and we have to protect the game’s history. Yeah, like Stanford playing Boston College in Palo Alto at 10:30 EST in an Atlantic Coast Conference matchup. History.
What about the game’s soul? The only difference between college football and NFL, and what makes it interesting to watch, are the many levels of success and failure. Memphis is under no illusions that it can win a national championship, but it redefines success to mean having a good ACC year. Players weren’t making business decisions or looking for their next team, so there was a much higher level of buy-in at all levels — from Georgia State to Ohio State.
Now that’s all gone, the money has washed everything away. The only success is playoff participation and associated revenue. Players and coaches have a whole foot out the door at all times, because that is what it takes to succeed in a business that hoards all its money at the top. Luddites will tell you that NIL and the transfer portal are killing the sport, but they’re not; they’re merely turning it into a professional league. Heck, we have private equity investing in the University of Utah. The levees are broken; we tore them down.
Paying players and allowing them freedom of movement is the right thing to do in a professional environment. But I can’t help but despair at the loss of the sport’s identity, and the total chaos that has resulted from a lack of oversight. The NCAA is a toothless organ that is wholly subservient to its member conferences, completely unsuited for a professional system. While the NFL commissioner has actual power, and the league’s owners balance each other by applying pressure across the board, college football is governed by a bunch of children playing Hungry Hungry Hippos in a zero-sum world. And there is no incentive for them to stop.
Two certainties exist across this craziness. First, centralized leadership and regulation are necessary if the sport is going to survive. College football has always been a bit off its rocker, but the amount of money swirling around has driven things past the point of no return. That means a commissioner, a body, a committee, or something that these institutions are actually accountable to. Second, the NCAA and conferences are incapable of achieving this on their own. Government, and probably federal, regulation is going to be required to achieve that. The Ringer’s Todd McShay says people in the highest places of college football power agree, since there is simply too much money left on the table if this remains a chaotic soup of corruption and stupidity.
That behavior has led to tremendous short-term dividends for those benefiting from the current system. But that’s the nature of a Ponzi scheme: profit exists despite no stable foundation. The sport’s “innovations” to make things “fair” and “interesting” and “entertaining” have been undergirded by an every-man-for-himself mentality to secure as many seats on the loot train before it speeds away from their campus. It’s always been making things worse, and finally, it’s starting to feel worse.
