I don’t like what’s happening in the world of sports, particularly college football and basketball. It’s no longer student athletes playing rival schools. It has become a multi-billion-dollar business with professional athletes who transfer colleges at will in order to earn more for themselves and earn more for their new coaches.
The Name Image and Likeness (NIL) money means that schools with heavy hitter alumni (Like ‘Bama, Texas and Ohio State) can buy their players. Bryce Young, Alabama quarterback signed a $3.2 million NIL deal. It is estimated thatcollege athletes collectively made an estimated $917 million from NIL payments in the first year, with the most lucrative deals flowing to football and men’s basketball stars. With these payouts, the smaller schools have to take a back seat, a way-back seat.
And these mega conferences like the Big Ten and SEC no longer even pretend to be regional. Texas is two time zones from Florida and now UCLA and SoCal are playing in conferences with Penn State. It’s crazy and I believe it will destroy college sports as we once knew it.
Virginia should be playing conference rivals like Virginia Tech, Carolina, and Duke, not Southern Methodist and Stanford. I see no solution on the horizon as long as the TV networks are willing to fund the charade.
Baseball was once America’s sport and if things continue as they are, it may well return to the top of the dog pile.