people get funny about things. This entire NIL PORTAL Circus is new to the kids. They are not yet pros in their own minds. They were recruited to colleges with the old “Tradition, loyalty, whatever” pitch. So some of this is ingrained. At least for now.
They are saying what 100 years of tradition has told them they should say. But it’ll change fast. This is, imho a temporary stage in the downfall of my beloved sport. I don’t mean that the sport isn’t going to crash. It’s just that it’s the uncontrolled no rules, no one really knows what to do stage. The next stage will be revenue sharing and contracts of some sort. Then we’ll see the concentration and death of a lot of teams.
What’s left will be anyone’s guess but I’m suspecting we end up with a NFL-lite Super conference where those who want to be pro-employees go. Fine, let it happen and be done. I think it’ll Permanently diminish the fandom of the sport but the $$ will keep rolling in for a long time and eventually we’ll forget it was really ever part of college.
The remaining schools will either switch to some kind of D3 format or just drop sports entirely. And I can live with both of those options as well at this stage. I just don’t want any of it further disrupting that whole academic part the Universities should be focusing on.