The writing was on the wall. There is going to be a fire sale of P-5 talent hitting the portal from OSU and WSU. It is horrible for the fans, administrations, college football. As much as I hate this for them I am glad it is not the U.
Yeah, I feel awful for them, especially since Jake Dickert has been talking about this for years now. Tampering is happening. Cam Ward apparently got like 10 offers of 1 million+ dollars and he hasn’t even said he’s entering. Saw on the duck 247 board that he is going to Oregon since they bid the most money. I swear, I hate the ducks. Not in the same emotional way that I hate USC or BYU, but just competing against them for recruits is so painful.
The powers that be should just rip off the bandaid and make revenue producing players employees of the school and make scholarships akin to contracts. You can keep the one transfer rule and allow players to transfer if a coach moves or is fired but, for everything else, there should be guardrails. The big schools would still have their way but at least would have to pay real money for the privilege. Right now it’s simply a buffet where smaller schools are what’s for dinner.
The new era is going to get out of control quickly (if it is not already). There needs to be some rules put into place, akin to the NFL, NBA, etc. Salary caps, free agency periods, etc. College football is functioning like a professional league, but without any of the rules/safeguards to protect the product from devolving into chaos.
I agree with the idea of some rules. Currently there does not appear to be some interest in fairness by the big programs that would apply across the population. But to make it workable, the current D1 needs to have subdivisions because it does not make any sense at all for Utah State and Georgia to compete for the same football championship. So how do we get programs with the most resources to agree to rules that begin to level the playing field?
At some point the P5 (now P4, one day P3, I dunno) will break away wherein there will be more high stakes NIL bidding and out-bidding, leaving the NCAA Div1 to do their own thing with more controls. NIL was specifically not supposed to be pay-for-play, but it certainly has devolved to that.