Yep. I have felt that for 3 or 4 years, a little more each year. Georgia and Alabama can have their own private party every year while the rest of the country spends more and more time reading books about a game that used to be.
I am hopeful that what we’ve seen is the product of a perfect storm created by the easy transfer ability of the portal, the possible applications of NIL and mostly the newness of both. Not optimistic, but hopeful.
Some of the potentially good;
- smaller P5 programs have long complained that the likes of Bama, OSU, UGA, Clemson, etc stockpile talent in their 2-deep / 3-deep that would start elsewhere. Ease of transfer without loss of eligibility should “spread the wealth.”
- after the initial fervor of NIL pay for play, kids still have to be happy where they are. No amount of money is worth working for a bad boss in a place you hate. If kids arent happy, they’ll leave. Not wishing ill will or bad decisions on any 18 year old kid but some will become cautionary tales and temper this a bit. I also hope a handful of “busts” cause some alumni to rethink their investments in NIL schemes.
- there will no doubt be some Gibbs scenarios where a kid is good enough to really upgrade his prospects through the portal, but I think it will go the other way a lot more. I think the big schools will still focus on getting and developing / retaining talent more than poaching it. Smaller schools will benefit from their attrition.
I think we’re feeling the sting of this pretty acutely because of our recent performance and the fact that we fell victim to possibly the highest profile loss of the portal so far. Just when we’re coming to peace with it, Ivey departs. We won’t suffer such attrition every year and these things may not turn out to be as bad as they initially seem... but from our perspective right now, not much looks promising.
More good news... if I am totally wrong about all of this and it IS as bad as we think, college football as we know it is over and theres not much we could’ve done to save it anyway.