Which of these 3 has mess up college football

[bobongo]

Television has to be at least in the honorable mention category. It has saturated the market, ruined the in game experience, and the disparate levels of revenue makes the playing field unequal in a much bigger way than it was 30-40 + years ago.

And the reason TV has become a monster is because of the love of money, the "root of all evil", as is written. It's the Grandpappy of the whole mess.

 

[SOWEGA Jacket]

None of them. The NCAA created a rigged sport from the beginning. These 3 things are just the latest iteration. More will come until money dissolves the NCAA. If you’ve been a fan of the corrupt sport before why not continue to be. Nothing has really changed.

 

[GTNavyNuke]

Reverting to the old transfer rules would solve a lot problems.

At the risk of rehashing the transfer rule discussion, I think it would fix some problems and reinstate others. The transfer rule is much better for the individual players who were getting much less for the entertainment value they added while some coaches and schools get rich. This way the players can greatly increase their compensation (through NIL) and possibly NFL.

Plus the players are the ones who will have the long term brain damage from concussions.. So they should be compensated more IMHO. There is still a big disconnect for me between GT the academic institution developing the student's brain and GT football damaging the brain.

 

[4shotB]

And the reason TV has become a monster is because of the love of money, the "root of all evil", as is written. It's the Grandpappy of the whole mess.

If we really are taking a deeper dive into root cause issues, then we have to go all the way back to a garden, a woman, and a serpent. This is when the whole mess really started to go sideways. Although chop blocking was still legal then so there's that to be said for that particular era in time

 

[Southern psu fan]

LeBron James, Dwyane Wade, and Chris Bosh messed up college football.

Once it became a thing that players could/would decide to play together just to win a ring, all bets were off as far as team loyalty goes. (The Great Deion Experiment of 2023-25 in Colorado is a variation of this.)

The Transfer Portal (and its evil twin sister, NIL) is how that game is played at the college level.

I like the transfer portal if it’s a one time thing without sitting out a year. One Time only.

 

[CEB]

I like the transfer portal if it’s a one time thing without sitting out a year. One Time only.

ONCE.

 

[Southern psu fan]

ONCE.
View attachment 15015

One time only with no exceptions! Keep the same rules for kids that’s graduated. This way all teams and players are playing by the same rules.

 

[Jacket4Life]

Both NIL and the portal. They go hand in hand. NIL needs to be capped at reasonable amount in order for non factory schools to compete.

 

[g0lftime]

Transfer portal. Every game I watch now, the announcers say where they transferred from. It's prevalent across college football. NIL has made some difference but I think it keeps a lot of talented kids in their programs to stay rather than leave.

 

[leatherneckjacket]

At the risk of rehashing the transfer rule discussion, I think it would fix some problems and reinstate others. The transfer rule is much better for the individual players who were getting much less for the entertainment value they added while some coaches and schools get rich. This way the players can greatly increase their compensation (through NIL) and possibly NFL.

Plus the players are the ones who will have the long term brain damage from concussions.. So they should be compensated more IMHO. There is still a big disconnect for me between GT the academic institution developing the student's brain and GT football damaging the brain.

Um, OK.

Well, then, let me play along.

The entertainment value has almost nothing to do with name on the back of the jersey and everything to do with the name on the front. Outside of the 10% of the players who make the NFL, most of which will only play less than three seasons, there is no discernable market outside of college football. You could replace every FBS football player with their FCS counterpart and the same teams would generate the same ticket sales and television viewership. Those same FBS players could start their own league in the same cities as their colleges and would garner virtually no attendance or television viewership. The only reason there is value is because they are associated with the universities and the players are piggy backing off the goodwill the college programs have developed over the years. The "value" of the student athletes is a myth. It does not exist.

Second, your response ignores the value they receive in free everything from the university. In reality, that compensation is worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. For 90% of the football players, it is more than they could ever make playing football outside of college.

Third, i have no idea why concussions are relevant to the discussion or why you are implying that GT is damaging brains, but you are completely off the reservation. Regardless, no one is compelling anyone to play football or go to college. It is voluntary. If they are getting concussions, it is a risk they are clearly willing to take.

Finally... The question is whether creating a system where there are basically no rules is fair or not. The NFL also damages brains and does not allow players to pick whichever team they want to play nor do they allow teams to poach players.

 

[cpf2001]

A power law distribution of talent and marketability in a market isn’t the same as there being no market. Replace GT players with an FCS squad year in and year out and it wouldn’t take long for GT football revenue to crater. Players bring in fans based on percentile of ability, not an absolute level.

 

[Oldgoldandwhite]

All of the above.

 

[leatherneckjacket]

A power law distribution of talent and marketability in a market isn’t the same as there being no market. Replace GT players with an FCS squad year in and year out and it wouldn’t take long for GT football revenue to crater. Players bring in fans based on percentile of ability, not an absolute level.

Nice straw man. Of course, if only GT changed their players, our program would crater. What would happen if all FBS players for all programs were replaced by FCS players, which is what I said?

 

[GTech63]

If we really are taking a deeper dive into root cause issues, then we have to go all the way back to a garden, a woman, and a serpent. This is when the whole mess really started to go sideways. Although chop blocking was still legal then so there's that to be said for that particular era in time

Amen my brother, but you left the man out.

 

[takethepoints]

College football was messed up before those 3.

Ncaa as run by flunkies appointed by college Prez.

They allowed a few teams to dominate because of an ocean of tv money.

They DIDN'T act to stop the same MEGA P5 schools from being in top 10 every year. THUS THE MONEY RACE. All schools were bought off by the easy money, but this lead to the players grab for "their share"

Only way out was ncaa to tax winning too often to level playing field. Simply reduce total schokarships for winning too much. Yea a mini death penalty for excessive success.

I think this is right. A "luxury tax" a la NBA would do a lot to even things out money-wise. But that isn't likely, given the way the NCAA is set up.

The fly in the ointment here is that even teams with loaded of money often have a hard time maintaining their win levels (Clemson). And some schools with very little money (comparatively) suddenly show up in the top 20 (Oregon State, TCU last year). Coaching means a lot and even the transfer portal doesn't necessary have a deciding effect. It is true that some schools who used to wait for Tech to offer a recruit then move in are now targeting our roster for transfers. Easier to do since we have yet to prove we have a consistent winning program. We'll have to see about that.

Now, as to solutions: get rid of scholarship football, basketball, and baseball. It really is that simple and that difficult. As a taxpayer, I resent having to pay for minor league pro teams and, btw, sure me the "but the associations pay for the sports" stuff. If the pros want experienced players, let them run their own minor leagues. But this won't happen until - and it is coming - Congress intervenes.

 

[link3945]

I have a hard time blaming the transfer portal and NIL. The kids are just now doing the same thing their coaches have been doing for decades.

 

[Pappa P]

Television has to be at least in the honorable mention category. It has saturated the market, ruined the in game experience, and the disparate levels of revenue makes the playing field unequal in a much bigger way than it was 30-40 + years ago.

No doubt television is the root of all of it. Too much money has changed the dynamics for boosters, ADs, coaches, players, fans. Too many games are on television so going to the game becomes less desirable. It’s not a game - it’s a business … no it’s more than that, it’s become fan’s insatiable appetite to win at all cost and diminish the student-athlete to a paid professional. I just read the comments of Dabo Swinney reacting to disgruntled fans during a frustrating season. Saban has had to deal with the same. Tech followers on this site are guilty of the same - unappreciative, abusive, and lack of civility. Just about everyone has forgotten it is just a game. It is not the end all be all. And along with television, social media has only amped up the above. My wife and I are long time Tech supporters - we go to support the student-athletes as former alumni and my wife was a VB letter winner. Yeah, it’s fun to win. But supporting those representing the gold and white means more than just a W. To be honest though, the fans and media are making it less fun for us.

 

[cpf2001]

Nice straw man. Of course, if only GT changed their players, our program would crater. What would happen if all FBS players for all programs were replaced by FCS players, which is what I said?

I was trying to point out the flaw with what you said. There's no objective standard here, so scaling everyone's talent up or down across the board is irrelevant. It's about being the best.

It's an entertainment market, the top draws are based on being the best *relative to everyone else*. If suddenly the best players were all that much worse but the best programs were still the best program, not much would change. The best of the new players would still be in the most demand and a market would still exist for them for being the best of the available talent. The sales power and appeal of the name on the front of the shirt relies on stacking up well in terms of players. So there's a market for players good enough to keep GT where it is - or, rather, to get GT back to where it was - even beyond the top 10, because the alternative for GT - not trying to compete for those players - is program suicide. How long would it take for GaSt, GaSo to outdraw GT if GT simply stopped recruiting ACC-level players and all those same players went to one of those alternatives?

 

[leatherneckjacket]

It's an entertainment market, the top draws are based on being the best *relative to everyone else*.

This is demonstrably untrue. College football does not have better players than XFL and college basketball does not have better players than the development league. Yet, both the college football and college basketball revenue and television market are huge, while they are non existent for the professional leagues with better players. Your post implies that there is no brand or goodwill associated with either college sports or with the universities themselves. This is an absurd statement. It would be equivalent to saying you could open your hamburger restaurant with better employees / ingredients and will make more money than the local McDonald's.

Also, you cannot use straw man arguments to demonstrate the flaw of someone else's point since, by definition, you are not arguing against the other person's point, but rather straw man version that you created in your own head.

Finally, you keep arguing as if I said only GT will replace its players with FCS players. For the third time, it is if every FBS player was replaced by FCS players. That would include Georgia State and GSU.

 

[cpf2001]

This is demonstrably untrue. College football does not have better players than XFL and college basketball does not have better players than the development league. Yet, both the college football and college basketball revenue and television market are huge, while they are non existent for the professional leagues with better players. Your post implies that there is no brand or goodwill associated with either college sports or with the universities themselves. This is an absurd statement. It would be equivalent to saying you could open your hamburger restaurant with better employees / ingredients and will make more money than the local McDonald's.

Also, you cannot use straw man arguments to demonstrate the flaw of someone else's point since, by definition, you are not arguing against the other person's point, but rather straw man version that you created in your own head.

The existence of competitor leagues that haven't outdone CFB does not disprove the existence of a player market inside the league.

Obviously there's a lot of name value in the university programs but that name value won't be maintained for free if they no longer compete in the market for talented players. Look at... well, look at Georgia Tech. Yes, it takes decades to piss away name value; no, that doesn't disprove the existence of a market.

Here's the thing: you're claiming that there isn't a market *despite the existence of market participants spending money in that very market outside of just the top few programs.* The evidence of there being a market is crystal clear, it's that there are participants in that market. And as you point out, the market for college basketball players is actually a *hotter* market than the G-League one. It's not an *independent* market - it exists because of existing brand value in the programs - but it's there.

You seem to be doing two things:

The first is ignoring path-dependency, claiming that because you couldn't immediately replace college sports by hiring away all the best players that there is no value to the players. *Where* the market value is depends on the path; *what* the value is, much less so. The claim here is about the latter. There is value to having the best players within the college structure, even if the value of having the best players outside of the name value isn't enough to overturn a century-old institution overnight. It would take magically erasing a century of history and starting from scratch, *but nobody in this thread is arguing that that's what the players should or could do* - bit of a, what's the word, strawman.

The second is substituting collusive ideas with any idea of demonstrating if a market exists. You pitched the scenario swapping all the current players out and sub in new ones, and then have more success than the former players trying to set up a new league. What is this supposed to show beyond that players in a some markets can collude to reduce the competitive cost of the market? What *actually* happens makes the opposite point - the players in the market, *without* a strong collective organization reigning in their behavior, are aggressively competing for players in college sports, even that the middle levels.