Before college kids can legally have a drink or make a few bucks at the casino, they’re chasing millions of dollars to play football, traveling the country like rockstars in search of the most lucrative deals.
Over the last decade, college athletics have evolved from the next level to the highest level, programs suddenly defined by dollars, not rings. The student-athlete is now an obsolete term, “athlete” simply the proper name.
“Why should we have to go to class if we came here to play FOOTBALL,” former Ohio State quarterback Cardale Jones once infamously Tweeted. “We ain’t come to play SCHOOL, classes are POINTLESS.”
That’s all come to a head over the last year and especially in the last week. Tennessee star quarterback Nico Iamaleava, likely to be one of college football’s best quarterbacks this season, left the Volunteers because, apparently, the $2.4 million he was set to make wasn’t enough.
Iamaleava wanted $4 million a year. Tennessee didn’t do it, and he left for a UCLA program that went 5-7 in its first year in the Big Ten. Any program will have to scoop change off the street to pay him that kind of money.
The shake-up in Iamaleava’s career warrants a discussion about the current state of college athletics, namely football and basketball, that has twisted what was their great potential into something that’s missing a few tweaks.
Transferring is too easy
On May 30, 2024, the settlement of an antitrust lawsuit with the NCAA no longer required athletes to sit out a year upon transferring schools, in essence opening the floodgates without looking at the consequences down the line.
“Free from anticompetitive rules that unfairly limit their mobility, Division I college athletes will now be able to choose the institutions that best meet their academic, personal, and professional development needs,” Jonathan Kanter, the assistant attorney general of the Antitrust Division in the U.S. Department of Justice, said in a statement, per The New York Times.
The principles of the lawsuit are certainly understandable, the decision boosting the competitiveness of smaller programs. But it suddenly expedites the process of jumping ship, making it much easier and more attractive to do so without the repercussions of sitting out.
Now, when something is just slightly off, players can skip town and play at the next spot.
Per NBC Sports, the total number of Football Bowl Subdivision players who transferred doubled from 1,561 in 2018-19 to 3,700 last year. Across all divisions, more than 11,000 NCAA football players hit the portal in just 2023-24.
This insane rate of turnover ruins the integrity of the game, hindering loyalty to programs and making college sports much more transactional. That uproots the tradition of fighting for a team, fanbase, and city that is otherwise much more common in professional sports. Iowa built its reputation and loyalty, but not many more programs can do that now.
Follow the money
The same issue arises with name, image, and likeness — and with paying players in general. Students are not transferring for academic or professional needs as Kanter said; they’re transferring to find more money.
Money makes anyone disloyal, and with how lucrative college athletics has become, players jump at the sniff of a bit more cash no matter what school is offering it.
Iamaleava is the case in point here. College-aged kids are chasing multi-million-dollar deals instead of just playing football. Tennessee was undoubtedly the better spot. So, what’s the incentive to play hard, win games, and give the fans a good product? Who cares — as long as the money is there.
Indeed, the love for and integrity of the game have severely diminished as a result. What made college sports so unique — the authenticity and true community behind the game — have now been erased with 20-year-olds making decisions like professional stars.
Look at Bryce Underwood, too. Once committed to LSU for $1.5 million a year for four years, the opportunity would’ve given him experience in one of the country’s best quarterback rooms that has produced the likes of Joe Burrow and Jayden Daniels.
But Michigan — 8-5 last season under new head coach Sherrone Moore after a national championship the year before — swooped in and offered him a four-year, $10 million deal with help from Tom Brady, Dave Portnoy of Barstool Sports, and even Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison.
Just reading that sounds like the contents of a professional sports deal, but these are college kids. The money in sports makes sense, but agents are necessary to fix this — as is some regulation such as caps, control on the numbers, and a leveling of the playing field. Anything beats the free-flowing state it is in.
Besides, where is the loyalty? Players can go to whoever is willing to pay enough, and there’s less incentive to play for a championship and more to play for the dollar signs. It’s selfish, and it takes the team element out of sports.
One and done
While basketball-related, the one-and-done rule deserves more attention than it gets for how restricting it is on college hoops.
Requiring hoopers to only play one year post-high school graduation before becoming NBA draft-eligible, the one-and-done rule makes a fantastic product of close games, rivalries, and young stars so much harder to watch — and the NBA much more favorable.
This year, we got Cooper Flagg of Duke, a generational hooper we all tuned in to see. Next year, he’s gone. There’s no incentive for fans to stay and watch each player progress through the storylines that make professional sports so attractive. It’s a business decision. I’ll just go see him in the league now because most fans can’t keep up with the high turnover year by year that makes the NCAA little more than a pipeline to the NBA.
The three-year requirement in college football is what makes it so great. Fans are already excited to see Arch Manning, Ryan Williams, and Jeremiyah Love chase the trophy next year and even another year after that.
There’s a more cohesive constant journey toward the end goal feasible in football, with all its problems, that college basketball doesn’t have.