Iām gonna give college sports 12-24 months and see if all the parties involved will come together and craft a better path forward. Perhaps current state is just the transition period to something that makes more sense.
At the end of the day though Iām not donating to a program where the kids can pay their own way and we are just a P5 farm team.
The tailgate has been my saving grace - but Iāve never felt so emotionally detached from the program and it has more to do with the overall environment than ours Ws and Ls.
Maybe something happen that rekindles emotions and gets my passion back, itās been a long 30 years being emotionally invested.
I am completely falling out of love with the new college sports world but I feel bad ditching the Niners, itās not really their fault that this is all happening. I think Iāll stick to at least attending our games when possible
Itās most likely going to take 5 years minimum for the national college football mess to get sorted out. I wouldnāt put a hard, fixed red line do or die type timeframe on support/nonsupport as itās going to be fluid until such time the +/- P4 make their final break from the pack.
I honestly donāt see a ton of difference in the results. Itās a different way to go about it. The big boys have always āpaidā players. Now they just pay players without the quotes.
The portal makes things a bit different but one could argue it actually helps programs like ours. Sure we gonna lose guys but we can easily replace them with disgruntled P5 guys imho.
From a competitive perspective I think my issues are the big guys always paid for top talent but it was who was paying more Michigan or Ohio state and it was freshman. Now they are paying kids like Jahmir or Brice off ālowerā teams. Good players and really good players for us but just decent or role players for them. When A&M and the like are paying all lineman 30k or everyone on the defense gets a car - we just canāt compete with that. So much for finding that Jobey kind of guy and holding onto them.
Then we end up letting go of a Jahmir or Aly who have proven they can play and we hope the disgruntled P5 guy can actually play which as we have seen is a massive roll of the dice.
The other part of my issues are basically from a funding point of view if kids are making money then our students shouldnāt be subsidizing the whole show. Itās one thing to help a kid get an education but average Joe student shouldnāt be going into debt to pay for the QBs education if the QB is rolling around in a new truck from NIL. I just have such a philosophical and ethical issue with that. It was bad enough with coach salaries but this is just crazy.
The path for us to win has always been steep. But smart recruiting and good coaching were still keys to success. Now? Itās literally basically just money. And we donāt have enough and never will, since our program only exists off the back of our students. And in the off chance we do find a way to win - we wonāt be able to retain the players that got us there.
Iām not really sure what the solution is but Iād start with a P2 buy out payment to schools at a lower conference. Make anyone with an NIL pay at minimum their tuition back to the school. And put some structure into transfers and portal.
Right now the players want all the benefits or a student with all the benefits of a pro - that isnāt sustainable for 80+% of programs.
