Dear College Sports: “I’m Leaving You”

I’m going to have to break up with you. I know this is hard, and the timing sucks with the transfer portal and football playoffs, and college basketball just ramping up, but I don’t think I have much of a choice right now. 

Dear College Sports,

Things just aren’t the same, and it feels like it just keeps getting worse. I remember the good old days when we first met, back when I really got to know the players.

Four or five years is a long time to get to know someone, and it was great watching athletes grow and getting excited each season to see who would be the next one to step up and make a difference. Redshirts meant you might get three years on the field or the court, maybe four, but I knew you were going to stick around.

One-and-dones were hard, but I understood that your talent shone too brightly and you were ready for the next stage. I tried not to get too attached, and at least I knew I could watch you in the pros.

I even suffered through the BCS years for football and never lost my love for the game. Convoluted formulas that tried to tell us the whole best two teams in the country were, as if we couldn’t tell by ourselves based on the results on the field.

Computer rankings and random polls had a tremendous impact. Watching the same teams year after year. There were weird rules that favored teams because they weren’t in a conference or were in the “right” conference.

Even through all that smoke and mirrors to tell me who the best team was, I still loved you.

Graphic courtesy Pro Skills Basketball

Recruiting was the best. Watching teams wine and dine the best athletes. Agonizing over whether or not you would pick our school, and wondering what happened when “sure-things” suddenly went south. There were rumors of McDonald’s bags containing more than just quarter-pounders.

Athletes and their families were suddenly receiving “improper” benefits that often couldn’t exactly be justified. A new car, a new house, a new job — all these things were spread as gospel truth even if they were just rumors.

Blue-chip prospects suddenly found themselves being treated as celebrities as people chased stories of where they were going to commit. Football and basketball were the two biggest stages. We lived and died with the decisions of 17–18-year-old athletes and with whether our school would be chosen.

We accepted them as family when they did, and respected them as rivals when they didn’t. Coaches were hired and fired, not strictly because of their coaching acumen, but based on their ability to convince athletes’ mommas that they would indeed take the best care of their son or daughter. Dynasties rose and fell on signatures. National signing day was like Christmas. Would the coach get the team or players you wanted, or would you have to wait until next year?

Courtesy: HuffPost

Then came the NIL settlement. At first, I fully supported it. After all, schools profited from all the hard work of the young men and women who are NCAA athletes, so why shouldn’t the athletes profit from it as well? On a more personal note, having NCAA football come back to my gaming console as a result of the settlement was a huge bonus. Now I could play the games, with the athletes’ real names (without spending hours poring over rosters that I had to print out and make tremendous changes to every season), a character on the screen that actually looked like the real players, and really get to know them.

I thought things were going to be great. Athletes would be treated fairly, schools would still make their millions, and the sport would get better.

But my honeymoon with NIL was short-lived. Little did I know that waiting in the wings was something sinister and nefarious. Something that threatens to destroy everything die-hard fans of college sports love — the transfer portal. Hiding in wait, since 2018, the NIL settlement allowed the portal to mutate and become something that I don’t think anyone expected.

In this age of instant gratification, the transfer portal, with the help of NIL, has taken college sports to a place it never expected to be.

Gone are the days of loving the backup(s), because you know next year will be their year to take center stage and become the next star of your program. Gone are the days of knowing that the team that takes the court, field, diamond, ice, or whatever playing surface they are on is playing for the name on the front of the jersey and the thousands of alumni that came before them. The schools that didn’t put names on the back of the jersey had it right. They knew that the athletes playing for them cared about the program, the university, and all those who had come before them.

Athletes are now highly influenced by parasites who make money off other people’s hard work and talent. Agents, who used to be banned from talking to college athletes as a threat to amateurism, are now among the loudest voices in their ears. Boosters, who are and were passionate fans and oftentimes previously worked in the gray areas of the rules, providing benefits that previously were punishable offenses, now openly bid on players.

Schools with the biggest boosters enjoy a financial advantage, offering these young men and women greater salaries than they may make as professionals, and certainly more than they could make with a “real job.” This leads players to chase bags of money unabashedly and without remorse. Athletes have become mercenaries, often playing solely for the highest bidder. Patience — gone.

Waiting behind an upperclassman for your chance to start; why would you do that when your rival or another school will play twice as much for you to start for them next year? Development in a system — gone.

Loyalty — overrated. Your word is worthless. The pursuit of the almighty dollar has overtaken “amateur” athletics and made them worse than any professional associations they ever aspired to be a part of.

Sports Business Journal

“And what about the parity it’s created,” some say as an argument for how this has made college sports better, or how it’s brought the traditional powers to their knees and allowed David to slay Goliath, that the “Davids” of the sports world are having their moment in the sun.

But it’s only a matter of time before a booster at a “Goliath” university or a way to make more money is found, and they steal that spotlight back. Mercenaries don’t care who they play for, so long as the price is right. So that same athlete that’s absolutely killing it for the small school, and helping them slay giants, is probably just waiting for a better offer from one of those same giants, and this time next season will be offering their services to their program.

Until this changes, or has at least some semblance of governing attached to it, I feel that I have to say goodbye. Leaving something you love is hard, but sometimes it’s best for both parties to part ways simply. As college teams literally remake their rosters every year and players chase bigger and bigger paydays, something is missing.

A play named for you, like “The Game of the Century” or “Kick Six” or “The Shot” in basketball in 1992 or 2016. Those moments live on for us forever, not because of the size of the paycheck the athletes received, but for the pride and joy they brought to the victors and the agony they brought to the defeated.

People, including the athletes, really cared about who won or lost. The games mattered more than the individuals playing them. That’s what is missing with NIL and the transfer portal now.

So for now, I think we should part ways. I don’t want to leave you, but you’ve changed. While change happens, sometimes it’s not always a good thing. If things change again, I’ll be back like a sucker that can’t take no for an answer.

But until then, I think I should watch from afar and protect myself from getting hurt. So I won’t say goodbye, but rather until we meet again.

Hopefully,

Greg LeHew