College Football on fire!

Now that the National Championship has been played and the Georgia Bulldogs have won, what is next to talk about? The answer is another question, what is wrong with college football? The answer to that is not so simple. There are numerous issues with the sport right now that are becoming more and more evident.

First, the transfer portal. Gone are the days where a recruit will finish with the school that they chose to play for in the beginning. I understand that hearts and minds can change, but the portal has become a free for all and is out of control. Starting quarterbacks for teams that were bowl bound this year are transferring and other prominent names are going as well. This can also be due to the coaching madness that we have had thus far. There needs to be some sort of penalty or eligibility parameter in place to keep this from happening. The number of transfer portal players this year is astronomical.

Secondly, the NIL is going to kill the game. For MAJOR instance is essentially buying the #1 overall recruiting class by Texas A&M. 30 million in funds to student athletes to basically come to their college to play football. Charlie Batch and his company trying to get a high-ranking recruit to go to Central Michigan by hanging a million dollars in their face. In order to fix this there should be a cap on what each player is allowed to claim on NIL dollars. This needs to be across the board no matter the position or player. Possibly even pay the players out of the college at this point. Again, same no matter who it is. Even better, perhaps a cross of the two.

Main point here is that these two issues are interlocking with each other. One plays into the other and vice versa. If this continues down the path that is going, who knows where it is going to end. Amateurism is no longer associated with College Football. So many bad things can come from portal and the NIL with the current ways they are being governed. Something has to be changed or we are going to lose the beauty of the game. Not lost upon me is the season that we experienced that had upsets every week and fantastic games.

That being said, the possible third thing that is hurting the game right now is the playoff and the lack of expansion. There needs to be 8 or 12 teams in the playoff. The outcome would be entertaining and make more possibilities for a different team to be at the top of the mountain. This year certainly shows why expansion needs to happen. Rivalries produce great games and sometimes also do not have the BEST team winning. The last week of the season and the championship games offer us insight sure, but sometimes they are not the best teams in the conferences. For example, the Big 10 championship game was a week before the actual championship game was played. Ohio State and Michigan were the best two teams in the conference this year by a long shot. Yet, Iowa was in because of the East and West division setup. They should all use the Big 12 model; the best two teams are in the Championship game. This year's games between Oklahoma State and Baylor were both fantastic games. Make it a uniformed way to make it to the championship game for every conference. This will help to take away the possibility of having the wrong teams representing their conferences in the college football playoff.

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Adam Krueger