Name, image and likeness and the transfer portal have killed the college football so many of us reveled in for decades. Tennessee quarterback Nico Iamaleava, after signing an eight million dollar over four years NIL contract, decided to hold out by not reporting for spring practice. While he was supposed to make $2.4 million for this season but he wants more. Thankfully, Tennessee said no thanks, you aren’t that good and has moved one. Iamaleava will enter the transfer portal but I doubt he’s going to find anywhere that will pay him the four million a year he wants. Why? He just isn’t that good.
But let’s look at another aspect of the NIL system. Why, if a player is making a million dollars a year or more, do they still get free tuition, room and board and tutoring? If they are professional players they shouldn’t be on scholarships, they should be paying to play. NIL and the transfer portal have driven some good people like Nick Sabin out of the sport and set up a system where 18-21 year olds get to act like 30 year old professionals. The problem is all these kids have a crowd of people telling the what they should do. I have no doubt that Iamaleava didn’t decide to hold out for more money by his nineteen year old self. Somebody said, “Nico you can get more money from the school. Tell them you aren’t going to practice until they give you more money.” So he holds out even though he had already signed a contract.
The Curt Flood case changed baseball and to my mind not for the better. You remember Curt is the person who sued and won and Free Agency resulted, so you never know who you favorite players are going to be with season to season. We lost the team identity to a collection of players that changes year to year. The same thing happens with the transfer portal. We griped for years that the team owners with the most money won the most world series championships. Then they finally put a salary cap in the game but even now you don’t know who your favorite player is going to be with next year. I’m sure the players love it because there’s millions of dollars in a game I would play for free. Heck, I’d pay them to let me play.
I played football at a school where there were no athletic scholarships. In those days it was just small college football but now they call it Division III. We played football because we liked to play football. The majority of those playing even Division I football won’t go on to the NFL but the college game is now based on those who will. There is a significant dichotomy between your second string right tackle and the five star right tackle making a million dollars a year. What does the second string tackle make?
Football is a team sport, if people don’t block, runners can’t score and passers can’t throw but when you have QBs and wide receivers being paid millions of dollars a year what does it do to team spirit in the locker room? When you arrive to practice in a beat up used car how do you feel about blocking for a guy who arrives in a Ferrari? How do million dollar players feel about playing through pain or acting as a decoy while someone else gets the ball? How do you relate with the three star recruit who needs the scholarship to get an undergraduate degree to go on in the world and make $80,000 a year working in middle management?
Somebody, somewhere has got to bring some common sense and practicality back into sports in general and college sports in particular. I think having to sit out a year if you transferred was a good rule. Now if the coach yells at you and you’re any good at your position you just transfer. You don’t learn any life lessons from cut and run tactics and we were always told that football was a metaphor for life.
But there is one hope, a collection of prima donnas is not a team and in football teams win, not individuals.