ESPN reports on football quarterbacks changing colleges based on football opportunity:
This is the latest example of college football free agency. It’s also the latest example of what big-time college football is all about: football, not college.
“Free agency’s a little bit of the recruiting puzzle in college football now, whether we want to believe it or not,” said Terry Bowden, who has coached at every level of college football and is currently head coach at University of Akron. “The top 30 quarterbacks in the country always go to the same few schools every year. When one is passed by another one, he’s looking to transfer so he can play somewhere else.
(For those are wondering but are too lazy to read the story, there’s a rule that states a graduate with football eligibility still available may transfer without sitting out a year.)
I find the story arc interesting: from being a sport which students engaged in as a student past-time, to a sport which attracted the regulatory notice of the President (Theodore Roosevelt), to the sport that has become more important than the schools to which it’s attached, to an ongoing attempt to unionize the student-players:
What, I asked Kain Colter, to make of this glorious bacchanal?
We sit in his living room on a high plains ridge outside Boulder. A lean, athletic 22-year-old man, he has the Cowboys-Packers game on the television and workout equipment around him. He made the Vikings’ practice squad this season and hopes to join the team next season.
He also organized a players union movement at Northwestern, where he played quarterback for four years.
“I mean, as a fan, it’s great fun, I love the college game,” he said of college bowl madness. “But the incredible money underlines that we are truly the engines of a multibillion-dollar industry.
“Honestly, every guy in every college locker room in the nation talks about this.”
Where there’s money, those generating the value will look to maximize their take of it, and given the oodles of cash, the article cited at the beginning of this post is just another step on this path, as I foresee continued changes to the college game’s background – unless the concussion problem sinks it into the depths.
Really, justice demands it.
Although I’d prefer to see college football replaced with a minor league football setup. It’d be more honest.
