To frame the question, take a look at this name soup and scratch your head and wonder…what the hell?
Probst & Pruitt could be a law firm for football shenanigans, but it’s a reality of modern “forgive, forget, and forge ahead”.
Georgia’s most recent QB commit, Colton Nussmeier, is currently unenrolled for his senior season of high school football in Texas because of transfer rules, so something leads me to believe that he’ll be moving to a Georgia high school near you sometime very soon, or he’ll be playing little league football a la Arch Manning at some private academy…or maybe he’ll land at IMG.
It’s hard to ignore what the portal and NIL has done to the college game, but it’s trickling into high school athletics now, too. While transferring to better programs has been a thing for quite some time, we’re seeing the same with coaching changes that are similar to some of the college coaching drama, too.
Dylan Raiola is on his fifth team in six years, hopping from Texas to Arizona to Georgia to Nebraska, and now, Oregon. While that might make for a lovely family vacation, it’s obvious that the lack of commitment to a program isn’t something that is born in college, but begins earlier in an athlete’s career and collective minds prior to the NIL and Portal nonsense that defines the college game today.
From Friday Night Lights to AGTG posts announcing transfers, it permeates the game at all levels today.
So question for the Refugees…is the sport fundamentally ruined from top to bottom now? Or has a fundamental flaw been made louder given the money and media that accentuates it today?
Discuss.
Raiola went to at least 4 separate high schools as well, I believe. College no surprise
Old age has made it difficult for us to make the home games, but my tailgate group always goes to a couple of away games each year. The rest of the games we take turns hosting watch parties. That is about the only tradition left for me. I hope the younger Dawg fans have as much fun as we used to in Sanford. I hope UGA never reaches mercenary status like many teams have done.
I hope we don’t reach those depths, but I’ve given up the charade that we’re actually any different than most other teams out there. If the money is enough, we’d play on a Tuesday afternoon in Dubai.
The exemptions to the 1-time transfer ruined the sport. When the NCAA would grant some exemptions and reject others with similar fact patterns, it made it easy for attorneys to get injunctions and forced the NCAA’s hand. There are only 2 ways to fix this:
1) Allow colleges to enter into multi-year scholarship agreements in addition to multi-year NIL agreements with student-athletes and/or …
2) Hit the reset button on the transfer eligibility rule with a “no exceptions” clause for subsequent transfers before graduation.
Until the transfer rules are fixed, nothing matters.
Once the genie gets out of the bottle it’s impossible to get it back in. The colleges have tried for years to keep the players through NCAA rules but now the rules are gone and the NCAA is just another useless bureaucracy. Declare the players are employees and be done with the kabuki theater.
The players don’t want to be employees, and the universities don’t want it either. They have not clamored (or had their reps clamor) for union collective bargaining. They want the PGA Tour independent contractor model without the membership agreement.
Really? Did you survey all of them? I doubt any of them prefer a union or the independent contractor route. They are following what their teams of advisors (agents, attorneys, runners, AAU coaches, hangers on) feel like they can make the most $$$ on. These are teenagers whose executive functioning processing ability is still developing who most likely do not understand the pros and cons of collective bargaining, independent contracting models, taxes, healthcare etc.
FWIW … this is one day ago. https://www.espn.com/college-football/story/_/id/49441655/stanford-football-players-join-push-collective-bargaining
Some of the polls I’ve seen in the past seem to indicate there is not a lot of momentum for organization and collective bargaining. The tide may be turning, but I’ll believe it when it happens.
I think it is at the precipice. Don’t really believe anybody is willing to even really try at this point. Just call it what it is, minor league football. Us older fans will just have to see it for what it is, Really, really sad!!😢😢😢
I could see constantly transferring from Juco to FCS to SEC but lateral every year? I guess I was never good enough to move with out progression. The dudes I looked up to preached Crawl, Walk, Run -with a lot of experiments on if you could drown in sweat in between, lol. My modest accomplishments in the vapor trail of the great must warp my perspective.
Never understood the angst over transferring. Its a free country ain’t it? I saw a clip in which Todd Gurley named the three schools he’d go to if he had to do it over again in this era. Why should a kid be denied that opportunity? Its his life. It ain’t yours.
Dylan Raiola ain’t my problem. I didn’t care then. I don’t care now. I won’t care later. The only thing I didn’t appreciate was Herbie sticking his sewer in it. He’s a fucking asshole. Always has been.
Unregulated pay for play is a problem. Child talent trafficking seems like a greater evil than freedom of movement to me.
The silver lining in all of this is that the brand of successful football is more and more becoming LOS football. A qb in shotgun chucking it around to 4 speed demons isn’t an effective strategy these days. That’s a good thing.
Finally, I’m glad we’re going through the transition with Kirby rather than a bunch of incompetents. I could see this era being quite frustrating if your program’s leadership was suboptimal.
My liver thanked me the day I realized I wasn’t supposed to let my emotions be so affected by the whims of 17 year olds on signing day and 20 year olds on Saturdays.
My nervous system was thankful when Ringo caught that ball in Indy. After that, and the following 15-0 campaign to add a stamp of validation, I’m good from here on out. 1981 to 2020 was corrosive to my entire well-being, physical and mental.
As the kids say–Heard
The drip, drip, drip of college athletics changing from a spectator sport and extra-curricular activity for the student athlete to a business is now a rushing torrent. It’s over as it once was and the business aspect will have to now compete for my money and attention just like all the other professional business sports. So yeah, I’ll watch and love my brand (UGA) but my connection to the kids is gone for good. They aren’t the students who sat in class with me back in the day. And if the product on the field becomes sub-par then don’t expect me to spend time or money on it.
Come on! It was always about the name on the back of the jersey! Wasn’t it?
The administrators were assholes for letting it get so exploitative, but the pay for play folks were even more shortsighted imho.
Eventually it will be a “superconference” with a salary cap/structure and a draft. Full nfl-lite.
Its sad that its come to this but greedy assholes do what greedy assholes do.
You can’t stop what’s coming. It ain’t all about you. That’s vanity.
I would appreciate the sport losing sufficient popularity so that getting into these games didn’t break the bank…
The fastest way to lose popularity and have ticket prices go down will be for Kirby to retire, we hire Ray Goff’s son, and have a string of 3-win seasons.
Other than the Fall Saturdays, most everything about modern college football sucks. And they are busy making that worse as well. It is just a never-ending money chase at this point.
Is the sport fundamentally ruined? Probably not – people are still watching, even geezers like me. Taking Raiola as an example (since you brought him up) I ask: Has he helped himself going to 5 teams in 6 years? I’d say no apart from the instant cash. Has he really helped any team that he has been on? Also no. My point is that everyone has to learn the new system. I think CKS believes that kids that want a good chance to go pro also want to be coached so that they will be ready to pro when the time comes. Long term I think he is right.
Ruined no on the road to ruin yeah.
High school kids choosing to be held back a year to get bigger and stronger to earn more money. Agents for middle schoolers yeah they should get paid. Just who’s looking out for those that don’t strike it rich.
It’s more money more money till the fans go the NASCAR route and stop watching or buying tickets.