What’s Going On with College Football?

College Football isn’t better than the NFL, or any pro league for that matter. The professional football leagues are made up of the best of the best, all of the top college players from every year with more experience and development. The players are better, the coaches are better, hell, for the most part, even the stadiums are better. Yet CFB still managed to have a staggering amount of fans considering that disparity; while it’s still a high level of football, many people prefer it over pro leagues because of the history, traditions and community style game it was. While players on your hometown NFL team came and went, year in and year out, with rosters that could look completely different due to free agency, trades, and drafting, your college program always had continuities, with coaches staying with their teams for decades and players coming in and playing for 4 to 5 years before leaving to go enter the working world. But the NCAA is getting rid of these factors, and since the football is worse and the reasons why people watched are starting to disappear, many CFB fans will soon turn to pro leagues instead. NIL, the transfer portal and disappearing traditions are destroying the fabric of what college football was built on, and it couldn’t be worse for the sport. So how would I fix this? Well, first things first, people need to stop treating the transfer portal like free agency. There should be a huge limit on the maximum amount of money a player can receive to transfer schools (I’m talking 5 figures instead of 2-5 million dollars). While players bring in a huge amount of revenue for the schools, they receive hundreds of thousands of dollars in scholarship money in return. The old system used to be unsustainable as a program could be penalized for giving a sandwich to a hungry player, which is absolutely ridiculous. On the other hand, while they should be able to receiver gifts, a scholarship and even a little money to play, they shouldn’t be constraining these schools for millions of dollars. Additionally, the transfer portal has gotten out of control and needs to be put in check. People will leave their schools for the slightest inconvenience, or even worse, for monetary purposes. For college football to be able to have a future in this world, they need to control the growing problem and return (at least somewhat) to the kind of sport it was in the past, built around culture, tradition, and community.