Josh Pate talks about how college football will be unrecognizable in 5-10 years

Overly dramatic. He needs a tampon

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it will become a semi pro football league detached from the university

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I have had this conclusion several times since NIL started.
The only thing I can think of to save the “college” aspect of COLLEGE football:

The college scholarship program needs to change.
Scholarship has 12 year window. You don’t have to be enrolled in classes if you are playing a sport. If you are in college to play a sport that you can earn a living playing, then that is all your focus, not classes. Say after 5 years from initially enrolling in college your respective sport doesn’t pan out professionally- you’d still have 7 years to use that college scholarship to earn your degree.

OR

Schools need to stop labeling sports as extracurricular activities, and just make them degree programs in and of themselves. Instead of saying I played football in college say, “I majored in football in college. Didn’t play professionally, but hey, I have that degree!”

It needs to detach. No tax money needs to go to building palaces for football recruits. Students working their asses off for ridiculous tuitions shouldn't have to watch athletes suck down millions in NIL money and still get full rides plus food, gym, trainers and everything else free that the university makes the general student body pay for.

Let these kids go pro right out of school. Let them live on sponsorship money in the "developmental" (formerly college) league. Much of what was unique about college football has already been dead on most campuses for two decades or more, anyway.

Faster pace for basketball.

I miss watching 3-4 year players in basketball.

With the transfer portal and NIL, College Football has migrated to an NFL Free Agent format. For better or worse, that's the world we live in. The NCAA has traveled too far down this path to turn around, in my opinion.

quote:

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There is no turning back…

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Disagree

College football has always been unrecognizable from what it was before. It’s arguably the most constantly evolving sport consumed in North America.

Whether it’s integration (60s-70s), tv rights (80s-90s), west coast offense/air raid offense (90s-2000s), million dollar coaching contracts (2000-2010s), facilities arms race (1990s-present), SEC Network (2010s), Conference Championship games (1990s), conference expansion/realignment (pick a decade), streaming services (2010s-present), bowl system (70s-90s), BCS (90s-2010s), CFP (2010s-present)…

I didn’t even break down all the rules changes including introduction of the forward pass, targeting, etc

It's not entirely clear what College Football will look like in 5-10 years, but it will have definitely changed and could become something I will lose interest in because of the "free agent" component that comes with the transfer portal among others issues I see, but we shall see.

It’s going to be funny when teams that never won a championship like TExas A&M finally win. No one will care because they couldn’t do it the right way for 60 plus years.

A lot of people aren’t focused on the most important part of Pate’s point here.

The biggest issue facing CFB isn’t NIL or the transfer portal, but rather a lack of leadership in determining how all of this will be legislated. The NCAA has flat quit, and they were never good when they still had hands on the wheel.

There has to be an oversight committee that can set some rules in place, otherwise you will end up with the two-tiered system that he talked about. NIL isn’t the devil for CFB right now. Lack of uniform regulation, or really any regulation at all is. CFB is, for all intents and purposes, operating separately from the NCAA as we speak, but there isn’t a replacement yet.

The structure of the sport will fall apart if that doesn’t get fixed and that will eventually make the sport unrecognizable and drive people away way faster than NIL or the transfer portal.