quote:
It’s a silly comparison. One is a contracted job with a penalty for early termination and the other is a scholarship. If you want to leave, that’s fine, but there has to be some sort of penalty. Sitting out a year was fair enough. This endless pursuit of fairness, whether it’s with transfer/NIL or the playoffs is killing the sport.

Reality is the sport has devolved into a situation where both the coaches and the players view their relationship with the schools as “open” and something that is only a short term hookup before they move on to something else equally short term chasing money or pro opportunities.

The fans are basically children of a broken home at this point being scolded that they need to follow the rules (show up to games, pretend this is still amateur athletics and pay more money, etc) when no one else in the equation is doing so.

As the kids say “FAFO”.

The coaches, schools, networks and players are “FA”. I highly suspect in the next decade or so they’re going to “FO”.

Everyone involved decided to treat this as a big business to be run by MBAs and that the best option was to chase short term profits. That’s fine, but they can’t be surprised when the fans start treating them as a product to be evaluated objectively and that if they find it wanting they can opt out of buying.

I suspect with the rose colored glasses and nostalgia stripped away its a pretty easy choice for many people and that the ADs and presidents end up wishing they’d never gone full end stage capitalism with their “product”.