The NIL and SEC decline argument

Back then if you wanted to make money, you had to get drafted.

If you wanted to get drafted, you had to develop and/or show out against elite competition to get noticed.

This was more likely to occur in leagues with superior on-the-field talent, television deals, and tie-ins.

Now if you're not quite good enough or if you don't want to put in the effort, you can just enter the portal and get paid, pretty much anywhere.

Some of these kids come from nothing and instead of changing their lives through hard work, development, education, and eventual generational wealth, they're selling their decently-athletic souls for a quick $100k and a dead end at some shithole.

Those guys could always get paid anywhere. But back then, most couldn't get PAID unless they chose carefully and really worked for it.

If left unchecked, the transfer portal will probably be the death of this sport.

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If left unchecked, the transfer portal will probably be the death of this sport.

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Sort of has.

Need guardrails. Max payouts, multi year contracts, etc.

I see Saban is reading my post now.

Here are the truths that everyone needs to understand:

1. Most of the best high school football talent comes from the South.

2. It would take a hell of a lot of money to convince most people from the South to move up north.

3. In pre-NIL days, schools paid players under the table. There is a limit to the amount of money that can be moved between parties without being declared before either the IRS gets involved for tax evasion or the FBI gets involved for fraud/laundering.

4. That limit was not high enough to allow northern schools to poach the best players from the South.

5. Now, with NIL, there are no more limits. Northern schools are able to pay whatever it takes to get Southern players to come up north.

1. The Blue Bloods became the best programs because they had success in the early modern era of football (post WWII). Almost all of them rose to prominence by the 1960s at the latest. Their success became a formula for a self-sustaining cycle.

2. Because they won the most, Blue Bloods generated the most attention and therefore the most revenue - they could sell more tickets, build bigger stadiums, hire better coaches, and attract more tv dollars (which were relatively small back then).

3. Blue Bloods typically invested in facilities and coaches decades ahead of their peers. Programs like Nebraska were ahead of their time with their state-of-the-art training facilities. This made it easier to attract higher caliber players in an era where players weren't paid (wink wink).

4. Blue Blood programs (aside from Nebraska and Notre Dame) are almost all located in high school talent hotbeds. Before NIL and the Portal, kids tended to stay closer to home. This has radically changed almost overnight.

5. Prior to the Portal and NIL, a top recruit's logical track was to commit to the best program and work his way up the depth chart over the years. So the Alabamas and Ohio States of the world often had better second or third-string players than the starters at smaller P5 programs. Now, those 5* sophomores who couldn't crack the rotation has financial and scouting incentives to transfer to a smaller program, start earlier in their career, and potentially get paid millions of dollars. This more than anything else has leveled the playing field. I used to watch Mizzou hang with the Nebraskas or Oklahomas of the world for the first half, then slowly collapse because they simply couldn't compete with the depth of their opponents.

But let's be real - top programs probably made more shady dealings in the pre-NIL era than the likes of Indiana football who probably couldn't generate enough interest in the program to justify such a risk.

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The level of shenanigans and paying within the SEC was at the institutional level, embraced by the member universities themselves. No other conference comes close.

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Where is the proof of this? The entire argument is non-falsifiable anti-SEC fodder. “They were only good cause they cheated” is loser talk.

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Before NIL you were successful & now you are not

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There are other explanations for this, though. Correlation is not causation.

We're in an adjustment period. Some programs/coaches are ahead of the curve because they have the means (IU, Texas Tech); some are behind and trying to catch up (Clemson). Some have been observing, learning, and are now responding/applying (Texas, Georgia).

The SEC isn't in decline, there's just more competition now from non-traditional sources.

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The truth is everyone paid players back then.

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Is it though?

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We have a true playoff now where teams have to win on the field against teams from other conferences.

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Were national title games in the BCS era and semifinals in the 4 team era not played against teams from other conferences? Do those games not count? Are all titles prior to 12 teams nulll and void? Were they played at all?

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Who knows how many SEC teams would have won in the past under a true playoff system.

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Mathematically, adding more teams decreases the chance of a particular team from a particular conference winning the title because every time a game is played there is a chance to lose. So, yes, it is mathematically less likely that an SEC team wins it all in all of those years. That is just basic math. But we didn’t have a 12-team playoff then.