If we're handing out do-overs now, I have a few requests.
I'd like another crack at a few college exams. There are some purchases I'd like refunded years after the fact. Give me another shot at a couple of failed relationships, and while we're at it, I'd like to go back and make a few different picks in last year's NCAA Tournament bracket.
Unfortunately, that's not how life works. Apparently, it's increasingly how college sports work. A wave of legal challenges to the NCAA's eligibility rules has opened the door for athletes who thought their college careers were over to seek another season. The governing body has essentially handed over the flux capacitor, and players are lining up to hit that 88 mph target.
It's the latest example of college sports removing a guardrail for a seemingly defensible reason. Collectively, the changes to eligibility, transfers and player compensation have resulted in something nobody would have called college athletics 10 years ago.
College sports already looks a lot like professional sports
For decades, college sports ran under the thinly veiled guise of "amateur athletics", when what we really had was a collective of unpaid developmental league players. Everyone was getting fat with money ... except the players.
That all changed with the dawn of those two mysteriously named entities, the "Transfer Portal" and "NIL" — both long overdue ideas that were introduced with the best of intentions. Unfortunately, they were also introduced unchecked and unregulated.
One day, players were locked into whatever school they initially chose and had to enter a huge rock fight for the right to transfer; the next day, they were free to come and go through the portal like someone picking through a box of chocolates, biting each one until they found what they wanted.
One day, players made no money and weren't even allowed to have part-time jobs or sell their own autographs; the next day, they were free to make millions under the facade of "Name, Image and Likeness" compensation, with dollar figures that, at times, surpassed even what many NFL or NBA rookies would make.
But the fault here doesn't lie with the players. They took what they were given, and who can blame them? The fault lies — mostly — with the keepers of the sport.
Players didn't create billion-dollar television contracts. They didn't destroy regional conferences. They didn't cast aside traditional rivalries. They didn't decide coaches should make eight figures and have the ability to duck out of a legal contract whenever they felt a better opportunity was in front of them. They didn't create the facilities arms race.
All of that — every single bit of it— falls squarely on the weak chins of the NCAA, the conferences and the schools. And the language these institutions of higher learning incorporate is even more based in absurdity than some of their draconian rules.
Let’s stop pretending and call college sports what it is
Don't call it NIL when compensation isn't meaningfully tied to traditional endorsement activity. Just call it player compensation. When elite players can command enormous amounts of money based primarily on their athletic value, pretending this remains fundamentally different from professional compensation becomes progressively difficult.
Don't call it the transfer portal when it functions like free agency. Just call it free agency. When players are free to sign with the highest bidder, the portal no longer functions as a way for players to make decisions that could better their situation, it's simply a free-agent roster, and college roster construction has taken on professional-sports characteristics.
Don't call them eligibility "rules" if litigation can continually rewrite them. The lack of unions and collective bargaining agreements means that the NCAA, conference, and school policies need to be as bulletproof against litigation as possible, not just cheesecloth that any first-year law student could shred with little effort.
Don't try to pretend these are still our conferences. Geography, rivalries, and regional identity once mattered. The developing megaconferences are gradually making the word "conference" feel antiquated. When schools that are thousands of miles apart belong to the same league because television dollars demand it, we're building something closer to professional leagues.
And the major sports? College football and basketball? We're getting awfully close to just calling it semi-pro football, and college basketball looks almost ready to merge with the NBA G League. But as much as those in power created an untenable situation, the players are now making things even worse in one aspect.
Eligibility do-overs are the next line to cross
Imagine finding out your college GPA wasn't what you wanted, so you petition to erase three semesters and enroll again. Maybe you took a job after graduation, but didn't like how your career turned out. No problem. Apparently, we're doing eligibility do-overs now.
Most of us don't get to rewrite yesterday because we don't like where today took us. Rules change, laws change, situations change, and we are all simply asked to sing along with Toby Keith: "I wish I didn't know now what I didn't know then, I wish I could start this whole thing over again."
College sports more and more ignores that narrative. Rules that once established a finite college career now seem like opening positions in a contract negotiation. If only we could all follow their lead.
Made a terrible investment in 2019? Reset it.
Passed on buying a house before prices exploded? Eligibility restored.
Blew your fantasy football draft? Petition for another four rounds.
Took the wrong job? Portal opens Monday.
Married the wrong person? Okay, maybe society already invented that transfer portal.
The point is, life works because choices have consequences. Sports work because rules create boundaries. College athletics seems determined to make both choices and boundaries negotiable. What everyone seems unable to realize is that changing a bad rule going forward is not the same thing as retroactively pretending the old rule never existed.
All of these changes are pushing college sports in the same direction
All of these things aren't separate controversies. The portal, NIL money, eligibility challenges, conference realignment — they're all moving toward the same destination.
College athletics isn't standing at a crossroads anymore. It's caught in a swirling vortex, and every turn, every spin, has pulled it closer to the same inevitable black hole: semi-professional sports. For decades, everyone not wearing a uniform who surrounded college athletes both professionalized and profited, while at the same time insisting that the athlete remain an amateur.
Administrators made professional salaries. Coaches made professional salaries. Television networks paid professional-sports money. Facilities became NFL and NBA-caliber. Recruiting became a massive, money-driven industry. Eventually the players said: What about us?
That's reasonable. It's hard to argue that they were cut out for far too long. But taking the position that a rule change or ruling should automatically change your life decisions reeks of a lack of accountability. There has to be balance.
The suits are to blame for how we got here, but players are taking advantage of eligibility changes. If you want to be treated as a paid professional, you also have to live with your decisions.
So one by one, the barriers on money, on transferring, and on eligibility have been dismantled in a shambolic fashion. The problem is that once that final barrier disappeared, there wasn't much amateurism left holding the entire structure together.
Quicker than a Timmy Chang interception, the entire system was in ruins, and nobody wanted to be accountable. We were left staring into that black hole.
The old version of college sports isn’t coming back
But the black hole we're staring into isn't necessarily the death of college sports. It's the death of the version we know and cling to. On the other side could be collective bargaining, contracts, salary structures, defined free-agency periods, enforceable eligibility rules, and two or three enormous football and basketball leagues.
It might even be more stable than what exists today, but it won't be amateur college athletics. It won't be what fans love, and that may not matter at all.
And maybe the most ridiculous thing left about college sports isn't what it has become. It's how desperately everyone keeps pretending it hasn't become it yet. If you look closely, the college sports GPS probably says, "Arrived at destination."
Add us as a preferred source on Google