Doyel: Let's enjoy this delicious CFP game while we have it, before college football eats itself
INDIANAPOLIS – College football is coming together Monday night in downtown Indianapolis. College football is falling apart around us.
Some of you will tell me to shut up, to stop shaking my fist at clouds, to celebrate Alabama playing Georgia for the 2022 College Football Playoff championship at Lucas Oil Stadium. Move over, old man! Players deserve to be paid, you’re saying. They deserve basic human rights such as switching schools without penalty, you’re saying.
You’re right, about most of it anyway. I’m not old, and that hurts. Baldness is genetics. But you nailed the rest.
If a college football coach can make upwards of $10 million a year, then hell yes his starting quarterback deserves some compensation, as does anyone on roster who can find a deal. And if college coaches can leave one school to work immediately for another, even as their former school has a shot at the College Football Playoff – good grief, Brian Kelly – then hell yes their players should have similar flexibility.
But stop seeing this issue as black-or-white. No, that’s not a racial commentary. It’s a commentary about extremes, about the world we live in today, where it’s All or it’s Nothing and there’s no room in the middle. You see it in politics, on social media, in sports. It’s everywhere, this need to say I’m Right because You’re Wrong, with no room for negotiation. It’s not getting smarter, this world. Just meaner, angrier.
The transfer portal was meant to give players freedom, and I don’t have a major problem with it, I really don’t, though this seems excessive:
The starting quarterback at UCF, Dillon Gabriel, entered the transfer portal and announced he was going to UCLA, then changed his mind a few weeks later and announced he’s going to Oklahoma after the starting quarterback at Oklahoma, Caleb Williams, entered the transfer portal shortly after the starting quarterback he replaced, Spencer Rattler, entered the transfer portal to go to South Carolina, where the starting quarterback, Jason Brown, entered the transfer portal to go to Virginia Tech, after the Hokies’ top two quarterbacks, Braxton Burmeister and Knox Kadum, entered the transfer portal. Don’t ask me where those two are going. Before starting this paragraph, I’d never heard of Braxton Burmeister or Knox Kadum. I’ve stopped looking.
The college football world is spinning fast, thanks to the transfer portal, and from the outside it looks confusing and even a little ridiculous, but whatever. Players have rights. They can go. We’ll adjust.
But what’s happening with Name, Image and Likeness?
Not sure we can adjust to this. Not without breaking apart college football as we know it.
Indy remains dream CFP host city
While it’s here, however long it lasts, can we please not take the 2022 CFP title game for granted? Maybe I’m speaking to me, and probably am, but there’s no way I’m feeling this way alone. This game has been barreling down on Indianapolis for years, and it feels so easy, like this is how it’s meant to be, so this is how it always will be.
Meant to be? Yes. Nobody else does big sporting events like Indianapolis. Downtown, hotels, stadium and arenas, volunteers – nobody has a more perfect set-up or follow-through than we do. You know this.
How it always will be? Indianapolis is the best possible setup for the NFL scouting combine, with so many hospitals and hotels and the stadium and convention center in a compact area. But the NFL is looking to move the combine next year, because money. This isn’t about convenience or even effectiveness. The NFL will sacrifice some of that for just a little more money.
We’ll have other events, not to worry. We do things that are big, and without sacrificing their enormousness we make them feel small. And small is good. Small is cozy, comforting, welcoming. It’s the walk from the J.W. Marriott to St. Elmo Steak House, or from the new Hyatt across from Gainbridge Fieldhouse to Steak ‘n Shake, or from the Hilton on Meridian to Lucas Oil Stadium. It’s the street signs we swap out for big events, the way we close Georgia Street to throw a block party.
It’s the sweet little light display in front of the Fallen Firefighters Memorial Plaza on Mass Ave.
Have you seen that? It’s two square light grids, each maybe 15 feet-by-15 feet, shaped into a scoreboard with down-and-distance, the quarter, the time left. It’s not an updating decoration but a fixed one, like Christmas lights. Among other things, it lists the score like so:
Home Away
20 22
Get it?
More: Doyel: When downtown Indy became a fiery hellscape, heroes rushed inside
The other night, though, winds were blowing through Mass Ave, and the light grids were blown over. It’s two simple structures, held in place simply – with sandbags weighing down the bottom legs – and I walked over to prop them back up. Picked up one of the two grids, set it upright, and put the sandbags back in place.
Picked up the other grid, and that’s when I saw it: The wind hadn’t merely blown over the square of lights – it had snapped the metal structure in half, down there at the bottom. Fixable, perhaps, but beyond my comprehension. Glumly I left, leaving it broken.
There’s a metaphor in there somewhere.
Eastern Michigan alum Charlie Batch offers QB $1M to transfer to EMU
An Eastern Michigan alumnus with a lot of money, former NFL quarterback Charlie Batch, has offered the previously mentioned Caleb Williams a $1 million NIL deal to transfer to Eastern Michigan. That’s legal, according to NCAA rules, near as I can tell.
When the NCAA announced its NIL change, opening up the free market for players, we knew this would happen. Well, some of us did. In the black-or-white world too many find easier to navigate, NIL was never going to be a threat to college sports. Here’s a burger endorsement for Trayce Jackson-Davis. There’s an autograph session for Michael Penix Jr. Those guys are already on campus. It’s pocket money. What’s the harm?
Right.
More Doyel on NIL:
October 2019: NCAA chaos coming after California creates NIL law
April 2020: NCAA softens stance, and here comes the wild wild west
July 2021: NCAA, Indiana General Assembly ignore coming NIL craziness
Now we have a rich booster publicly offering a player $1 million to switch schools, and soon the offers will be made under the table, before a player even thinks about entering the transfer portal. You can see that coming. Where does it go from here? Don’t know. But know this: It’ll go somewhere.
At Texas, rich boosters are enticing high school kids to Hook ‘Em by pledging $10 million in seed money – consider it an endowment – into something they’ve called the Clark Field Collective. NIL was never supposed to be used as a recruiting tool, but here we are. If someone in Texas could find a way to effectively overturn Roe v. Wade, as someone in Texas did, well by golly they were going to find a way around NCAA recruiting rules.
That's Texas. What will be Texas A&M's counter proposal? We’ll see what’s what, but you know Alabama and LSU and Ohio State boosters are about to get serious. Texas and former EMU quarterback Charlie Batch have shown the way toward chaos, which is where this was always going to go. Seems like we’re getting there ahead of schedule, but that’s the world for you: Why ruin something tomorrow that you can ruin today?
It’s up to the NCAA to make sense of Batch’s $1 million indecent proposal and the Clark Field Collective’s $10 million slush fund, but the NCAA is terrified. The folks at 700 W. Washington St. have big salaries and a beautiful view of the White River, with just one way to keep them: Don’t rock the boat. The biggest college football schools have been itching to break away from the NCAA for years, wanting all of the college football postseason revenue for themselves. If that means pocketing much of that $11 billion March Madness TV contract, destroying the NCAA Tournament along the way, well, things happen.
The NCAA is powerless to stop college football from ruining itself, is my point, and may not have the stomach to try.
College football is fine, today. You understand that distinction, right? Today, with Alabama and Georgia preparing to play for the 2022 national championship, with the eyes of the world on Downtown Indy – the world will love what it sees – college football seems better than ever.
But the winds are blowing. College football is starting to shake. And there’s not enough sand in those bags.
Find IndyStar columnist Gregg Doyel on Twitter at @GreggDoyelStar or at www.facebook.com/greggdoyelstar.
This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: College Football Playoff: Watch Alabama-Georgia in CFP before downfall
