Game thread vs UTEP Miners

In an age of excess and greed, why should we expect anything less than a bad bill that doesn’t actually curtail anything but give more power to the administrative level?
It will have some effect but it isn’t the panacea they will claim it to be. Of course, it will begin the real separation of schools willing to submit to these new rules, and those that are more apt to decide to be a true semi-pro league and drop the university ties.
It seems like it has been a 15 year project to break down most of the traditional elements of college football, in order to make way for a new version of semi-pro football.
ESPN is now showing the CFP and Superbowl icons side by side on their commercials, because ESPN now owns the rights to both events. That isn’t an accident, and I think they are trying to draw parallels for the fans to begin seeing them as one entity of professional football.
I think the goal was to dismantle conferences, eliminate the PAC12, disrupt traditions like the Rose Bowl or yearly rivalry games, absorb major brands into the larger population base conferences and then dismantle amatuerism, disrupt the 4 year athlete model, make fans less likely to follow only their school team and try to create more interest in the big brands as a forerunner to a new 32 team league of semi-pro “franchises” with built-in fanbases and name recognition. They have almost done it.

The argument was that NIL and the transfer portal give players a lot of flexibility, but it has obvious consequences like small school rosters are never settled, players don’t lean into working through adversity, players will tend to chase money while they can, fans of smaller schools may tend to care less since it is a revolving door roster, players won’t be known as a 4 year starter at his school any longer, coaches last about 2 years if things go south.

All of these consequences invite a solution through a ruling body. Who is to gain from any type of legislation? Do we actually believe legislation can be a fix-all for every school, or that there aren’t back-door conversations on behalf of those blue blood brands as well as ESPN?
I think the fix is in already and this will bring the death blow to what we knew as amateur collegiate sports. We will probably see a reigning in of the NIL, transfer, and spending, but the damage has already been done. In response, some of the big brands are going to push against it, demand some form of allowance to proceed on their own as unaffiliated franchises, form their own super league, along with a new CFP format that expands to 16 but only the brands from this new group of independent franchises will be allowed to participate, and guess who will have all of the broadcast rights to it?

Perhaps it could be the best thing to finally get the “haves” out of the system and allow the other 90 schools to compete on more settled footing in the traditional sense of what used to be, with regional conferences, NIL to some degree, transfer portal in a modified structure and players actually considering to stay at their school for a 4 year span.

I am Don Quixote fighting dragons that will not yield. The machinery of media, finances, and athletics will not get better. I am wistful for a past that will not reappear to me. It was probably always flawed as well, but it seemed like a better illusion than the plain faced greed we see at every turn right now from all participants involved in college sports.

Oh well, Go Beavs! If you can’t stop them, you may as well try to get a slice of the pie while you can. I hope the Beavs can make a real run at the CFP even if it only available to them this year, and even if they get boat-raced by one of those blue bloods. Although I think the Beavs could put up a good showing.