It’s time for the National College Athletic Association (NCAA) to give up its charade of being a regulatory arm for college football.
When one thinks of college football, one generally thinks of four-year institutions of higher learning where football players attend for four years and graduate, moving on into the job force. One does not, generally speaking, think of so-called four-year institutions where there are a proliferation of what are blithely called “graduate seniors” – players who, most likely at the urging of the football coaches acting at the behest of alumni and boosters, extend their college careers so they may continue playing football.
A perfect, though by no means the only, example is Notre Dame, where there are TWENTY-FIVE graduate “seniors”, including a 30-year-old (!) kicker named Erin Goins, who served seven years in the United States Army before coming to the team.
Thirty years old and playing “college” football against true college students – you know the ones; they’re between 18 and 22, players who range from fresh out of high school to three-year college veterans? We are second to none in appreciation for Mr. Goins’ service; however, we are among the first to decry his playing “college” football. He is, quite frankly, too old. There is absolutely no excuse for this travesty, and the NCAA is directly to blame for it.
The NCAA is also to blame for utterly obliterating the concept of amateurism in college football by creating the NIL> debacle. In case one doesn’t know, “NIL” stands for Name, Image, and Likeness, wherein college athletes are allowed to receive compensation (that’s spelled “M-O-N-E-Y”) because of their talent – you know, the way NFL players are paid for their talents?. That, in our mind, means (regardless of how the NCAA magically considers paid athletes to be amateurs) that these players are, in fact, professionals [professional – “following an occupation…for gain:…” <i>(https://www.dictionary.com/browse/professional)] – and there is absolutely no place in college football for professionals.
Then there are changes to the rules for college football, about many of which we have negative opinions; we will, then, focus on one rule that came into being for the 2024-25 season: the two-minute time out before the end of the second and fourth quarters. The NFL calls this the ‘two-minute warning”. Aside from allowing teams what is, essentially, a fourth time out per half, the rule affects the momentum of the game, no matter how one looks at it. We don’t care that it has the same effect in the NFL; we are not discussing the NFL and its many frailties.
It appears to us that the NCAA is doing everything in its power to make college football a minor league for the NFL. We say, as that seems to be the case, that it is time for the NCAA to stop pretending and create two tiers of college football: Division I, for true colleges where student-athletes of traditional college age play football while undergraduates – no NIL, no transfer portal, no “gradate seniors”, no middle-aged men; the other, Division NML, as the apparently desired NFL minor league, where graduate seniors and 30-year-old kickers can play while aspiring to their dreams of playing true (that is, not NIL) professional football.
What say you, NCAA? Are you truly the arbiters of college football, or are you merely the shills for rich and powerful alumni of big colleges who place more emphasis on winning at all costs rather than on the true sportsmanship of amateur collegiate football?
The coin is in the air, NCAA; call it.