The future of college football

I’m a huge college football fan and have been ever since I stepped foot on campus at the University of Washington. Growing up in the Bay Area, there was always the Cal vs Stanford rivalry but college football was never that big. Going to a school like UW that cared so much for their sports teams was an amazing experience and I fell in love with everything college football.

There’s been major news in the college football world the last few weeks.

The Supreme Court ruled that the NCAA can no longer prevent college athletes from getting paid for their likeness. This has been an ongoing debate for years. Colleges, leagues and others have been profiting off college athletes for a long time and none of that money has gone back to the athletes themselves.

While I do believe that athletes should get paid, I unfortunately see this as the beginning of the end for college football. We are now in a world where you can buy athletes legally and the highest bidder will win. For better or worse, this will shift the sport into a world where the universities that have the most money and care the most about football will win. This typically happens in the midwest and the south.

I believe that college football will likely shift to a much more regional sport in which the best athletes will start flocking to the biggest schools in the south and midwest where they just care more about football. West coast teams will not be able to contend. This has been the trend over the last ten years and it will only get worse from here.

We have seen the first ripple effects of this as Texas and Oklahoma have been rumored to be making a bolt for the SEC, leaving behind the Big 12. I suspect that this will be the first domino in conference realignment meaning that more changes will be coming.

The tradition and pageantry of college football unfortunately is likely all but over. Teams will need to realign to focus on maximizing as much money as possible in order to contend. As a major fan of a west coast team, I’m not looking forward to the future of the sport.