ATLANTA (WDRB) -- College football coaches are scared and they admit it. They are losing control.
If a player wants to transfer, he can transfer. If a recruit can get more money from another school, he's probably going to choose another school.
They don't know what their roster is going to look like next season. They don't know what their conference is going to look like or the entire sport for that matter.
At SEC Football Media Days on Thursday, Texas A&M head coach Jimbo Fisher said it well: "What does human nature make you scared of? The unknown. We have so much unknown. That's why we're all on the edge and panicked about what's going on."
But think about this. All players have acquired in the past two years is what coaches have had forever. Coaches could leave at the drop of a hat for a better offer, leaving a player's entire college career and future in question.
Coaches have always been free to go to the highest bidder, to change addresses (and accents) at will. What's going around is coming around.
But that doesn't mean there isn't kicking and screaming. Red flags are flying like confetti.
On Wednesday, Georgia head coach Kirby Smart said that some schools (or the money behind them) are writing checks they won't be able to keep on cashing.
"I don't think what's going on in college football right now at some places is sustainable," he said. "Meaning, can you do that year-in and year-out and repeat that? Can you honor the commitment that some people are trying to make to kids to get them to go to their school? It's not good for college football, what's out there. ... We have 95 players right now with NIL deals that are on our roster. That's incredible, the depth of that. There's so much good there.
"It's the guardrails. It's the parameters that we need to protect our game. Not only protect our game, guys, it's protect young men, OK?"
One day after making that "guardrail" statement, Smart kicked off the notion of guardrails to sign a 10-year, $112.5 million contract that makes him the highest paid coach in college football.
Guardrails, you see, kids, are for y'all.
Alabama's Nick Saban also sounded the guard-rail refrain.
"There is no competitive sport anywhere that doesn't have guidelines on how they maintain some kind of competitive balance," Saban said. "I think that's important to college football. I think it's important to fans. That's why they have rules in the NFL where you have a salary cap, you have difficult schedules if you have a successful season, you draft later if you have a successful season, you draft early if you have an unsuccessful season. All these things are created so there is competitive balance, which is great for the game and it's great for fans."
I hate to tell the coach that there is one sport where there are no guidelines to ensure competitive balance: college football.
There hasn't been competitive balance in college football for decades. In the past 30 years, nine different programs have won national championships, and there were only eight until last year when Georgia broke through.
Don't tell me Alabama would go for a rule making the four playoff teams play all of its nonconference teams against top-ranked programs in the playoff rankings from the year before. I wonder how Saban would feel if playoff teams got fewer scholarships than everyone else the next season?
And don't get me started on Jim Phillips over at the ACC's Media Days. I get it. I agree, college conferences and universities should act with more decorum. But those days are gone. Sadly.
Phillips assured reporters that he will, "strongly advocate for college athletics to be a healthy neighborhood, not two or three gated communities."
Goodness, where has he been? College football has been gated communities for a while. Heck, when Louisville got into the ACC, I wrote those very words, "finally, you're in to the gated community." Unfortunately, Phillips' finds that his is looking a bit dated, with bigger homes being built down the road.
But his gated community was the first to expand. His call for conferences to treat each other better is a bit tough to take when you remember how the ACC treated the Big East.
In the end, what is happening is that a group of people who have had control are panicked at the idea of losing it and are desperate to do anything to hang onto it.
There's a whole lot of that going on in this country, and not just in sports.
It sets up some fierce battles, which makes for times of chaos. I don't see much stability on the horizon.
Copyright 2022 WDRB Media. All Rights Reserved.
