Greed Continues to Ruin College Football in Many Ways

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Shock waves ran through the college football world on Sunday after the College Football Committee excluded Florida State from the college football playoffs. Despite the Seminoles going undefeated with a 13-0 mark, the injury to starting quarterback Jordan Travis seemed to sway the committee’s decision on whether FSU was a top-four team. At the end of the day, it was Alabama in and FSU left to hang dry.

Former Clemson Head Coach Tommy Bowden, whose father, Bobby Bowden won two national championships at FSU while coaching the Seminoles from 1976 – 2009 was caught off guard when he didn’t hear FSU chosen as the fourth team. “I batted it around a couple of days before they played Louisville. I finally determined if Florida State wins, there’s no way you can keep them out. And then all of a sudden when they named Alabama I was really really shocked.” Bowden continued, “They had a loophole. They had it written in the criteria you can base it on injury to a certain player that affects the team’s quality of performance.” When asked if he thought the criteria was broken, he responded. ” think it was left broken by them purposely for situations like that. The system is definitely broken.”

Former Miami Hurricane Head Coach Dennis Erickson who won two national championships while coaching at Miami from 1989-1991 doesn’t believe that FSU should have been left out, but seems to understand the committee, “The committee tries to make decisions on who is the best team. Do they have a crystal ball? I don’t know.”

There were many others that I spoke to personally that had an opinion on FSU being excluded, including Skip Hall, who coached Boise State from 1987-1992, “Somebody is always going to be disappointed especially in a year like this where we had so many undefeated teams and I think the board that makes the decision was fearful of leaving out an SEC team and of course, that’s why I think Alabama jumped in there. But then again they couldn’t leave Texas out because they beat Alabama.”. Hall continued, ” It’s a real shame for Florida State. They had a great season.”

While many thought Florida State should have been in, USA Today’s National Sports Columnist Dan Wolken had a different view, “Under the criteria that the selection committee was given by the conference commissioners, they made the correct evaluation that the injury to Florida State’s quarterback put them 5th among the five conference champions.”

The decision to not include FSU in the playoffs is only one of the many issues college football is facing today. While it leaves a black cloud over the sport there are many other issues with the game including greed. “125 years ago playing football used to be part of the college experience. It wasn’t supposed to be the college experience” said Bowden as he talked about NIL in college football. “With the NCAA putting no cap or limitations, it’s really created a greedy culture about how much money can I get.”

Hall agreed, “Unfortunately college football is no longer an amateur sport. It’s a professional sport because players are getting paid. Some of them are unbelievable amounts they are getting paid.”

“Greed is definitely ruining college football,” added Erickson. “It’s a mess. Things we taught, loyalty, etc. are gone. I’m embarrassed for college football.”

Hall of Fame sports writer and columnist, Dick Weiss, who worked for the Philadelphia News and the New York Daily News and covered over 35 national championship college football games agrees that NIL is ruining the sport. “I think the NIL is ruining college football. Wasn’t it Matt Rhulle who said a good QB costs me between 1 and 2 million dollars? It’s an arms race.”

If the above two topics aren’t enough to exemplify greed all you have to do is talk about the transfer portal.

“Nowadays when you try to discipline a player they’ll just take off,” says Bowden. “I believe a lot more guys are coming out for money, which I think is the wrong reason.”

Hall isn’t a big fan of the portal either. “This portal thing has caused so much disruption. From Boise State’s standpoint you bust your butt to go out and get a great player and he does well and then all of a sudden his stock is high, he wants to enter the portal and make a lot more money. It’s really hard on a program. I think it’s a real shame.”

Even though greed is terribly hurting the sport, Wolken says college football is doing very well, “College football by every metric is doing well. It’s the second most popular sport in America with healthy TV ratings and full stadiums. There is plenty of greed in college sports but that is more to do with the lack of a plan to allow the players to share in the wealth that they have helped to create.”

Wolken is not wrong. Even though greed is hurting the sport, fans are still watching. That is for now. Sooner or later greed will catch up with them. Let’s hope someone knocks some sense into the sport and brings it back to what it was meant to be. A game.