Will next year be the year fans tune out college football due to the “disaster” that is NIL?

Some 8.8 million people tuned into ESPN to watch Texas-Alabama last week, the network’s most-watched Saturday game since 2014.

It barely beat the 8.7 million who watched Nebraska-Colorado on Fox, but was just behind the 9.2 million ESPN got the week before for a Sunday broadcast of Florida State-LSU.

In total, 21 college football games have already attracted two million or more viewers. At this point in the 2022 season, the total was 18, according to SportsMediaWatch.

So…will next year be the year fans tune out college football due to the “disaster” that is NIL, or the “wild west” of the transfer portal?

Is that when the stands are empty because college football is just a “minor league sport” or is the Big Ten moving to Division III for philosophical reasons?

Ask for a friend… or at least the whiny coaches, fear-mongering conference commissioners, absurd NCAA lawyers and establishment media personalities who told us, repeatedly, that by now everything would be ruined forever.

All we know is that the demise of college football will have to be delayed, once again, for at least one more year because it certainly won’t be this season.

To the surprise of no one capable of critical thinking, college football has not become less popular because players can earn a few dollars and have gained some control over their careers.

If anything, it’s more popular.

The stadiums are full. Television ratings are up, even though ESPN lost 15 million households due to a contract battle with Charter. The hype around the sport is incredible, and not just because of Deion Sanders, although Coach Prime surely doesn’t hurt.

But wait, haven’t we been told that fans won’t see a sport inundated with transfers and NIL deals? However, three years later, is the biggest deal happening in Colorado?

What about competitive balance? Remember that even if you could stomach the idea that Caleb Williams could appear in a Dr. Pepper commercial (and many of those who now claim to do so used to be opposed to that), would all NIL mean is that the rich would become More rich?

Well, you can’t get much richer than the SEC. He has dominated the sport for almost two decades. This year, they are 3-6 against Power Five teams, with Alabama, LSU, Florida, Texas A&M and South Carolina all defeated by double digits.

Meanwhile, the once-forgotten Pac-12 is 21-4 overall with eight ranked teams. One big reason: It starts with 10 transfer quarterbacks, including USC’s Williams (formerly of Oklahoma), Colorado’s Shedeur Sanders (Jackson State), Washington’s Michael Penix Jr. (Indiana), Oregon’s Bo Nix (Auburn) and DJ Uiagalelei (Clemson) from Oregon State. .

That is dispersion of talent.

It’s not easy to quantify, but since 2015, 247Sports has tried through its composite talent rankings. It assigns a value to each player based on their high school recruiting ranking (a clumsy metric, but at least consistent).

In 2023, Alabama is the most “talented” team with 1,015 points. In 2017, long before NIL or the portal, it was number 1 with 997 points. So this Alabama team has 1.7 percent more “talent.”

However, if you compare the 10th most “talented” team from those years (Oregon now, Notre Dame at the time), then the Ducks are 5.3 percent more talented. Current No. 25 UCLA has 7.2 percent more talent than then-No. 25 Mississippi State. This is consistent with other seasons and other slots.

If anything, the era of NIL and the transfer portal are leveling the playing field a bit, at least at the top of the sport.

It even extends to high school recruiting, where non-traditional powers can focus their NIL dollars and attention on a single player. Consider that currently 34 of the top 40 recruits in the class of 2024 are verbally committed to 19 different programs. This is the highest pace in at least a decade. In 2018, only 13 schools hired top 40 recruits. In 2017, there were 15. In 2016, there were 19. In 2015, there were 18.

Again, a slightly greater spread of talent, not less and certainly not much less, as predicted.

Almost everything the establishment claimed would happen has not happened. The same thing happened when they opposed athlete stipends, academic awards, or any other advancements.

Imagine the popularity of the sport if its most famous coaches and administrators weren’t constantly telling fans that it’s all garbage and the future is bleak?

In reality, the biggest threat to the sport’s tradition is conference realignment. Sports directors and commissioners, who secretly manipulate and then transfer entire sports departments in search of more money, can’t blame the players for that.

It’s all an attempt to scare the public so that Congress can somehow “save” an industry that, in reality, enjoys bigger revenues, bigger broadcasting deals, bigger interests, bigger jobs, and bigger salaries.

But hey, keep listening to those old school coaches who are upset because someone moved their cheese.

Remember, it was then-NCAA President Mark Emmert who testified during O’Bannon v. NCAA that NIL would convert college athletics “into minor league sports, and we know that in the US, minor league sports are not very successful with fans either.” support or fan experience.”

And it was NCAA attorney Dan Waxman who argued before the Supreme Court that “the cost of labor” was a “differentiating characteristic” for college sports and that if players made money, interest would decrease. Waxman even brought up a survey that claimed that “something like 10 percent of respondents said they would be less interested and watch less if” athletes received even a $10,000 academic award.

That survey was clearly false.

And there’s always former Big Ten commissioner Jim Delany, who opined that “the Division III model…would be, in my opinion, more consistent with the Big Ten philosophy” if something like NIL were to emerge. Shortly afterward, Delany received a $20 million bonus for negotiating a television deal.

The complaints continue. The Washington lobby continues. The media alarmists keep screaming (it’s good for ratings). The howls about how sport has been/is/will be ruined is still as loud as ever.

It doesn’t seem like many real fans are listening anymore.

They are too busy watching the games.