College’s Football’s Lost Virtue: A Critical Analysis of Modern College Football’s Departure from Traditional Values

Originally Posted to: mindthecampus.org

By: David Rancourt, PhD & Mariano Jimenez Jr.

Beautiful Game

There has always been something special about college football. From the passion to the pageantry, this game exemplifies the true spirit of America—a force so powerful it can unite total strangers and divide close families. Tribal to its very core, football fans of all ages perform rites and rituals, embrace their team’s icons, and hope and even pray for victories.

Despite all its fanfare, what is most special about this game has always been its effect on the men who play it.

As young boys from all walks of life join local leagues to learn fundamentals and tactics, coaches and players alike will agree that football, more than anything else, is about the development of character, understanding each man’s role on a team, and learning to make the sacrifices necessary for success.  Players also learn that in this brotherhood, the only color that matters is that of the jersey on your back.

Football makes America better and stronger by instilling great values in the men who play the game.

Virtue Lost

Though purity remains in the youth and high school ranks, the virtue of the game is being destroyed at the college level.

Words like dedication, commitment, loyalty, team, sacrifice, and hard work have been lost for short-term gains of money and fame.  Recruiting has morphed from “what a better man a boy will become by playing for Coach Integrity at State U,” to nothing more than a bidding war.

Today’s talent auction pits the checkbooks and desire to win of D1 schools against one another to pay unproven and often ridiculously demanding 18-year-olds to sign what are now single-season letters of intent.

Of course, everything is temporary, no matter how good or bad the player turns out to be. At any time during the season, if things get difficult or coaches bench a player for well-deserved reasons, the player can simply quit, enter the transfer portal, sign a new deal elsewhere, and be celebrated again at the arrival of their next school.  Even great players in seemingly perfect situations are fair game for bidding wars. The unlimited transfer portal represents the essence of America’s tragic obsession with immediate gratification, eliminating virtues like commitment and resilience, teaching short-term gain over long-term development.

This is emblematic of a society that embraces shots for weight loss, pills for pain relief, and celebrities who are famous for nothing other than being famous.

What Caused This Mess?

As much as Name, Image, and Likeness (NIL) and the Transfer Portal have been detrimental to the game, watch as unionization, salary caps, and administrators clamoring for state funds to pay players further erodes all that makes the game special. NFL style management structures and private equity have now also entered the equation, proving that college football is little more than a minor league for the NFL.

Though unfair, it would be easy to blame the players for their newfound greed and selfishness. However, after decades of everyone else making money off their backs, must we wonder where student-athletes developed their thirst for money and fame?  The blame lies squarely, emphatically, and precisely with the leaders of our universities who allowed and enabled all of this to happen.

Though no single person or entity is to blame for this decades-long escalating arms race, all parties involved bear some burden of responsibility, one of these authors included. As higher education in America has come under harsh review for many deserved reasons, the popularity of college football allowed it to escape critique, preventing a meaningful evaluation of how tepid, weak leadership and the siren’s song of greed and victory created this football monster.

Exploited for years by shrewder, better-informed agents pitting schools against one another for the services of overpaid coaches, university presidents and trustees were blinded by the adulation brought by victories. Few athletic directors possessed the experience necessary to evaluate the risk of complex multi-year contracts and buyouts properly. Colleges abandoned decades-long conference affiliations, aligned by academic and regional interests, to lure more money from big television payouts from other conferences. This created national mega-conferences that were great for television but terrible for traveling fans, student-athletes, and budgets.

A Better Way

Fans who long for a purer version of college football have options.

The Ivy League still has amateur student-athletes playing exciting, competitive games. These student-athletes don’t have tutors spoon-feeding them and typically attend in-person classes with their peers. The Ivy League does not pay players, has no affiliated collectives, and has no athletic scholarships. It also requires student-athletes to meet high admissions standards and earn meaningful degrees.  National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics member colleges also have high-quality intercollege sports, played by student-athletes who typically expect to turn pro in something other than the sport they play.

Principled leaders must take a stand and call for an end to collectives and all other monetary payments from universities to student-athletes.

NIL may be the law of the land, but if colleges prohibit NIL payments as conditions for playing at a specific school, then the market will sort out who is worth what at no cost to institutions.  The transfer portal must be reformed so that there are limits and consequences to transferring. Four-year eligibility limits must return along with an admissions mandate that all student-athletes fit within reasonable academic tiers met by all other admitted students. The academic standards don’t need to be those of the Ivy League, but there should be higher standards and demands for in-class learning so student-athletes can receive an education comparable to their non-athlete peers.

Until leaders of National Collegiate Athletic Association universities develop the courage to find their intended purpose again and say enough to this madness, they will continue to shine as beacons of shallowness and hypocrisy, sadly advancing the belief that all that matters in this world is winning, money and fame, ignoring their mottos, mission, purpose, and obligation to society to educate students to be prepared to take on the world, not the NFL.