Everything that I hate about what has become of college athletics will be on display this weekend. Bloated conferences, horrible offensive strategies, and money literally determining the fate of teams’ seasons now.
First, the Wisconsin Badgers will take on the Southern Cal Trojans in a “Big Ten” conference game in Los Angeles. Let’s start with the name of the conference. The “Big Ten” now has 18 teams in it. When it was first formed in 1896, the Big Ten was known as the “Western Conference”, and had 7-members (including Wisconsin). When Iowa and Indiana joined in 1899, it was renamed the “Big Nine”–which continued until 1916 when Ohio State came in and it became the Big Ten.
That numerically accurate name stayed in place through 1990, when Penn State joined the conference. Rather than make the logical change to the “Big Eleven”, the university presidents decided to maintain the legacy created by the Big Ten name and instead came up with a lame logo that incorporated the number 11 in the name “Big Ten”.
Things got even more inaccurate when Nebraska joined in 2010. Changing to the correct “Big 12” was not feasible, as the old Big Eight became the Big 12 when it expanded to a dozen schools. Although it should be pointed out, Nebraska and Colorado leaving the Big 12 at the same time left them with only ten teams.
While the name didn’t make sense, the addition of Penn State and Nebraska at least made sense in terms of geography–both are located in states adjoining current conference members–and in terms of institution, as both are large, land-grant state universities, which is common to every other conference member except Northwestern. But the desire to “open the conference to larger East Coast media markets” led to the addition of Maryland (Washington, DC) and Rutgers (New York City) in 2012–meaning the conference now had 14-schools stretching from the Atlantic Ocean to the foothills of the Rocky Mountains. The name Big Ten was becoming more and more inaccurate by the year.
Then came the implosion of college football’s long-time structure in the last few years. With the collapse of the Pacific 12 Conference came the acquisition of Oregon, Washington, UCLA, and Southern Cal for the Big Ten. Now the collection of Midwest schools stretches from the Atlantic and Pacific oceans and from the Canadian to the Mexican border. And the name, now only 56% correct in terms of membership hangs on like a long-running joke. Nothing says you care about student-athletes to make Rutgers women’s volleyball travel more than 3,000 miles across the country for a Tuesday night match against USC.
As for Saturday’s game between the Badgers and the Trojans, I will be averting my eyes from that one. Wisconsin’s Air Raid Offense promised high-octane performance, just like when Head Coach Luke Fickell was at Cincinnati. He promised that the days of “boring” Ground and Pound offense (which led to six conference championships in the space of 20-years) were done and Wisconsin would be lighting up scoreboards across the country. When that is actually going to happen is very uncertain right now. Wisconsin struggled against its two lesser non-conference opponents and then got annihilated by Alabama at Camp Randall Stadium two weeks ago.
The difference in talent and coaching were obvious for the entire country to see. Defenders of Fickell insist that once he gets “his recruits” on the team, they will be the explosive offense crew that he promised. But with the transfer portal–where players can leave school at any time they want and immediately start to play at their new school–there is no reason to have to wait three recruiting classes to have a team that can compete on the national stage.
Fickell is what I like to call a “video game” coach. He’s part of the new generation that grew up playing Madden or EA Sports NCAA Football on the “easy” setting–blowing out their computerized opponents by calling passing play after passing play after passing play. They are lauded by the short-attention span sports media as “offensive geniuses”–while anyone advocating for ball-control and running the ball out of power formations is labeled as being from the “Stone Age”. So instead of being known for its physicality and imposing its will on its opponents, Wisconsin football is just another program that runs five-wide, empty backfield, read-option spread–just not as well as the powerhouse programs. I am counting down the days to when Luke Fickell decides that the “academic requirements” of UW Madison make it “too hard to recruit the talent needed to succeed” and he takes his clown show offense to some middling team in another conference.
Switching gears, the impact of Name, Image and Likeness payments to “student”-athletes will be coming home to roost in Las Vegas this weekend. The nationally-ranked and undefeated UNLV Running Rebels will be taking on Fresno State without the quarterback that led them to their first three victories, Matthew Sluka. Sluka did not get hurt, he did not get suspended, he did not flunk out of class. Sluka literally quit the team this week because he wasn’t getting the NIL money that he had been promised.
According to reports, Sluka claims that while he was in the transfer portal after a couple of seasons at Holy Cross, a UNLV assistant coach told him he would be paid 100-thousand dollars by the Rebels’ football collective this year. A “collective” is a group of big-money donors and companies make offers to pay college athletes to come to those specific schools–as colleges themselves are still not allowed to directly pay players. Wisconsin has one, U-W Green Bay launched one last year, and Division III U-W Oshkosh is forming one now as well for kids that aren’t even on scholarship to play. It is the future of college sports.
Because NIL was instituted in the wake of a Supreme Court ruling that players can be paid by anyone except the school itself to play sports (usually for endorsements), the governing body of collegiate sports, the NCAA, has no rules in place to govern its administration. And any rules they might try to put in place will only be struck down in the courts again. So you have a Wild, Wild West nature to college sports where nobody is bound to play for any school not just year to year, but now, week-to-week. As a commentator on the Dan Patrick Show called it today, “Kids are now free-agents every day”.
And that is what Matthew Sluka at UNLV is proving. While Vegas claims no one promised him 100-grand (he’s been paid closer to 50-thousand dollars), there is no written contract between player and school (except for the scholarship) to keep him on campus. And because he played only three games, he can transfer to yet another school next year without losing a season of eligibility.
As fans, it will become increasingly difficult to maintain support for programs that see mass turnover in personnel year after year after year. That will be compounded by conference alignments that have destroyed regional rivalries that date back to the 1800’s, while poorly-designed and executed pass-heavy offenses create long, boring games filled with incompletions and interceptions. On a positive note, I’ll have a lot more time on Saturdays to play more golf or get more stuff done instead of sitting on the couch for three-and-a-half hours watching my once-beloved Badgers.
