There's been a lot of concern about the future of college football lately. People are worried about the transfer portal. They're worried about NIL. They're worried about revenue sharing, player contracts and players returning from the NFL. They're worried about the sport's ability to pass rules that won't be immediately overturned by some judge in a district hundreds of miles away, and what might happen if Congress gets involved and makes an even bigger mess.
Everybody is worried about something, but I've a simple request to make of each and every one of you ...
Stop worrying.
Not because college football is in perfect shape; we know damn well that isn't the case. There are plenty of problems, and the people running the sport have spent decades proving they're uniquely qualified to create new ones. There will be more lawsuits. There will be more court rulings that make everybody scramble. There will be unintended consequences from rules written to prevent the unintended consequences of the previous rules. There will be politicians who suddenly develop a passionate interest in college sports because it's an election year, and new data suggests voters care about this issue right now.
That's college football in 2026. It's weird and messy, and it's going to remain weird and messy for a while.
What it is not, however, is dying.
There has been a tendency over the last few years to treat every change to college sports like another crack in the foundation of civilization. A player transfers? College football is ruined. A quarterback gets paid? College football is ruined. A conference adds another school? College football is ruined. Two Group of Six schools make the College Football Playoff? College football is ruined. A judge says the NCAA can't enforce a rule it invented? Somebody get Congress on the phone because COLLEGE FOOTBALL MUST BE SAVED.
But what are we trying to save it from, exactly? From the sport being different than it was when you were 19?
College football has always changed
Bad news. You're different than you were when you were 19, too. I know I am. My forehead wasn't nearly as big, nor was my waist as round.
The sport has always changed. Conferences have always changed. Players have always transferred. Coaches have always chased bigger jobs and bigger paychecks. Schools have always tried to find ways to win more games and make more money. The primary difference now is that everybody has a better idea of how much money is involved, and the players finally get a larger piece of it.
That transition from a mid-20th century mindset to the reality of today was never going to be clean.
College football spent decades operating under a system that was increasingly difficult to defend, and now everybody wants the replacement system to arrive fully formed, perfectly fair and legally bulletproof. That was never going to happen. We're building the plane while flying it. Sometimes a piece is going to fall off. Hell, maybe one of the engines will stop working. That doesn't mean the plane is crashing.
College football just needs time, not saving
What college football needs right now isn't salvation. It needs time. Time for schools and players to figure out revenue sharing. Time for collective bargaining or whatever version of it eventually arrives. Time for courts to establish boundaries. Time for administrators to figure out what they can regulate without getting dragged back into a courtroom.
Maybe Congress eventually has a role in that. Maybe federal legislation becomes necessary to establish some kind of national framework. I've no idea; I'm just a guy sitting on his laptop who likes to watch college football and write and talk about it. A guy who refuses to spend another offseason pretending the entire sport is one court ruling away from extinction.
Now, let's remember why we watch
You know what happens this week? Like, in a few short (long) hours from the moment you're reading these words. Games. Actual, real-life, college football games. Games that count in the standings.
We get quarterbacks throwing into double coverage. We get coaches burning timeouts because there has never been a football coach in human history who understands clock management. We get kickers missing 35-yard field goals that ruin somebody's weekend. We get a ranked team going on the road against somebody it should beat by three touchdowns and finding itself down 17-10 in the third quarter while everybody on the internet loses their mind.
We get college football.
And once the games begin, something funny happens. Most of the worry disappears.
Nobody is sitting in the student section in the fourth quarter of a rivalry game thinking about whether an NIL clearinghouse can withstand judicial scrutiny. Nobody is watching their quarterback scramble on fourth-and-6 while wondering whether Congress should grant the NCAA an antitrust exemption. They're watching the game, which is the whole point.
College football has problems. College football has always had problems. We should talk about them, and we should try to fix them. And when we do, new problems will arise.
But there's a difference between acknowledging that a sport is going through enormous change and acting like every change represents an existential crisis.
It doesn't.
College football doesn't need your pearl-clutching. It doesn't need another funeral procession for some romanticized version of the sport that probably never existed in the first place.
It just needs to get through some strange times, and, thankfully, the offseason is over. So, again, I ask you a simple favor. Stop worrying and crying about everything that's happening in the sport.
It's time to watch some damn college football.
