Change is almost always hard. Yours truly is still coming to grips with the fact that the Earth is apparently round instead of flat. It’s so much more comfortable for some of us when everything stays the same.
So do I really want to see Oklahoma and Texas become the newest members of the Southeastern Conference, ballooning the league where everything “just means more” to a whopping 16 schools?
Nooooooo way! I still long for the days when it was 10 schools instead of swelling to 12 with the addition of Arkansas and South Carolina in the early 1990s, then its current 14 thanks to the welcoming of Missouri and Texas A&M prior to the 2012 season.
But let’s be honest here. College athletics as we’ve long known it, for better or worse, is over. Name, Image and Likeness has taken care of that. Once athletes begin playing for the name on the back of the jersey instead of the one on the front of the jersey or the side of the helmet, giving it “that old college try” will never mean the same.
In fact, if Alabama coach Nick Saban is correct (and when isn’t Lord Saban correct?) that his new quarterback Bryce Young – the same Bryce Young who is yet to start a single, solitary game for the Crimson Tide – has already bagged close to $1 million in NIL contracts, that old chant of “Overrated” on those rare seasons Houndstooth U. loses a game is sure to be replaced by “Overpaid.”