Commentary: Why college football is becoming harder to love

SEATTLE – This story was supposed to be about something else.

I was planning to write about how Washington is positioned to win in an evolving era of college football. How new North Carolina coach Bill Belichick – let those last six words sink in – called UW “a template” for the program he plans to build. How coach Jedd Fisch’s philosophy, to install an NFL operation on a college campus, is ideally suited for a stunningly professionalized sport.

Then (former) Washington State quarterback John Mateer stiff-armed a seven-figure NIL offer to enter the transfer portal. That offer, by the way, was a testament to a proud fan base, patched together with coffee sales and beer sales and $20 bills, a crowdfunded quilt. It was entirely admirable, and not nearly enough.

Then Cougs coach Jake Dickert woke up as a Wake Forest Demon Deacon. He considered a program with back-to-back four-win seasons, in a conference held together by spit and animus and indefinite lawsuits, an obvious upgrade. He opted for the ship that was sinking slower, though there are holes in both hulls.

Then the expanded College Football Playoff arrived, appeasing ESPN with precious content, amid chaos and controversy and transfers galore.

So I’m not writing that other story. I’m not writing anything novel or new. I’m writing about the incrementally growing hole in my heart. I’m writing about the loss of love, little by little.

I love college football. I always have. But it’s becoming harder to love.

Which, by the way, is not a wholesale condemnation of this current era. I believe athletes who sacrifice and study and bleed for strategic collisions that stuff billions into everyone else’s fists deserve to be compensated. They should be afforded the same freedom to transfer as any other student or coach. Though the systems surrounding NIL and the transfer portal are preposterously flawed, the intention is just. The purpose is pure. The players are not the problem.

The problem is the systems, not the sport. The problem is a free-agency period that takes place during an exorbitantly expanding playoff, providing programs and players an impossible timeline. The problem is unchecked collectives whispering sweet-nothings into the ears of agents and shadowy representatives, a game of financial telephone. The problem is an industry without authority, without an agreed-upon order, without a commissioner or a set of collectively enforceable rules.

The problem is a mad dash for media-rights money, a merciless game of musical chairs. Conference realignment, and the callous networks yanking strings, have trampled this sport’s sacred traditions in a race for revenue.

The result? A bizarro Apple Cup at Lumen Field in September, sanitized and stuffed and streamed on Peacock, sans pomp or circumstance. A Big Ten road opener at Rutgers in Piscataway, N.J., 3,000 miles from Montlake. A WSU schedule that includes Oregon State twice in 2025, because these are desperate times. A trade of regionality for revenue, for competitive survival. A dissolving sense of self.

The solution? There are no solutions here. I’m open to ideas.

And I hate to sound like an old humbug.

But, well, here we are.

Remember where we were? Remember why you first fell in love with college football? Remember the smell of hot dogs and the sound of hard thuds on cornhole boards, the fall Saturdays with friends and strangers that seeped into your soul?

That’s what I loved, at 12 years old, zigzagging the quads before attending my first home game at Notre Dame. Before the eighth-ranked Irish topped Pittsburgh 14-6 to improve to 6-0 in Tyrone Willingham’s debut season, my dad and I bought bratwursts and strolled past T-shirt vendors peddling a seven-word slogan:

WHERE THERE’S A WILLINGHAM, THERE’S A WAY

(There was no such way at Washington.)

That slogan, of course, did not age well – as Willingham leveraged a nosedive at Notre Dame into a disaster at UW. But I fell in love with everything else. The trumpet players manning the spiral staircase inside the golden dome. The Irish dancers and converging colors and Touchdown Jesus’ elevated view.

That’s what I loved, and love, about college football. I love sailgates in Seattle. I love Ralphie’s run at Colorado and “Enter Sandman” exploding out of stadium speakers at Virginia Tech. I love walk-ons being awarded scholarships. I love improbable FCS upsets. I love snow games. I love Army-Navy, forever and ever. I love the bouncing student section at Wisconsin. I love extraordinarily silly rivalry trophies, such as SMU-TCU’s Iron Skillet and Boise State-Fresno State’s Milk Can and Wyoming-Colorado State’s Bronze Boot and Indiana-Purdue’s Old Oaken Bucket.

For that matter: I love regional rivalries, may many rest in peace.

College football was never perfect. But I preferred when no one knew, or cared, what Fox paid a program. When the sport itself didn’t feel so secondary. When its soul could not be split like a horcrux in “Harry Potter.” When communities were connected by common threads and clashing colors, a collage of crimson and purple. When conference championships mattered and bowl games mattered, and money didn’t matter quite so much.

I still love college football. Just, maybe, a little less.

This story was supposed to be about something else. I hope the next one will be.