“I don’t know, Linus, I just don’t know.”
That’s one of my favorite lines from Charlie Brown, who wonders why he’s depressed days before Christmas in the long-running holiday special “A Charlie Brown Christmas.”
I know the feeling, Charlie. I should be excited when we’re just weeks away from the start of another college football season, a sport I’ve enjoyed since 1965 when I watched quarterback Jon Brittenum on TV march the Razorbacks 80 yards in the fourth quarter to beat Texas, 27-24.
That game sparked a lifelong love of college football for me that’s stretched six decades. But today?
I don’t know. I just don’t know.
I read a press release last week from the National Football Foundation touting the state of college football and pointing out there are 774 schools from Division I to Division III that’ll field teams on college campuses this fall.
“No other sport contributes more to the vibrancy of a college campus than football,” NFF President & CEO Steve Hatchell was quoted as saying in the press release. “University and college presidents clearly see the value of having programs on their campuses, and we applaud them for understanding the role football can play in the educational experience of all their students.”
Educational experience? Really?
Then, what about the money grab the Big Ten pulled with its plans to add two schools on the West Coast that are hundreds of miles from its base in the Midwest? How does that help fans and students who want to travel to the games?
Easy answer: It doesn’t.
Seems to me trying to earn a degree for some athletes has been surpassed by how much money they can secure through NIL (Name, Image, and Likeness) while in college. There are probably elite players with the contact numbers for coaches at other programs if their demands are not met.
And, under the current rules, they can transfer at any time.
Oh, don’t get me wrong. Top college football programs and their coaches have made millions off the back of athletes for decades with little regard for those actually doing the work. But the pendulum has swung so far in the other direction with what can essentially be described as free agency for college football.
Tommy Tuberville, a United States senator from Alabama who formerly coached in the SEC, is among those concerned.
“I’ve talked to all my [coaching] buddies. They’ve never seen anything like it,” Tuberville said in Washington, D.C. last week. “When you don’t have guidelines and direction, no matter what you are doing, you are lost. They are all lost right now.”
On this issue, I stand with Tuberville, an Arkansas native.
I also stand firmly with Spring-dale Har-Ber coach Chris Wood, who played college football at Arkansas Tech and whose son, Hunter, plays at Missouri State. I sought Wood’s opinion during NWA Democrat-Gazette football media days last week aware, of course, of his longtime involvement with football, including the 17 years he’s been head coach of the Wildcats.
“College football is in a transition,” Wood said. “It’s taken on a form of our society, to be honest with you, where you get yours if it makes you feel good and, if it doesn’t, you just go somewhere else. Everything is a microcosm of our culture and country right now. I can’t blame these young men for the opportunities that have been given to them. But I’m a traditionalist and a truist. When you commit to something, you commit. You stay and you persevere.”
There are players today who’ve worn the uniforms of three different teams in college and, if you’re an Arkansas fan, it’s got to feel weird to see Joe Foucha and Greg Brooks lining up against their former teammates when the Hogs play at LSU in November.
Granted, I’m just a fan who didn’t bring in a penny for Arkansas State when I worked in the basement of the school’s cafeteria to earn money for college. But, my goodness, the value of a free education for scholarship athletes has been lost in the race to make premier players wealthy before they’ve even made their way to the school’s library, if they ever get there.
Sigh.
I will try to rid myself of this negativity and just enjoy the games once the season starts. But for now, I see dark clouds moving in like the ones that hung over Charlie Brown’s head on occasion on the mound.
I don’t know, Linus. I. … just. … don’t. … know.