Some things never change?

As I have highlighted before, I was cursed at birth. I grew up very Roman Catholic, very Irish, and very close to the stadium where the Notre Dame Fightin’ Irish play (college football, to the uninitiated). Worse still, during my formative youth, the Irish dominated the sport (three national titles between my sixth and eighteenth birthdays). Apparently it was God’s Will and we all just needed to get on board, which I happily did.

Even college football fans know that the Latin saying “sic transit gloria mundi” translates roughly in modern sports jargon as “not so fast, my friend.” Notre Dame had a brief dip and then resurgence under Lou Holtz (one title in 1988, another given away as an attendance trophy to Bobby Bowden and Florida State University in 1993–not that I’m bitter, no, not one bit). Then began what is now thirty years of relative irrelevance. Relative because they are a blue-blood of the sport, who at one time had the most championships, the winningest coaches (two), the most Heisman trophies, the most Hall of Fame players, the most players in the NFL, and the highest winning percentage in the sport. That and myth (George Gipp’s “win one for the Gipper” deathbed speech) and legend (the most famous lede in sports history–the Four Horsemen, Joe Montana and the Chicken Soup game), which resulted in two iconic movies: the Knute Rockne story with some B-movie star named Ronald Reagan as “the Gipper” (whatever happens to him?) and “Rudy” about a guy who made all of one tackle in his “career.” All of which made Notre Dame a brand unique in the sport, so much so they remained independent (never joined a conference) and had their own television rights deal. And everyone either loved them or hated them.

But time marched on, the sport changed, and the Irish did not. Nearly every team is on television every weekend. Boosters became more adept at providing “benefits” to players, whether of the monetary or “other” kind. Athletic Directors decided to go all in at keeping athletes eligible for football rather than insisting on their education. And other coaches and teams simply got better, while Notre Dame didn’t. They occasionally struck lightning and got to a championship or playoff game, only to lose in a lop-sided fashion, which only reinforced that they were no longer elite.

But I digress. As college football continued to rake in ridiculous amounts of revenue, the fact that everybody was getting rich except for the guys tearing their bodies to shreds on the field finally dawned on the men in helmets (all those helmet-to-helmet collisions take a toll). A series of court cases ensued, and while not all have been settled, the net effect is to allow players to make money off of their “name, image, and likeness” (or NIL), to change teams–I mean schools–without penalty, and to generally ignore most academic requirements.

Some may quibble with this last thought: one group because they say the players never did try to be students, another group because there still are NCAA rules about it . . . but nobody is enforcing them. University of Colorado football stars Sheddeur Sanders (son of coach Deion Sanders) and Travis Hunter (the Heisman Trophy winner) have never attended an in-person class at the school. There are no established limits on how NIL money is awarded, and the teen-aged players involved often have “hand-shake” agreements with shady entrepreneurs, already leading to breach of contract lawsuits. Oh, and the federal government insists (under the Biden administration, so who knows?) that all that money going to players must be apportioned equally between men’s and women’s athletes, not based on who brings in the revenue.

Which leaves the whole sport up in the air, at a time when it is more popular than ever. There is a move afoot by some players to unionize, another by some in administration to have the athletes declared employees. The two largest surviving conferences, the B1G and the SEC are hell-bent to create a competitive structure which (1) locks in their dominance on the field and (2) gives the most lucrative teams/schools more revenue, more opportunity, more power. And the sport just instituted a twelve team play-off, which has proven wildly popular and lucrative.

The interplay between the football players, the coaches/athletic Directors, the conferences, the NCAA (which has become a modern-day Holy Roman Empire: neither National, Collegiate, Athletic or an Administration), the courts, and the federal government will play out soon. Congress intends to get involved, because, hey, that always makes things better! The trends all augur for a semi-professional league which emphasizes talent on the field, marketing, and revenue, while retaining a patina of that quaint old-school student athlete silliness. I can’t wait to see the Hurricanes (affiliated with the University of Miami) making it to the national championship game with a team of ringers led by DeShuan Watson (yes, he still has one-year of college eligibility left, and who cares whether he likes special treatment at the massage parlor?). Color me disinterested.

I began this blog post back in September, after my Irish started the season with a big win on the road at Texas A&M. About the time I got my thoughts together, my team cratered against an opponent called Northern Illinois, officially ending their hopes to make the playoff and reinforcing their irrelevancy. A funny thing happened. The Irish rallied from that low point to win all the rest of their games convincingly, but of course the talking heads said, they would fold again in the playoffs. Instead, they won three tough games in a row, losing only in the championship game to Ohio State.

It was a gritty performance, even coming back in the final after it looked like the game was over at the half. There was much to enjoy about this team, both in their winning and in the way they played. Commentators who grew up hating Notre Dame for their success and their insistence of being different were reduced to admitting they “liked” this team. The Irish were a throwback in style to college football in the old days, even if they were a modern team in terms of NIL, coaching salaries, and transfers. That may be the best that those of us who enjoyed amateur college football can hope for.