The most obvious sign that college football has entered a bold, uncertain new era isn’t the fact that we now have a 12-team playoff, or West Coast teams in the Atlantic Coast Conference, or players moving like air hockey pucks from school to school. No, the most obvious symbol of 2024’s break with the 150-year history of college football is a 1.5-inch-square QR code that will adorn the helmets of Oklahoma State players this year.
We’ve seen players transfer from school to school. We’ve seen schools jump from conference to conference. We’ve had playoffs for years (decades, in some divisions). But we’ve never seen anything quite like the stark reversal in attitudes toward paying players. This sort of direct-to-player funding was the kind of thing that used to cost schools bowl eligibility or even the death penalty; now it’s a cover charge.
Fandom as a whole is rapidly changing across the sports landscape, but nowhere is that more apparent than in college football. Between NIL, the transfer portal, conference realignment, the expanded playoff, legalized gambling and, hell, even the new EA Sports College Football video game, we’re now in a world where fandom is an entirely different proposition than it was even a few years ago.
What does this mean for you? Well, if you’re of the Pokes persuasion, make sure your bank account is linked to your phone and you have an HDTV. If you’re a fan of one of the other 133 top-tier football programs, get ready. Your fandom is about to become monetized.
Gone are the days when players would etch themselves into the lore of a university and remain loyal forever. Last year’s Iron Bowl hero, Isaiah Bond — he caught the fourth-and-31 “Gravedigger” pass — transferred to Texas right after Nick Saban retired. Georgia’s potential future salvation at quarterback, Dylan Raiola, jumped to Nebraska late last year when the Cornhuskers made him a better offer.
(Before you light up players for disloyalty, remember: Coaches have been pulling this kind of stuff for generations. And players don’t usually leave sanction-saddled schools in their wake.)
Gone are the days when you could count on your school facing the same slate of rivals every year. Thanks to conference expansion, it will take multiple seasons for a school to cycle through all of its in-conference opponents. Major rivalries will remain, but others — like Mississippi State-LSU or Michigan-Minnesota — will become once-every-few-years affairs. They may not have had the sway of Ohio State-Michigan or Auburn-Alabama, but they had a charm and character all their own, and now that’s fading.
Then, of course, there are the rivalries severed or devalued by realignment, like Oklahoma-Oklahoma State, Oregon-Oregon State or Washington-Washington State. Sure, you had decades of memories built up around those showdowns, but hey, how about that realignment-funded new carpet in the locker room?
Gone are the days when you can be a passive fan, buying a ticket or a sweatshirt every once in awhile to support your school. Well-heeled alumni already know the pain of ever-escalating “donations” in order to get the opportunity to purchase tickets. The micro-donation NIL structure means that everybody gets to show their support in stark financial terms.
Now, every single fan must face the question: Just how much of a fan are you? Willing to skip a dinner out — or a mortgage payment — to shore up the offensive line? Hey, how about dipping into the savings to help lure that five-star receiver? Technically, a college fund doesn’t have to go to only your kids, right?
It’s not quite clear yet how Oklahoma State’s new NIL angle is going to work. You can see the potential problems developing from five states away — there’s no “QR” in “team,” after all — but it’s a bold new direction. And it’s a one-way direction, too. What, you think future generations of college players are going to want less money?
The logical next step is clear: NIL and the portal — plus betting, of course — all combine to distance fans from the actual players on the field. The gap between students and student-athletes was already vast; now it’s unbridgeable. That isn’t just the guy you see in your geology class out there scoring that touchdown; that’s a dude making more this season than you will in your first five years out of school.
It’s pretty clear why these changes have come about — money, oceans of college football-obsessed money — and where this is heading, too. The college football universe is consolidating inward, ever more in the direction of professionalism, where tradition and atmosphere must line up behind triumph and profit. Every year, college football gets closer to the NFL with a marching-band soundtrack, and 2024 marks a huge leap toward that end.
Enjoy the season, even if it’s not quite how you remember college football. Change is here. Time to adjust our fandom.
