Football Talk
I find it deeply ironic that Indiana, a proverbial loser, won the National title in college football doing exactly what earned the Southern Methodist Mustangs the death penalty in 1987—paying players. My, how the times have changed. And I think it’s fair to say parity has come to college football courtesy of NIL and profit sharing, because even Vanderbilt is winning.
Of course, we’re still left to wonder how professional college sports fits in with a college’s mission as place of higher learning, a question that was first asked long ago when money was under the table and easier to ignore. Now it’s out in the open, and teams have payrolls. And I hear applications are way up at Indiana, so a winning football program looks like it’s good for business. But how much of that money is flowing into educational programs and what are we sacrificing?
In the end, this is probably one of those issues that concerns those of us old enough to remember when and hardly bothers the new batch of humans with no memories to speak of. It’s the inevitable march of money. And money, as it flows, alters landscapes and restructures the world, and to paraphrase Joni Mitchell, it will pave paradise as it puts up a parking lot, and no one will remember paradise because there’s plenty of parking.