Laundry

There's a lot of things to hate about college football and athletics right now.

It’s “talkin’ season” in college football. Conference Media Days are the time every summer when coaches are styled up, shuttled off, and then set in front of microphones to talk about their program’s amazing offseason, improved leadership, impressive newcomers, and high hopes for the coming fall. Media Days are also when I lose myself in the hype. I inject all the hype about Texas into my veins, then walk up to the proverbial high dive and stand on the edge of the board. The platitudes of talkin’ season fill the air as I shake off the offseason’s robe of cynicism and the painful memories still lingering from last year, revealing that I’m wearing a burnt orange speedo—it’s new, I would have bought especially for the coming season. Then, I dive headfirst into the pool, into the fall, and all its hopes.

Before I jump this time, there are a few things I need to get off my chest. I find that my steps up the ladder are slower than before. Perhaps it’s because Texas in year four of Steve Sarkisian is more of a known quantity than they’ve been in 14 years, and I don’t have to talk myself into this team like I did many others. But that’s not the reason I feel reluctant. The reason I’m hesitant is because of all the ways in which college football and college sports feel increasingly soulless, sometimes by the day, and I hate it. A month ago, I touched on how Texas fans need to be ready to put sentimentality aside because it could be coming for their quarterback position. But this is more than about one player, one season. So pardon me if I’m not ready to gush about the coming slate yet; sometimes you need to be pissed off and “feel the space to feel your feelings,” at least that’s what people who have read parenting books tell me to allow my toddlers to do. So here are the things I hate about college football (athletics) right now. Next week I’ll write about how to fix it.

Mercenaries

Do you remember the figure in the Texas Revolution who fought for Santa Anna at the Alamo and participated in killing Travis, Crockett, and Bowie, but then later joined up with Sam Houston at San Jacinto and became a hero? Me neither. That’s because such a person doesn’t exist. That’s how I think of this era of transfers and player movement. This stuff is supposed to mean something. I get that I sound like the famous meme of the sobbing pro wrestling fan shouting, “It’s still real to me, dammit.” I’m probably old-fashioned, idealistic, naive. “It’s always been this way,” the cynics shout. “The coaches do it, why shouldn’t the players?” types the journalist sitting atop their high horse.

But that’s not true. The NCAA’s ineptitude has caused the greatest overcorrection ever to occur. In the past few years, they’ve reversed their draconian policies about transfers into a complete U-turn where it’s now become a free-for-all. Frankly, college football isn’t even the worst offender, as the roster sizes and sheer amount of players cause them to move less. But it has destroyed connections between the player and fan in college basketball, where if you look at any roster in the big conferences, you’ll see multiple starters who have played for three schools, sometimes four. Should players be able to find playing time? Sure, but I guess we’re just done with the illusion of the student-athlete. A player who transfers three or four times is most likely never sniffing more than a G League contract in the NBA at best, so how are they benefiting long-term from a college experience in three cities? Where does their long-term network and support system come from when they inevitably don’t get that lucrative pro contract? Take someone like the 39-year-old Dillon Gabriel, now starting for Oregon after Oklahoma and Central Florida. What fan base eventually claims him? Does any? Gabriel has a high profile and will be fine, but there are hundreds of athletes less successful than him that this system isn’t serving in any way. On the fan side of things, it feels like we’re cheering for laundry now rather than something deeper. I was actually heartened by the fact that no A&M players came with Jim Schlossnagle to Austin. Do I love Aggie schadenfreude? Absolutely. But if Texas loses in the national championship this year and next season I have to look at Quinn Ewers in an Oklahoma jersey, I might light myself on fire. See the latest transfer of baseball player Gavin Kash to Texas A&M. Kash is a solid player, but next spring he will have now played for Texas, Texas Tech, and the Aggies in a four-year span. I’ll leave that there on Kash, whose nomadic nature is indicative of the problem at large. The system is baking in a component that is by nature making the fans and players care less about the things that the sport has always held sacred.

Impressions

About 10 years ago, we were in Portland, Oregon with another couple, and we decided to go to an open mic night at a dive bar. There were a lot of nerves, screaming, and references to anatomy, but very little laughter. I was struck by how there wasn’t a single comic on stage that seemed to have an original voice; they all just seemed to be doing terrible imitations of the popular comics at that time. No judgment here—I used to be that way in my writing. You should see the short story I wrote after I read Outer Dark by Cormac McCarthy. It wasn’t good. I had just become a father and I was going through some shit, okay? The villain did get strangled to death by the heroine's umbilical cord, and that was cool, I guess. Would you like me to write this point in the McCarthy style? I’ll try.

The monolith was carved into the fabric of the world, a monument formed during this brief note in time that served as a demarcation as to where it had existed in what was this long symphony called the Earth’s death song. It pitted its great armies against one another and the audience swelled with admiration, unbothered by when the generals changed clothes and switched sides. Still, those worshippers fell at the feet of this temple on the first dawn of each week and it consumed them whole. When it had occupied all of Sunday, its great belly growled and its brow furrowed, but instead of having to hunt, its churchgoers volunteered the remains of their days to its mouth like a rabbit who feels safest nestled in the jaws of a wolf. Its opulence increased as it feasted on more of their gaze, more of their eyes and their inability to look away from it and its unencumbered marvelance. Then came the imitator, who tried to take part of the mountain in which the great pillar was etched, it was approached by the masses cautiously and they inspected its mettle with a swipe of their finger and a touch to their tongues like they were some great chef assigned to grade the taste of a new dish. But the masses spat it out as they discovered it was an impostor and there they destroyed it, disemboweling it and tearing it to pieces of pathetic treasure that they left at the foot of the monolith who laughed at the impressionists' destruction.

TLDR: College Football feels like it’s doing a bad impression of the homogenous behemoth that is the NFL.

The NFL is one of a kind; it can’t be encroached upon, but it also has its structure holding it up, whereas College Football right now is throwing stuff on the ground hoping it congeals into a foundation. The NFL’s season is clockwork, the fact that it rarely changes its playoff format and when it does, it’s for TV. It was made for TV, college football wasn’t. Yet now, television is influencing all of the decisions college football is making—money, I get it, spare me. But now, the conferences and the game times are set for the television viewer and hurt the live product. Another 2:30 August opener in Austin, Texas? Great. You also won’t be able to turn the TV on anymore and see the style of play and tell which conference you’re watching. And seasons where a national champion has two to three losses will feel a lot different than 2005 did for Longhorn fans. Is it worse? I can’t say for sure yet, I know once the SEC finally stops being cowards and adopts a nine-game conference schedule I’ll be more excited to pay to see Tennessee than I am Louisiana Monroe. But I also know it all feels like a bad impression of the NFL. The fact that Texas is playing Georgia and Michigan this season is incredible, I can’t wait. What makes it incredible though is its rarity. Do I think it's incredible when the Cowboys and Steelers play? No, it’s neat, maybe. But, this is the SECOND time in history Texas and Michigan will have played. That’s something you can literally tell your grandkids about. It will be the first time the Georgia Bulldogs will have come to Austin, Texas since 1958. Imagine a season where Texas and Oklahoma play three times: in the regular season, for the SEC, and then in the playoffs. The shine of the Golden Hat sure looks a bit dimmer in that case, doesn’t it?

All this reminds me of the nerds who for years wanted superhero movies. How they must have felt when they saw X-Men and Iron Man on the silver screen for the first time. But, how do we feel now? How do they feel having gotten what they wished for as Hollywood and originality lay in crumbled ruins under Captain America’s boots?

Structure

I think what’s also dampening my enthusiasm is a lack of structure in a sport that was built on tradition. When everything is so uncertain in something that relies on its rhythms, how do you orient yourself? NIL was meant to reverse idiotic things like players not being able to sign autographs, appear in commercials, or release their own line of craft mustard, but it has turned into a guilt-fueled GoFundMe for every college football fanbase. Okay, that system sucks, but just as we’re getting used to NIL and collectives, now revenue sharing is introduced, but nobody knows what that means. Is it a hard cap like the NFL where rules are enforceable and the playing field is equal? Or is it back to how it used to be: where there are “the rules,” but then there’s the underbelly filled with McDonald's bags stuffed with cash? I also fear just as we get used to our new conferences, they’ll change again. Like how we finally got used to the destruction of bowl season and a four-team playoff and the way that affects the rhythm of a season, but then we were given a 12-team playoff and in just two years of that format, the playoff will probably be expanding to fourteen teams. Remember what I said about a bad impression of the NFL? This is the same sport that did things the same way for almost 100 years until the balloon popped. It’s as if your grandma got a neck tattoo and started telling you your politics were sus. You can’t get your footing in college football because the ground can’t stop shifting.

Me

If there was a fourth thing I hate about college football right now, it would be myself. I hate that as much as all this bothers me, I’ll be eating from the palm of its hand in six weeks. As much as I feel like I’m cheering for laundry now, damn it if they aren’t important clothes to me. How I love being in said clothes screaming alongside my family, friends, and kids. As I’ve said before, that’s the real value in all of this. But, I hate my contradictions, like when a player picks another school besides Texas I call it a selfish money grab, but when they pick the Longhorns, I feel related to and I tell myself they really loved the architecture on campus and the purity of our institution. I hate that I rail against the expanded playoff now and how it will force fans to possibly have to buy four extra astronomically priced tickets a year if they want to follow their team, but then I’m sure I’ll try to tag along when and if it happens. I hate that even though we’re drifting towards a world where the Longhorns are the football team merely sponsored by The University of Texas at Austin, I’ll still give it my emotions, money, and time.

God, I hate that I love this sport.