New Orleans       Let’s be honest, American sports fans, reading the sports page is as much like reading the business section, as it is keeping up with the scores on your favorite teams.  In fact, given the billionaire takeover of US pro sports in the big three of football, basketball, and baseball, sometime it’s the same people in both sections, and now Amazon’s Jeff Bezos is trying to buy a soccer club, lord save me!  I’m not sure if it’s because they are fans, as opposed to hoping to pick up some trophies.  Neither are they necessarily “good sports,” as we see from the litany of infractions and cheating by super Microsoft billionaire Steve Ballmer and his hijinks with the Los Angeles Clippers, their star Kawhi Leonard, and the suspensions and penalties he and his team amassed.

Nothing is crazier these days than college football and the excesses of name, image, and likeness or NIL payments or what most of us would call pay-to-play salaries for players.  Watching the so-called “transfer portal” is like betting on prediction markets.  What coach is going where and how many players from his old team is he taking with him?  Who is going to be playing where, especially at quarterback, wide receiver, or edge rushers?  College teams at state universities are no longer homegrown success stories, but a pickup team of players selected from the national pool.  Who knows when eligibility ends, except perhaps the judges that end up having to decide the lawsuits from the players or their universities?  Is it four years or five?  Was there a pandemic or redshirt exemption that has to be considered?  Add to that the new wrinkle introduced by LSU’s new head coach Lane Kiffin of trying to suit up former college players who tried to make it on a professional team, but failed back to try their hand playing for LSU.

There are stories about a quarterback being guaranteed $10 million for the season to play for the Miami University Hurricanes after previous seasons at Tulane and Duke, and they are undoubtedly true.  Nothing tops Louisiana State though.  LSU paid millions to buy out the old coach’s contract, then guaranteed almost $100 million to Kiffin, so he could leave the University of Mississippi before their national playoff game.  None of this is about sports anymore.  This is all about winning being the only thing.

Which is to say the only thing other than the money the schools make off of these athletes.  Another report was issued about the devastating health effects of football on more than half of the pro players, but that doesn’t change the fact that eight of the ten largest stadiums in the world, not just the US, are purposed for the college football cash machine.  I don’t begrudge players getting a piece of that pie, especially given the short shelf life of their playing careers, but when football and basketball players stay in school because they can make more money than they would by taking a fulltime job in the pros, then something is upside down.

Maybe if you went to a school, you can be forgiven some pride as an alum?  For the rest of us, the fiction is now gone. College sports are just the minor leagues for the professionals, so no need to pretend otherwise.  Too many can’t take their eyes off of this train wreck, but are we aiding and abetting yet another destruction of American culture and character, where sports used to play a positive role?  It seems so.