Covid Or $ Drives College Players 2 Pay Dirt?

Is WSJ’s “Rise of the 32-Year-Old College Football Player” a sad or glad commentary on how basterized Old School concept of “student-athlete” has become? Quips lingering QB vet, “It feels like I’ve been here since 1920”.

Indeed, we learn that “college football careers are being stretched from four or five years to as many as eight.” Hell, the Oklahoma State punter Tom Hutton is 32, a time when many NFL pros are considering “retirement.” Of course, the pandemic is being blamed again as the “primary” driver as the NCAA gave all football players who competed in the truncated 2020 season an extra year of eligibility. “Covid is a blessing in disguise,” said Penn State QB Sean Clifford, “because it adds an extra year of leadership to a lot of guys that did not have it.”

True. But fact is, “on rosters across the country, the most veteran players are creeping into their mid-20s.” Could part of the trend be also attributable to anti-trust court rulings and the NCAA’s liberalized rules that now allow colleges to pay modest cash sums to players who also show academic achievement and for even the dullards with skills to get lucrative corporate sponsorships? As the WSJ piece notes, “college football’s [new] old-timers aren’t just hanging around on campus with nothing to do” since NCAA rules require them to be “actively working” toward some kind of degree to remain eligible, mostly of the post-graduate variety. So, as Willie Sutton might say, college football is more than ever like a business and those playing it are naturally going to go “where the money is”?

Davd Soul