Opinion: College football is now just a business, each player a free agent — and the fans lose

On Saturday at Yankee Stadium, Notre Dame’s Fighting Irish (ranked No. 6 before the game) played Army's Black Knights (No. 18) in one of the great rivalries in college football. Once known as “The Game,” the teams’ first meeting in 1913 was the moment the forward pass modernized the sport (a dazzling 35-13 win for the Irish, with future legend Knute Rockne catching a 40-yard touchdown pass for Notre Dame’s first score).

Over a century later, this year’s game was special in its own way: It’s the one moment this season when Americans could see on one field both the very worst and what's left of the best in major-college football.

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The Army-Notre Dame rivalry writes its own storylines: the pope's boys against the Doughboys, religion and the military, the cross versus the saber. Both schools are grounded in moral principle, both reach for higher callings.

Or, at least, they once did.

The unlimited money that has flooded into college football since the NCAA changed policy in 2021 to permit college athletes to profit from their name, image and likeness (“NIL”) has sent the two teams in different directions. While federal law prohibits the military service academies (West Point, the Naval Academy and the Air Force Academy) from participating in endorsements, Notre Dame has thrown its lot in with the rest of college football by building one of the top NIL collectives in the country — so successful as a nonprofit that it recently announced plans to go for-profit. Which means that when Army lines up against Notre Dame, the Fighting Irish roster will have been bought and paid for with millions of dollars. The quarterback alone, lured away from Duke this past offseason, cost a cool mil.

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So much for moral principle: The team now represents capitalism, not Catholicism. And for what did Notre Dame sell its soul? Moving up a few spots in the national polls?

It's through schools like Notre Dame — those that claim a conscience — where we truly see corruptio optimi pessima (the corruption of the best is the worst of all). Name, image and likeness deals are ruining college football by salami-slicing away the game’s integrity at several levels. They separate the haves from the have-nots with astonishing pay imbalances we wouldn’t permit even in the littlest leagues. The centrality of money in the NIL era separates teams from geographies and rivalries — no more Oklahoma-Oklahoma State game, no more Oregon-Oregon State game, no more Stanford-USC game. Pursuit of cash has obliterated traditional conferences like the Pac-10.

But most of all, this new baldly market-driven approach to college sports separates students from student athletes. In this era, there’s nearly no connection between athletes and their schools anymore, with tornado-level turnover expected every season. The endorsement-supercharged transfer portal has turned college football coaching into a cross between speed dating and a pickup game. It’s like attempting leadership inside a washing machine. Coaches literally buy time-limited “loyalty” with car dealership dollars. Some — like Colorado’s Shedeur Sanders (season price tag: $6.2 million) — barely bother to show up for in-person class (though, to be fair, he did get around to it in his third semester on campus). College football players have turned into freelancers.

But here’s the thing. We already have the National Football League. College football was never meant to be about the raw quality of the game. It was always about the traditions, the rivalries, the teams. Army still has a team. Most colleges don’t: They have a rotating cast of free agents. So when even a school like Notre Dame has run Rudy off the field, what’s left? A junior varsity NFL. I think fans will lose interest before long, because what’s left to love?

This isn’t a “good old days” nostalgia argument. College players should be paid for their difficult, dangerous work. They should get a slice of the revenue when their work is bringing in tens and hundreds of millions of dollars for universities and coaches who don’t take any physical risks. College football players should be paid somehow. But not like this.

The current system is the worst way possible, without reasonable guardrails, and it’s destroying what was once good about the game. The NCAA, led by former Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker Jr., is advocating for a proposal to get past the current system’s “dysfunction.” This is the wickedest of problems: Far beyond football, the NCAA includes 97 conferences, 11,000 schools and 500,000 student athletes. Baker needs allies to navigate these complexities. He needs Congress to nail down some national legal guidelines.

Above all, Baker needs help from schools like Notre Dame. Schools that theoretically care about cardinal sins like pride, greed, envy — the engines of the name, image and likeness marketplace. Schools that want to unwind this deal with the devil, even though they profit from it. Notre Dame modernized college football once, against Army, and it can move the game forward again by helping pass legislation.

Given context, the Army-Notre Dame score almost doesn’t matter. Because sometimes it really is about how you play the game.

ML Cavanaugh is a West Point graduate, former college athlete and author of the forthcoming book “Best Scar Wins: How You Can Be More Than You Were Before.” @MLCavanaugh

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This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.