The Big Ten Is Right: The NCAA Can’t Police a System It Broke
Tampering is everywhere in college football. Pretending the NCAA can police it now is the pure fantasy.
The Big Ten is right.
The NCAA's attempt to enforce tampering rules in the current environment is absurd. Go away, NCAA. Sit this one out. Actually, sit everything out. You are useless and at this point just an annoyance. We all hate you. Just go away.
Here are the facts. The NCAA sucks. The school presidents, former NCAA presidents, enforcement staff, etc. All incompetent turds who did their best in the name of gluttony and greed to destroy college sports.
They should be held accountable and cast out by the public in shame. All of them. Every school President, conference commissioner, and other greedy bastard who created this chaos in college sports. Why are we still showing them respect and allowing them to put their hands all over our precious college sports?
Should we be shocked that college sports have not been fixed yet in any significant way? The people who ruined the system in the first place are the ones trying to put it back together. Does that give you much confidence? It shouldn’t. Their impressive blend of arrogance and incompetence is astounding. Truly.
Is tampering wrong? Sure.
Should college football get a handle on it? Absolutely.
Was Dabo Swinney right to call out Pete Golding and Ole Miss Rebels football for allegedly tampering with linebacker Luke Ferrelli before he left Clemson Tigers football? Yeah. It sucks. We get it. These losses greatly hurt your roster plans. Plus, Dabo is a loyalty guy. You know, for Dabo losing Ferrelli felt personal.
Should Manny Diaz be furious that Darrian Mensah bolted for the transfer portal at the latest possible moment, effectively blowing up his quarterback room after signing an NIL agreement that was supposed to run another year? Of course he should.
But here’s the real question:
Is the NCAA the governing body capable of fixing this?
Absolutely not.
How funny is it that the group that created the problem is the one in charge of fixing it?
The Big Ten Is Right
This week the Big Ten Conference sent a letter to the National Collegiate Athletic Association asking them to pause tampering investigations and infractions proceedings.
Why?
Because the current rules were written before the modern NIL and transfer era. Back when the NCAA still pretended college athletes were amateurs. Pretending to be the key word. It is the reason we have to deal with all this crap. All day, every day. The NCAA is simply kidding itself here. Honestly, you could argue this is embarrassing.
Today’s reality looks nothing like that world.
Players transfer freely.
Players negotiate NIL deals.
Players move schools like free agents.
And yet the NCAA is trying to enforce rules written for 2018.
The Big Ten’s argument is simple:
The rules no longer match reality, and enforcing them selectively is both unfair and impossible.
Consider the numbers cited in the letter:
Nearly 1,000 football players entered the transfer portal on the same day in January.
More than 300 committed to new schools that same weekend.
Some committed within 90 minutes of the portal opening.
Does anyone honestly believe those conversations began after the portal opened?
Of course not.
Which means if the NCAA were serious about enforcing tampering rules, almost all of college football would be under investigation.
And that’s the point.
The NCAA Is Pretending the System Still Exists
Here’s the problem.
Tampering rules might technically exist on paper.
But in practice?
Everyone is doing it.
Coaches know it.
Players know it.
General managers know it.
One SEC personnel executive put it bluntly recently:
“If you’re not doing it, you’re so far behind in the game.”
So the NCAA faces an impossible situation. Once again, they look like a joke, probably, because they are with nobody to blame but themselves.
They either:
Punish everyone
Punish no one
Or randomly pick a few programs to make an example of (which they will because they suck.)
And that third option is exactly what the Big Ten is pushing back against.
You can’t run a system where everyone breaks the rule but only a few get punished.
That’s not enforcement.
That’s comical theater. Three Stooges type stuff.
The NCAA Put Itself Here
Here’s the deal, NCAA.
You did this to yourselves. You have nobody else to blame. You did this.
Not just the bureaucrats in Indianapolis.
The schools themselves — the university presidents who make up NCAA membership — created this mess.
For decades they sat back while television money exploded.
The money got bigger.
The contracts got richer.
The NCAA got fatter.
Meanwhile, the athletes who generated the entire machine got nothing.
No revenue share.
No salary.
Barely any control over their own movement.
Eventually the legal system caught up.
The cracks started showing with the landmark O’Bannon v. NCAA lawsuit, which challenged the NCAA’s use of player likenesses in the EA Sports video game without compensation.
Then came another shock when football players at Northwestern University attempted to unionize in 2014 — a signal that the amateur model was already breaking down.
From there the avalanche began.
Court losses.
Antitrust rulings.
Name, Image and Likeness rights.
And finally the recent House v. NCAA settlement, which effectively ushered in an era where schools can directly share revenue with athletes.
In other words:
College sports became professional without anyone ever building a professional system.
The NCAA and the school presidents messed everything up! Now, they are trying to fix it. HA!
The People In Charge Failed
Let’s be honest about something.
The NCAA didn’t fail because the problems were impossible.
It failed because the people running college athletics refused to confront reality until the courts forced them to. They were stubborn to a fault even with the signs clearly pointing to time of change.
University presidents — the supposed stewards of institutions dedicated to education and leadership — showed astonishing levels of short-sightedness.
They chased television money.
They protected their own financial interests.
They built athletic palaces and staffed huge athletic departments.
And they ignored the obvious legal challenges coming their way.
Now the system is collapsing under its own contradictions.
The NCAA Has No Credibility Left
And yet somehow the NCAA still pretends it can police tampering.
That’s the truly comical part.
How ironic is it that the schools that charge thousands of dollars for a degree effectively ran this business into the ground?
This is the same organization that:
Lost multiple antitrust battles in court
Failed to regulate NIL when it had the chance
Allowed the transfer portal era to explode without guardrails
Now it wants to step in and discipline a handful of schools for behavior that the entire industry openly acknowledges happens everywhere.
That’s not governance.
That’s denial.
The System Has to Change
The Big Ten is right to force the issue.
If college football is going to function in the NIL era, the rules must reflect the reality of a modern transfer market.
That means:
Transparent recruiting contact windows
Realistic tampering guidelines
Enforcement that is consistent and credible
Because what exists today is neither.
Right now the NCAA is fooling itself.
You can’t enforce rules that no longer match the system you created.
And you certainly can’t pick off a few schools when everyone else is playing the same game.
One Last Thing
So here’s a suggestion for the NCAA.
Stop pretending you still control college sports.
You don’t.
The conferences and TV networks run it.
The courts shape it.
The money dictates it.
At this point, the NCAA's attempt to enforce tampering rules is like me walking around pretending to be Fabio. It is simply not reality.
This is the reality of today’s college sports!!!! As the saying goes read it and weep!!!
Hard agree on all of this. They made their bed, now they gotta lie in it.