Nobody Wants to Talk About The Real Problem With College Football

TL;DR

College football's NIL and transfer portal chaos are just kids mirroring the self-serving behavior their coaches and the NCAA modeled for decades.

Key Points

• 1.The term "student athlete" was invented in 1955 by NCAA executive Walter Byers specifically to deny workers' comp benefits to Ray Dennison's widow — not to protect players.
• 2.Amateurism originated in 1800s England as a tool for the wealthy elite to block working-class athletes from competing, and the NCAA embedded the same concept into its founding constitution in 1906.
• 3.Walter Byers later admitted in his autobiography that he crafted "student athlete" to shield schools from liability, and by end of life publicly said athletes deserved to be paid.
• 4.The NCAA refused to let players earn NIL money partly because admitting a player's name had value would undermine the legal fiction that they weren't employees — so they cancelled EA Sports games for 10 years instead.
• 5.Lane Kiffin, Bobby Petrino, Willie Taggart, and Brian Kelly are cited as coaches who repeatedly broke recruiting commitments and left programs mid-cycle — with zero punishment — while preaching loyalty to players.
• 6.Over 4,000 players entered a single transfer portal window, roughly a third of all D1 scholarship athletes, and NFL coaches report players arriving less developed, more entitled, and less resilient.
• 7.Dr. Albert Bandura's 1963 Bobo Doll experiment — confirmed across 60+ years of research — shows kids imitate powerful authority figures behaviorally, not verbally, meaning the NCAA and coaches' self-interest directly shaped player culture.