The more college football changes, the more it stays the same

You dare not turn on your television or open your newspaper or web browser lest you encounter more news that breaks your spirit.

You go to sports to escape the insanity of culture wars and the horrors of real wars. So let’s focus on the frivolous. For instance, the NCAA transfer portal.

University of Pittsburgh wide receiver Jordan Addison caught 100 passes for 1,593 yards and 17 touchdowns last season for the Panthers and won the Biletnikoff Award as the nation’s top receiver. Now he’s in the portal.

If Addison leaves Pitt for USC as has been speculated, he would join quarterback Caleb Williams, who departed Oklahoma in the offseason.

Another quarterback, Spencer Rattler, transferred from Oklahoma to South Carolina after last season. Last month, Rattler said “I was just happy to get away from a toxic situation and get somewhere new. Anywhere was going to be better, and I found the right place.”

All this player movement has a lot of fans saying they’re starting to lose love for the college game with all the comings and goings. They dislike the goings much more than the comings.

The NIL money some players are getting doesn’t sit well with everyone, either. They might feel differently if the players were their children.

By the way, Lincoln Riley also left Oklahoma after last season to become USC’s head coach. Reportedly, his long-term deal is worth $110 million.

Riley moved into a $17.2 million oceanfront house in Los Angeles County with 13,000 square feet, 12 bathrooms, seven bedrooms, seven fireplaces, a five-car garage, a movie theater, and a sauna/steam room.

Hey, the guy apparently likes nice things. He can have them because some rich people who like USC football are tired of the Trojans not being football kings like they once were.

In other college sports news this week. Big Ten Conference Commissioner Kevin Warren said he expects his league to have a new media rights deal soon. It could reach $1.1 billion per year.

Wowie! It’s good to be the Big Ten. It’s good to be a Big Ten executive. It’s good to be an athletics department administrator or a football coach or a lot of other people who work for Big Ten members’ athletic departments.

All that cash makes it easier for everyone else in the Big Ten to stomach Ohio State’s status as the penthouse football program of the upper-class conference. No, the Buckeyes didn’t win the Big Ten last season, but will again, and again, and again.

Ohio State had two wide receivers taken in the first round of last week’s NFL draft, giving it 10 since 1960. The next time another Big Ten team has two receivers go in the same first round will be the first time.

You think NIL will tilt the field toward the dynasties? Much like in real life, there’s been a class system in college football forever. No, Iowa isn’t Ohio State, but it lives in a much-ritzier neighborhood than almost everyone else in college athletics.

Besides an 11-man coaching staff and five strength and conditioning coaches, Iowa has a director of football operations, a director of player personnel, a director of recruiting and a director of football administration.

It also has a director of player development, a director of football creative media, a director of analytics, a director of football video operations, and assorted assistant directors of those departments. There also are analysts and specialists.

Which makes Iowa no different from just about everyone else in the Big Ten and SEC.

Yet, we all watch the games because of the entertainers, not the staffers with the titles. Even though the players have the newfound freedom to change schools on a whim and can now cash in on their own name, the college game and everyone who makes a nice living from it will be just fine.

If you don’t believe that, you probably thought people were serious when they said they’d stop watching the NFL because of players kneeling during the national anthem.

It’s American football and it’s too darn big to fail. If only all our big things were.

Comments: (319) 398-8440; mike.hlas@thegazette.com