On Fandom and a Changing College Sports Landscape

Around 20 years ago, former WSU head football coach Bill Doba was talking to reporters after national signing day when he was asked how good his recruits would be. Doba’s response was along the lines of, “I don’t know, ask me in three years.”

What he meant was, You’re asking me about a bunch of high school seniors and a few junior college transfers. We’ll develop them starting this fall, probably redshirt most of them, and they’ll continue to develop as they work their way up the depth chart. By their junior year, most of them will have proven whether they’re good or not.

Nowadays, if you asked Jake Dickert the same question, the answer might be, I just hope half of them are still here in three years.

The loosened transfer rules and Name, Image and Likeness (NIL) have no doubt transformed college sports, and mainly football and men’s basketball. The line between athletes being treated as amateurs or professionals has been blurred to an extent we’ve never seen before. Throw in the money tossed around by the TV networks—not to mention their influence in conference realignment—and I’m starting to turn into the person I used to mock: The fan yearning for “the good old days.”

“The good old days” mean something different for everyone. For some, it’s football games kicking off at 2 p.m. every home Saturday. For others, it’s simply players sticking around at least until their junior year.

When Dick Bennett coached WSU’s basketball team in his last season before handing the reigns to his son Tony, the roster was littered with sophomores who played big minutes. The team wasn’t great overall, but fans could see the potential and were excited for the next two seasons because those sophomores had two more years to develop and improve. And lo and behold, with a tinkering to the offense the next season, those teams became perhaps the school’s most memorable.

As we saw with this year’s version of WSU men’s basketball, instead of being hyped about the future and what’s returning—and how we can now build a program with a good core and a great coach—Isaiah Watts walks in the WSU dressing room like this:

To be clear: NIL and unlimited transfers are both good, philosophically.

It was always odd and probably cruel to prevent players from making money off their own name, image and likeness when the schools could make tons of money for themselves doing so. And if coaches can up and leave whenever they want, why shouldn’t players?

But the affects NIL and unlimited transfers have on the game has made it an adjustment—to say the least—for the fans. No longer are we excited after a 4-8 football season because we have a quarterback with two more years of eligibility coming back and most of our young offensive line returning, or a sub-par basketball season when four of our five starters are coming back.

Now, we see that quarterback with tons of potential starting to look elsewhere after one or two seasons. Cam Ward is on his third school, as is TJ Bamba. Again, that’s their right, as it should be. But for the fans who help fund the athletic department, it’s now a year-by-year exercise: No longer are we looking forward to seeing how a quarterback or a wide receiver or an offensive lineman has developed after summer workouts. It’s now a wait-and-see game wondering who’s on the roster this fall.

And the coaches who recruit them? Man, those transfers have to be a kick to the pills. Coaches spend tons of time and money recruiting players in hopes that they can develop. And to see them bounce after one good season? That’s not a good return on investment. I know coaches are paid well and maybe the sympathy isn’t always directed in their direction, but you have to feel for them on some level.

It’s a brand new ballgame in college athletics, and it might be about to get even thornier:

Fans may not like it, but we’ll have to get used to it. I’ll still tune in to the College Football Playoff. I’ll still do my best to catch every WSU football game no matter how fun or maddening the play on the field is (on the CW and Fox this fall!). I’ll still watch the NCAA Tournament. I’ll do all of this like the NCAA and the TV networks want me to do, to justify their existence.

But the die hard fandom is slowly dying inside of me. Maybe it’s age, having been out of college for 15 years. Maybe it’s reality having seeped in, knowing that the hype I drank in my teens and early 20’s was me being suckered into what the mass media wanted. What I really need to do is heed the advice of Michael: Enjoy the good times during the good times.

It’s a strange new world of college athletics. You get to decide whether that’s a good thing or a bad thing.