Over the past few years, the college football landscape has undergone profound changes. With the addition of the transfer portal, players face essentially no consequences, outside of public image, and transfer as they please. However, it’s not just the transfer portal egging players on to transfer, it’s Name, Image, and Likeness (NIL). In 2019, California passed the first state law involving NIL so college athletes could get paid. Fine, I get it, they’re working their tails off and are getting no money, might as well pay them. However, it has quickly become a virus spreading in the collegiate sports world. Not to say teams weren’t giving players money before NIL became legal, but it certainly seemed a lot more under the table. Now, players are blatantly making commitment and transfer decisions unscrupulously. For example, Arch Manning, Texas’ starting quarterback is being paid 6.8 million dollars to play college football. Why even go to the NFL? Another example is Bryce Underwood, University of Michigan’s starting quarterback and the number one recruit in the class of 2025. Underwood is being paid somewhere between 10 to 12.5 million dollars according to Front Office Sports. It is not ridiculous to infer players are basing decisions solely based on money, which completely makes sense, I think most people would. However, transferring due to the amount of money a different school is offering you is completely unfair to your coaches, teammates, and fans. Darian Mensah, Tulane University’s former starting quarterback, left the team when finding out he could make four million dollars a year at Duke. He was previously making zero dollars at Tulane. Understandably, players will want to make money if this is essentially their entire life, but allowing programs to offer players seemingly infinite amounts of money seems wrong. Most recently, Demond Williams Jr. of the Washington Huskies signed a contract of five million dollars to stay with the Huskies. Days later, he announced that he would be entering the transfer portal after being offered six million dollars from Louisiana State. While he ended up staying with the Huskies, his true character has been exposed by this mishap.

There are times that this transferring w0ros outbetter for both parties. The most clear being former Ferris State quarterback, Trinidad Chambliss. Chambliss won a division two national championship with Ferris State in 2024, making zero dollars in NIL. After that year, Chambliss was offered 650 thousand dollars to come play at Ole Miss. He was the starting quarterback of this years team, leading them all the way to a nail bitter in CFP semifinals. Now, Chambliss makes money and has found success in Oxford, and Ferris State now has more players getting the recognition to transfer at the division one level due to Chambliss’ success.

Players are the tip of the iceberg. We’ve recently seen coaches act with zero loyalty to their team and program. Most recently, we’ve seen two power four coaches leave their successful programs in favor of more historically valued programs. The first being Lane Kiffin, the former head coach of Ole Miss (University of Mississippi), the second being Iowa State University’s Matt Campbell. Kiffin lead the team to their most successful season in years, with a record of 11-1 and the #11 seed in the College Football Playoff (which is a whole different beast). Just after confirming they will be making the playoffs, Kiffin left the team for Louisiana State University, an inferior program this year who lost their head coach Brian Kelly midseason. This will undoubtedly be a textbook example of coaches having no loyalty to programs. It certainly was not all because of the history of LSU football, but likely because he will now be making 13 million dollars annually. Kiffin was making an already absurd amount of money at Ole Miss, taking in nine million a year, but his greed has consumed him. Of course, he needs more money! The aforementioned Campbell has gone in an eerily similar direction. Campbell, who has been the head coach of ISU since 2015, left for Penn State University. Penn State is another university with an extremely deep history in college football, and I wish I could say it was just because of that, but alas, it is not. Campbell is now making 8.8 million dollars annually, and 70.5 million dollars guaranteed according to ESPN. He was previously raking in five million dollars a year, once again, who wouldn’t want more money? Who needs morals when you have millions?

This is not new to college football, however, this complete lack of principle by seemingly any coach on the Division 1, Power Four Level, has gone too far. It’s become out of control, and it will continue to make it hard for any program outside of the ones with millions of dollars in disposable income to win. Money has made it understandably impossible for players to stay with programs paying them less. However, this does beg the question, what could a college kid possibly need tens of millions of dollars for? Chipotle? Nice cars? It seems morally wrong for people aged 18-23 getting that much money. It promotes terrible spending habits when the money is no longer there, I will not be surprised when it’s found that many college athletes are broke when they are no longer playing. With these new rules, it seems college football is becoming more and more like NFL free agency. Whoever has the most money, wins.