On the surface, in the moment, college football looks like a sport that's finally undergone some transformational change.
On the surface, in the moment, players can now transfer so easily you're to be forgiven for wondering if some might soon be able to switch teams at halftime. Down 35-0? Report to the other locker room, son; then we'll really put a whoopin' on Dear Old Whatsitsname.
More than 25% of the Associated Press first and second All-America teams are transfers.
Players you once suspected of accumulating hard cash under the table no longer have to stoop; they can get it over the table, an overdue adjustment that allows many of Saturday's heroes to trade on their name, image, and likeness. Some of these arrangements include staggering levels of cash, but it's especially staggering to the many romantics in the national audience who felt that players couldn't, shouldn't or wouldn't get paid eventually.
Yet for all of this, the sport's essential narrative remains fairly stagnant for the season that begins this weekend. Alabama was the preseason No. 1 (you're kidding!), and to hear the wagering crowd tell it, you can count on one hand the schools not named Alabama with a chance of being the postseason No. 1. In fact, you can count those on Mickey Mouse's hand (he has three fingers — why do I have to explain everything?)
"I can't recall a season when there was so much separation between the top teams and the rest of the field," said Robert Cooper, director of trading for SportsBetting.ag in an email this week. "The talent, the schedules, the conferences ... it just kind of created a perfect storm of superiority in the college football ranks."
Cooper points out that nearly 70% of the betting to reach the four-team College Football Playoff tournament is on, uh, four teams, and almost half of that is on Alabama. The three Mickey fingers are Ohio State, Georgia, and Clemson. After that there's an enormous dip to USC and Texas A&M, each attracting just 6% of the action.
The game may be changing foundationally, but it's calcifying at the top, and nobody's betting that will change. Who or what would dare to amend college football's enduring, essential narrative?
Hooters, they say.
Who's they? Hooters.
"For decades, the physical play, blue-collar mentality and on-field leadership of the offensive lineman has shined," Hooters chief marketing officer Bruce Skala said in announcing the chicken wings empire's NIL deal with 51 offensive linemen, "but national praise and attention for these crucial players has all-too-often been sidelined. We want to change the narrative and celebrate these elite student-athletes who play a pivotal role in making college football so thrilling."
Hear this, ye college football journalists: Your coverage has just been called top heavy by Hooters.
Well, it's a start, anyway. I think it's great that Hooters is spotlighting 51 typically anonymous blockers at 10 schools, none north of Missouri, because ultimately there's plenty of good left in college football; it's just not where we typically look for it.
It's great to discover, thanks to a story in the Tulsa World, that that backup long-snapper at Oklahoma State is one Zeke Zaragoza, a California kid with a narrative that practically belies belief.
Blindsided at age 3 by a nervous system so confounding it took a team of 25 neurologists even to identify it, Zeke fought for years from a wheelchair against opsoclonus-myoclonus syndrome, said to affect one in 10 million people annually. Told he couldn't play sports or so much as ride a bike, his parents opted for aggressive treatments and Zeke finally went into remission and began playing football at age 10. When he was recruited, his parents kept his story hidden because Zeke wanted no favors as he competed for a shot at playing college football. Now he suits up for the Cowboys.
It's wonderful to read my friend Tom Archdeacon in the Dayton Daily News anytime, but his column this week about hope and heart and humility called attention to an undersized walk-on wideout at the University of Dayton, Brian Dolby.
A couple weeks back, a number of Dayton players were asked to explain one of their tattoos in front of their teammates. Dolby lifted his shirt and pointed to a small circle with the number "41" inside.
"I told them that had been my grandpa's number and that I got it for him because he's the motivation for what I'm doing."
That's all he said.
His grandfather?
Brian Piccolo.
I won't explain that one. Just find the movie.
More typically, we look to things like the Heisman race for an example of individual brilliance, but how wrapped up can we get in the question of which young stud who's been accumulating trophies for most of his life ends up with another one?
That said, it's not going to be Alabama's Bryce Young, because he won the Heisman Trophy last year. So says the Alice Miller Rule (this, I don't mind explaining).
In the fall of 1975, when mastodons walked the sidelines and I was just starting my so-called career, Ohio State running back Archie Griffin was galloping toward his second consecutive Heisman.
But hold on there Buckeye, said Alice Miller.
Ms. Miller, my aunt, a casual college football fan whose preferences leaned toward Notre Dame for no evident reason — and to Army because everyone seemed to like Navy — asked me pointedly why sportswriters would let Archie Griffin win a second Heisman.
"Why not?" I wondered.
"He won it last year," she said.
"So what?"
"It's not right," she said. "He's already won it. Let somebody else win it."
I still have no idea whether my aunt Alice's view had merit or not. I'll simply state that after Griffin, no one's ever won it twice, even though the 10 juniors who did win it and went on to be seniors all took their crack at it and failed.
None came especially close.
That's the Alice Miller Rule, unofficially on the books since 1976.
