As 2022 winds down, Sports Illustrated is looking back at the themes and teams, story lines and through lines that shaped the year.
The year began with a seismic shift: Georgia winning its first national championship in 41 years. The Bulldogs were slight favorites against Alabama, but the act of taking down the Crimson Tide and nemesis Nick Saban was the first indication that 2022 was going to be different.
Momentously chaotic might be the best way to put it.
By February, after Texas A&M had signed its best recruiting class under what certainly seemed like collective- and NIL-aided circumstances, we were solidly on our way. In the spring, Saban said the Aggies “bought every player on their team,” and A&M coach Jimbo Fisher furiously countered by calling Saban a “narcissist” and “despicable.” Well, we were off and running.
Collectives were demonized by some and defended by others. The NCAA flailed so much in its attempts to enforce standing rules against pay-for-play recruiting that it issued what amounted to a We Need Snitches APB to the membership.
Then came June 30, when the year didn’t just shift, it nearly split open. News broke that USC and UCLA were out of the Pac-12 door in ’24 for the Big Ten, setting off shock waves throughout the industry and following the 2021 jolt of Oklahoma and Texas announcing their moves to the Southeastern Conference. Both moves crystallized the biggest rivalry in college sports: the Big Ten and Fox vs. the SEC and ESPN.
Everyone else was diminished and endangered. The Big 12 and its new commissioner talked big about potentially raiding the vulnerable Pac-12. The Pac-12 scoffed in response. Notre Dame, the ultimate lever that could send realignment spinning further, held fast as an independent. Everything seemed to calm down. For how long, we shall see.
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Two months later, college football finally got its act together and moved past a petty commissioner impasse to formalize an expansion of its playoff from four to 12 teams. This took some 14 months longer than it should have, but progress was progress—it was just a matter of how fast that progress could come into being. By December, the rush order had been put in place: 12 teams by 2024.
On Dec. 5, the transfer portal swung open once again and the flood of prospects was unlike anything we have seen before. Big names, small names—it seemed like everyone was on the move. College leaders complained about the portal becoming de facto free agency and players taking the best available offer—kind of like what coaches have done for themselves for decades.
The transfer exodus impact on bowl games is just being felt. The impact on the 2023 season will be immense.
On the field, Texas A&M’s massive flop, —from top-five team to a 5-7 record—was a Schadenfreude Special for many. Two big-time coaches who changed jobs, USC’s Lincoln Riley and LSU’s Brian Kelly, made their new schools’ massive investments immediately worthwhile by reaching conference championship games, where they both got trucked and missed the Playoff. Instead, the new coach who authored the biggest breakthrough was one no one saw coming: Sonny Dykes at TCU. He guided the Horned Frogs into the Playoff as the No. 3 seed, breaking up an SEC-Big Ten stranglehold that saw those two leagues position their teams in first (Georgia), second (Michigan), fourth (Ohio State), fifth (Alabama) and sixth (Tennessee).
Yet for all the momentous chaos, we end 2022 where we started it: reigning champion Georgia once again looming as the team to beat.
Here is a selection of SI’s best college football stories of the past year.—Pat Forde
The Other Side of College Football’s Game Changer: The NIL Collective, by Ross Dellenger
Many believe collectives are exploiting a loophole, using a concept that wasn’t the intention of NIL. Leaders within the college sports industry have questioned the collectives’ motives and tactics, in many ways demonizing them for operating a pay-for-play scheme and doling out salaries to college athletes. The truth may be somewhere in between.
An Inside Look at the Most Powerful Person in College Sports, by Pat Forde
SEC commissioner Greg Sankey has evolved into the most powerful person in his line of work, at a moment of acute fragility within the enterprise. But as his league swells in numbers, lines its coffers with cash and helps destabilize the national landscape, it’s fair to ask: Is the smartest guy in every room and on every committee now piloting college sports along the best path, or the road to ruin?
Why Have Southern Teams Dominated the CFP? Follow the Money, and History, by Richard Johnson
The original sin is pretending college football is something it simply isn’t. It is a sport with regional pockets of fervor that masquerades as a national endeavor when you link them all together. There are weak links in the chain. It is played from sea to shining sea, but it is no secret where it is played the best.
Lane Kiffin on NIL, Recruiting and Boosters: ‘We’re a Professional Sport,’ by Ross Dellenger
“I’ve said from the beginning, players should get paid. They do the work. Why that should be limited to a scholarship check, I disagree with. And they shouldn’t be [paid] all equal. That’s not what happens in the real world. Why does their best player get paid the same as their worst player? That’s not real life. There’s just not a system. It was ‘O.K., open it up!’ No system behind it. I’m sure some people saw these things coming, and a lot of people didn’t.”
USC, UCLA and the Big Ten Get Theirs, But at What Cost?, by Pat Forde
In a monetary vacuum, both sets of moves make sense. Texas and Oklahoma will leave behind a smaller revenue pool for a bigger one, and the SEC will welcome two longtime cash cows to enhance its bottom line. For USC and UCLA, moving out of a conference of fading relevance to join one that is on the cusp of a record new media-rights deal smooths the path back to powerhouse status, and the Big Ten answers the SEC’s aggression with arguably an even bigger move. It makes sense, but it also sucks. College athletics has continued its descent into soulless professionalism.
The more you dig into the landscape, the more apparent it becomes that there are, in effect, two worlds of name, image and likeness. There’s what was on display at the Hall of Fame in Atlanta: a celebration of the new era the way it was largely envisioned to operate. Then, there’s the rapidly expanding space that fueled, most notably, the recent spat between Jimbo Fisher and Nick Saban: booster-funded collectives that traffic in the recruiting inducement and pay-for-play space.
