??
It was fine before all of the realignment and huge money, which were the first strikes.
Throw in free transfers and NIL and it's a disaster.
It's always been headed for disaster. It's a system that at its base is deeply unstable.
It was able to charge stadiums full of people to see the kids play. But the kids were not allowed to access what people wanted to pay them. We know this because under the table stuff went on forever. At some point, that was going to come to a head if schools leaned into wringing out maximum money and could not contain themselves to a certain budget.
Of course we know how they leaned into raising money. That part is easy, but the other part is more interesting. Schools wanted to win. They realized they could get an edge through spending, and we were set on this course. At some point when paying millions to coaches, building tens of millions in buildings and amenities to attract talent because money couldn't do it, eventually that was going to break. College athletic departments are in a place where they don't allow themselves to say "no" to so many different types of spending. Because if you didn't, you got left behind.
And in such a spend-heavy space, a flat system of compensation was eventually going to snap. The NCAA did itself no favors by dropping the transfer thing first in hopes of dodging NIL. Transfers might have been salvageable. Maybe. In some ways, it's a super pure market. Kids get whatever the folks with the money want to give them.
Schools got the most from their value and competed in the ways they could, and there was no other reckoning. Maybe it could've looked a bit different, but this is where it would end.
