it’s flat out not sustainable…they’ve got to make significant changes to the portal and implement clear guidelines and rules for NIL.
They can keep all the NIL stuff, and the portal. Just put the one year sit out rule back in, and remove waivers. I think that would solve 95% of it.
I'm not a Pitt fan, but Pitt literally hit their ceiling last year, with an ACC Championship, and a NY6 bowl. They had a Heisman Finalist QB, and the best WR in the nation. Instead those guys sat out a "meaningless" Peach Bowl, and the WR took $1 million to go to USC. They got a transfer QB from USC, who left for no apparent reason, he started every game. But they added the Boston College starting QB, who transferred to BC from ND.
What is the incentive to be a Pitt fan? Your peak is a top 5 bowl that nobody cares about, and your best players skip, and then leave. That's why I'm all for playoff expansion if the rest of the postseason is completely irrelevant. I was listening to a podcast discussing Mel Tucker, and whether he was worth the money, if he can't even hit Dantonio levels. The counter point was that nobody cares if your program hits Dantonio levels anymore. You are either a regular CFP participant, and an actual contender, or you aren't. The difference between 9-3 and 3-9 is negligible, so even if Mel Tucker crashes and burns, he did so trying to get the types of players who could *potentially* make MSU relevant. In the current climate, the Dantonio MSU really would not have been. Hell, it's not even 2012 anymore, let alone 1992.