Transfer portal. NIL. Realignment. House settlement. Revenue-sharing. New governance. Eligibility extensions. Statewide and nationwide political involvement. Court case after court case. Lawsuit after lawsuit.
College athletics is in a chaotic and transformative time. It’s confusing for fans and media, and exhausting for coaches and administrators.
Everyone has their opinions, positive and negative, about the current state of college athletics.
But how do the players feel?
Is it as chaotic and confusing for them?
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Players today have gone through a rapid change in the 2020s. The games and the practices look the same except for some rule changes. But the daily life and meaning of being a college football player seems to have changed. Or has it?
College football fans may view today’s climate as too corporate and semi-pro. Massive TV revenue. Huge NIL deals. Millionaire players. Lamborghinis in the parking lots. Luxurious facilities. Fancy media days. Schools now paying players directly and creating contracts.
But that’s not what most of Division I college athletics looks like.
Most of college athletics looks like the FCS, Group of Five (soon to be G6), and D1-AAA (D1 schools that don’t sponsor football). Mid-majors make up much more of the D1 membership than the power schools. These mid-majors aren’t living large, they don’t rely on TV dollars, and they operate on tight budgets.
For players in the Missouri Valley Football Conference, the top FCS league and arguably stronger than one or two in the FBS G5, what are their thoughts on the state of college athletics? Do they even know or care what’s going on outside their locker room? Does the core point of college sports still ring true when it seems like everything always comes back to money in the national headlines?
HERO Sports spoke with them at the MVFC Media Day on July 21.
“It’s hard to keep track of all of it,” Illinois State defensive lineman Jake Anderson said. “But [Illinois State] does a good job holding meetings and stuff to make sure we know everything that’s going on as much as we can … until they change it the next time.”
South Dakota State defensive lineman Kobe Clayborne tries to keep tabs on the goings-on off the field, partially due to potentially wanting to be involved in college football after his playing career.
“I like change, so I love it,” Clayborne said. “Just being a younger guy and wanting to get into football, it’s cool to see and being able to experience it as a player. Because then having that experience as a player will help if I do ever go into coaching. But I think it’s cool. I think that it is the Wild, Wild West. I do think there needs to be some regulations and rules because what’s going on out there sometimes is crazy. And it’s out of players’ control. It’s out of coaches’ control. There are people, third parties, that are entering, and that causes a lot of commotion and corruption, really. And so I think there does need to be regulations. But overall, for the players’ aspects, I think it has benefited us as athletes.”
For two of the top players in the Valley – South Dakota running back Charles Pierre Jr. and North Dakota State linebacker Logan Kopp – they’re just focused on football.
“As a player, I’m not really worried about it,” Pierre said. “I’m just worried about the upcoming season and what the team is going to do. So it doesn’t really cross my mind, we just worry about putting our head down and working.”
Said Kopp: “I don’t pay a lot of attention to it. I rarely go on social media and don’t have any social media on my phone for over a year now. I think that’s a big part of it, is I don’t buy into what someone behind a phone screen is going to say about NDSU, about our players, about our coaches, the FCS, or about the Missouri Valley. I’m worried about the NDSU Bison, the players in the locker room with me, the coaches that coach us, and the fans that are cheering us on. Anybody else we try to drown out the noise.”
A player of Kopp’s ability (a back-to-back First Team All-MVFC selection), it’s a safe assumption that bigger schools were trying, through various methods, to get in his ear that they were interested in him. But Kopp said that was something he never explored.
And that’s one area of the changing landscape that FCS teams probably feel the most — the transfer portal.
There was a time when there were restrictions on transferring. A player would have to sit out a year if they transferred up a level unless they were a grad transfer. Players transferring down could play right away. But lawsuits chipped away at those restrictions. A one-time transfer rule was implemented where a player could transfer once with no punishment. That quickly gave way to what we have now, with no limitations on the number of times a player can transfer, making it easier for FCS standouts to transfer to the FBS.
Life-changing NIL offers and tampering have also incentivized FCS and G5 players to transfer to the P4, risking playing time for more money.
“I think, as far as the landscape of college football and the transferring, I’m not a particularly big fan of it,” North Dakota linebacker Malachi McNeal said. “But I would probably say as far as NIL, I think it’s a great thing to get athletes a piece of the pie. Get something to help compensate them. I think that’s great for them. But at the same time, I think you’re going to get everything that you deserve. So I think that it’s been a great tool to help build that piece and help athletes be able to help sustain their lives on a day-to-day without having to worry about anything other than football. But at the same time, I think some people kind of cloud their judgment with it.”
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The level of NIL money being offered at the FCS level is nowhere close to the power schools. But that isn’t a 100% bad thing. The purity of college football exists in the FCS due to the players’ main focus being on football, not money. There have been more FCS All-Conference players returning than departing for the FBS. And it’s a reasonable guess that many of them turned down more money to stay at their FCS school.
“We really don’t focus on that because we’re trying to build a team. And if you try to build a team based off money and greed, it’s not going to be a team,” Murray State running back Jawaun Northington said. “So we just try to build a relationship with each other, get to know each other, learn each other’s stories, and all that instead of focusing on outside noise. Because the most important thing is, you know, what are we going to do? Because at the end of the day, money’s not going to go out there and play football. We are. The players are. So that’s what we try to focus on, developing ourselves and developing our relationships with each other in order to be a team.”
The negatives in the new era are sometimes talked about more than the positives.
For example, the transfer portal and transferring come with a negative connotation for some fans. Some jump to negative and false assumptions. And sure, there are examples of players transferring for the wrong reasons. But the transfer portal mechanism and ability to transfer more easily have also resulted in many successful stories.
Southern Illinois quarterback DJ Williams, who transferred from Murray State before last season, is one of them.
“The relationship with me and coach [Nick] Hill, I tell people this all the time, I love him to death. Not just because he’s sitting right here, but I tell people this all the time,” Williams said. “He gave me a chance to take over a team when I’m coming off a 2-9 season as a starting quarterback. Not too many people would take a chance on a kid like me. We played him, he beat us, and he still saw my talents. I didn’t even play my best game against him. And as soon as I got with him, talked to him, coach Hill really gave me a chance at a lifetime, honestly. I love him to death for that. He brought me out of a tough spot where I didn’t have too much confidence in myself. I wasn’t the same person I was going into my Murray State years. Leaving there, I was going through it, honestly. I wasn’t the same person. Didn’t have the same smile playing the game. Honestly, he gave me that joy back and instilled that confidence back in me.”
