Cynical isn't a strategy

I played college football at the University of Texas. I love football — the game in general, and the college game in particular. Or I did. Lately I’m not sure which tense to use.

The sport has changed, and most of the change runs through money. Somewhere along the way the money stopped being a side effect of the game and became the reason for it. It’s the same turn a lot of American business took: run everything to maximize value for shareholders. The trouble is that in college football the shareholders aren’t the athletes anymore, if they ever were.

I could have stopped there. Plenty of former players do. You get jaded, you complain to your friends during the bowl games, and you leave the arguing about NIL and the transfer portal to people on TV. But being jaded isn’t a strategy. It’s just a mood that lasts a long time.

So I tried to do something about it. I built College Football Alum, a site where verified former D1 players can grade the programs they played for and vote on the questions the sport is fighting about right now: NIL, the transfer portal, the playoff, realignment. Players can post under their name or stay anonymous. School pages fill in as more reviews come in, so nobody’s single opinion stands in for a whole program.

That last part matters to me. I don’t think I have all the answers, and I don’t assume my view is representative of the guys I played with or against. The point isn’t to broadcast what I think. It’s to find out what we think, collectively, from the people who actually lived it — instead of letting the loudest voices in the sport be the ones who never played a down.

To say it hasn’t caught on yet is an understatement. So far the sign-ups are a few good friends. That’s taught me something I didn’t want to learn: building the thing was the part I’m good at, and getting people to show up is a different skill. Marketing doesn’t come naturally to me. I’m working on it, starting with writing this.

Still, I’m glad I built it. Now when someone asks what I think about NIL, the playoff, or the transfer portal, I can tell them — and I can tell them I tried to do something about it.

If you played D1 football, I’d like to hear what you think. Sign up at collegefootballalum.com.