There hasn’t been a college football offseason like this one in the entire history of the sport. Quarterbacks in rehab for gambling, over-the-top sponsorship patches funding NIL budgets, and players who are too old to be on their parents’ health insurance, but not too old to run out of eligibility.
As the cliche saying goes, “I didn’t have that on my bingo card.” Well, after Sunday it feels like we’ve run out of bingo cards this offseason.
The headlines that get churned out on sports media sites during the current state of college football seem almost made up at times. The titles on social media graphics are so sensational they almost seem like fictional. That was definitely the case with Sunday’s news of Cleveland Browns tight end Dae’Quan Wright announcing he was committing to LSU. That’s right, the tight end at Ole Miss last year and first-year NFL player, who signed two deals with teams in his attempt to make a roster. That guy is now signing with LSU with less than two weeks until their first game.
It’s not illegal, and LSU isn’t the only team that will be adding these types of fifth-year players with these types of resumes to their current roster. It doesn’t make the situation any less shockingly dissimilar to the normalcy that college football used to have just a few short years ago. It took us just five years to go from $20,000 NIL deals for quarterbacks being noteworthy to having multiple Power Four quarterbacks rivaling LeBron James’ yearly salary this season.
So, with changes coming that drastically and at that rate of speed, one can only imagine what kind of weirdness we’ll be reading about in the next five to 10 years. Here are a few predictions for them.
1. Texas sells a 49% share of football program to Elon Musk
2. Pat McAfee signs with the Dodgers
3. The SEC and Big Ten create a super power conference with Notre Dame
4. Transfer portal quarterback signs deal worth more than his head coach
5. LSU hires another polarizing leader, Kanye West, as band director
6. Curt Cignetti calls out China for being a fake superpower at Big Ten Media Days
7. Mr. Beast to start at quarterback for Boise State after pledging $100 million for NIL budget
8. NCAA places two-year bowl ban on BYU after reports of giving improper benefits to over a dozen Make-A-Wish participants
9. Diego Pavia commits to NAIA powerhouse after being granted another 11 years of eligibility by Topeka judge
10. Notre Dame opts out of reality, stages on-field protest during first round playoff game they weren’t playing in
