I grew up in Michigan, so even though I didn’t go to the University of Michigan (too rich for my blood), college football was all about the maize and blue. My dad loved Wolverines football and gave my brother-in-law all sorts of a hard time about his having gone to Michigan State (only way it could’ve been worse is if he’d gone to Ohio State). They’ve both passed away in the last couple of years, but the spirit of their love of their respective schools and their football teams lives on in our family. 

It's getting, well, different now, however. When I was a kid, college sports were the audition for the pros and occasional scandals would see heralded universities across the country – including Michigan – penalized, both as programs and individual players for violating the NCAA rules. 

Those rules changed with Name, Image and Likeness rights (NIL) and the ability of student athletes to make money, sometimes huge sums of it, while in school as “amateur athletes.”

Schools were making fortunes off these players, why shouldn’t the players themselves? That made sense, even if it changed the spirit of the game, because why shouldn’t the people everyone is getting rich off of also get a piece of the action?

Of course, once Pandora’s Box........

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