Considered the college football season now doubles the opening season in terms of transferability due to the NCAA’s new transfer windows, part of the process of building up bad games is addressing rumors. Drake Maye of North Carolina is Topics of speculation, and even his own head coach helped propel them.
Maye certainly didn’t play like an imminent opening in the Holiday Bowl against Oregon on Wednesday night. Yes, the Tarheels had a 13-point lead, but that had more to do with Mack Brown taking the lead on the fourth point and goals from both in the fourth half.
Of course, the Ducks eventually won, 28-27, with an extra, but that wasn’t the point. The point is that Maye has been playing pretty well – as he’s played all season – and even though he hasn’t yet qualified for the NFL Draft, his performance this year was good enough to win a contract. $5 million NIL to fill the void elsewhere. Homegrown Heel said he wouldn’t trade Carolina Blue for another school’s color, so kudos to him.
Farther west in the state, however, it’s a different story. Wake Forest is about to launch one of the more successful leagues in Winston-Salem history, and longtime quarterback Sam Hartman has made his name on the portal. He has 12,967 yards and 110 touchdowns in his career in black and old yellow, but it looks like any other numbers he amasses will come as Golden Domer, with reports take him to South Bend. There are no rumors of a raise, but I’m sure the QB1 at Notre Dame has NIL perks and deals.
That’s worrisome for a number of reasons, but the main one is that fans of the unbanked are increasingly losing ground because not only are blueblood bots poaching their trainers, but now they trying to poach the players. Being a real Triple-A club for teams you can’t compete with has tipped me forward and the school I’m a fan of isn’t in danger of that fate. At least not yet. (I hope.)
Look, I get it. No one will lose sleep over Demon Deacons. They are not a traditional football powerhouse, and they have continued an 11-win season with an eight-win campaign. If Hartman wants to spend his final season in college at Notre Dame competing for a spot in the knockout stages, that’s great.
Now things get really messed up when whenever a quarterback does better than his program, he is immediately the target of a big school with no signal callers for luck. free agent that the portal has created.
Maye had a bad relationship with Alabama during the recruiting process before eventually ending up at Chapel Hill, and considering that Tide wouldn’t have the expected top-three pick of Bryce Young after the Sugar Bowl, the machine must work. They had lost twice in frenetic finishes, and the game had slipped to the point where Jalen Milroe, who looked dynamic in his quest to replace Young, was a risk. One of the biggest flaws of the top shows is revenue, and although you can give every other position rep, quarterback is a big unknown. So why not go after a proven item if there is one?
And since colleges can’t technically offer a huge “contract extension,” there’s little or no incentive for athletes to stay loyal. Disgruntled 19-year-olds aren’t the only ones looking for greener pastures. The exposure, opportunity and situation in Tuscaloosa also appealed to star players at small schools like South Beach for LeBron James. (Mini market, small school, same difference.)
If only there was a way to get your best players to stay – you know, like a raise. While I don’t have to tie all of this to pay the unpaid workforce, it’s interesting and at least a way to prevent the big bank from always taking the small bank.
