Anonymous wrote:The big-time college sports, mainly football and basketball, have now fully become minor league professional sports. You've got guys jumping in the transfer portal every offseason, playing at four schools in four years. Signing a "contract" to play at a school. Making big $$ to play their sports and likely not focusing on academics very much.

Don't get me wrong, I have no problem with the players being able to get something after years of the coaches and administrators making big $$ off the backs of their labor.

My question is more for the fans and general public. Now that big time college athletics is just minor league pro sports, why does anyone still care about it? Why do they watch?

Nobody watches AA minor league baseball. Nobody watches G-league basketball. Nobody watches minor league hockey. That's exactly what the big-time college sports have now become - minor leagues to the professional leagues.

My view is that if you're going to spend your time and money watching sports, watch the best players. Watch the NBA, the NFL, etc. Why waste your time and money watching minor league players "in college?"

Anonymous wrote:A large % of the viewers are gambling, right?

As for why people care... it's alumni and legacy viewers. Private equity and media can milk the aging legacy viewers for the next 40 years. If you are a 30 year old Georgia or Michigan alum, it's not like you can change your degree and rewrite your life experiences from age 0 to 22. You're going to be an observer of that college team until you die. That's what they're milking. Execs and bankers don't care if everything evolves negatively or dies in 50 years -- it's about profit extraction NOW

Anonymous wrote:I have never really cared about college sports ever.

Anonymous wrote:This year I really felt disinterested

Anonymous wrote:This year I really felt disinterested

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Anonymous wrote:If major networks invested billions of dollars into the broadcast rights of minor league baseball and G-league basketball then people would probably watch. College Sports will always continue to be popular and important because it's incredibly accessible to the common fan.

And a huge tradition.

Fair, but what’s happening now is not that tradition. These universities now have minor league professional sports teams attached to them as appendages. And these appendages are increasingly disconnected from the idea of a university as a school of higher learning.

This is not the good old days of all American student athletes going to class and walking around campus in their letter jackets.

I’m probably romanticizing the old days but you get the idea.

You are romanticizing the old days. I remember when my Div 1 Uni came out in the 1980s saying it would not go as low as the NCAA was then allowing for SAT scores. I think it was 800 TOTAL at that time. I had taken the old SAT as a 7th grader and not known any algebra and gotten a 370 math off a few arithmetic problems. So basically the requirement was you could read and make change. Not impressive at all. And the bowl-winning teams liked to brag about the very ordinary scholarship capabilities of their teams...but they got first choice of the literate players because of their wins, not because of the free education. Our best football player (Heisman-eligible) left as a junior or so for the NFL after several violent incidents and a crashed loaner luxury car.

Looked up what the SAT are now and there are no rules anymore. Google AI says:

"The NCAA permanently removed the SAT/ACT score requirement for Division I initial eligibility starting in 2023, so there's no minimum score needed, but student-athletes must still meet core course requirements and have a certain GPA, with universities setting their own higher standards. While older rules had a sliding scale (e.g., a 900 SAT with a 3.55 GPA, or 1000 SAT with a 2.0 GPA), that system is gone, focusing now on your core GPA and high school courses."

The disconnection was there in the 1990s but people keep kidding themselves.