Apocalypse or example?

 Maybe they shoulda had a plan. Who knows, mighta worked.

But, nah, the lords of corporate college athletics don't roll that way. They swing from the gut, even when the gut takes them to scary places they never imagined. Another way of saying that is they make it up as they go along.

So when they got lawyered into finally letting the kids who are the engine of their mighty capitalist machine become capitalists, too, they didn't have a plan. Plans are for wimps. The lords trusted their gut, same as ever.

And so here came the transfer portal and the NILs that enabled college athletes greater freedom and a piece of the economic pie, and now it's, Oh, God, college football and basketball are RUINED, I tell you, ruined. Just look at what's happening!

Well, yes, let's. Guys (and women) ARE transferring willy-nilly now. One of them, basketball player Parker Stewart, transferred from Tennessee-Martin to Indiana and now is transferring back to Tennessee-Martin. And now there's this basketball player at the U, Isaiah Wong, who's saying he'll transfer if he doesn't get a better NIL deal  -- even though the school has nothing to do with his NIL deal.

The whole thing's completely out of control. And of course it's all the fault of the kids,  because when has a 19 or 20 or 21-year-old ever consistently made rational decisions?

They see more money or what looks like a better situation, they're gonna jump at it. It's what kids do.

Then again, it's also what their coaches do. 

In the days since Wong announced he wanted a juicier NIL deal or he was off to the transfer portal, he's been made the poster child for everything that's wrong with the whole business, and why it's going to destroy college athletics. But where did a kid like Wong learn to be so nakedly mercenary?

Young people learn from their elders, and when their elders continually bolt for presumed greener pastures, the young people are going to follow that example. When Brian Kelly leaves Notre Dame after 12 years for LSU, the players he abandoned -- and players elsewhere -- take note. Same goes for Lincoln Riley abandoning Oklahoma for USC, and Jimbo Fisher ditching Florida State for Texas A&M, and so on and so forth.

In every case, Coach leaves for more money, a chunkier budget and a presumed better shot at the Big Ring. In every case, he breaks his word to the players he recruited for the school he's leaving. And in every case, he breaks a contract he signed in good faith.

Loyalty?

Shoot. Loyalty's for suckers. It's as over as eight-tracks.

So why wouldn't the kids think so, too?

What's happening might be seen as a looming apocalypse, but it's an apocalypse of college athletics' own doing. You change the landscape without a road map, that's what happens. You set the example your coaches set, you can't pretend to be surprised when the athletes follow that example.

College football and basketball have drunk deep from the free market well for decades. Now the athletes are drinking from it, too. And, gee, you mean how the free market operates didn't magically change because of that?

What a shock.