Alabama Football: Thoughts on pursuit of parity in college football

Alabama football fans, as well as Georgia fans, must be weary from the national anguish over the Tide and the Dawgs in another National Championship game. Perhaps we should care more, or at least try to understand why so many believe Nick Saban’s Alabama Crimson Tide is destroying college football.

A solid source, Matt Hayes, recently weighed in on what must be done to “save college football.” To Hayes, the solution is simple – as quickly as possible, expand the College Football Playoff format to 12 teams. As Hayes says, Playoff expansion will certainly happen. Clashing priorities may continue to delay it, but it will occur for one main reason.

That reason is money. College football is a profitable entertainment product and the bounty it generates, while already massive, will increase with an expanded Playoff format.

As Hayes reasons, the Georgia and Alabama football programs currently have,

"…a clear and distinct advantage right now. The only way they fail is from within. And it doesn’t look like that’s happening any time soon."

The why of the advantage, according to Hayes, begins with the two programs stockpiling elite recruits.

"…  there’s a reason elite 5-star recruits gravitate toward Alabama and Georgia. They want to play where they can win championships, and where they can be developed to play in the NFL."

To a large degree, the statement is correct, though it is wrong to imply that all other programs are significantly less capable of developing players for the NFL.

Hayes is correct, at least in terms of the 2021 season, when he said, college football has a problem and it is,

"That’s 128 teams vs. 2, and 2 have the advantage."

Hayes contends with 12 teams participating in the annual Playoff, fewer elite players will gravitate to Alabama and Georgia and will instead choose teams currently now only Playoff longshots. The anticipated result would be more parity in college football.

The only thing wrong with the premise is it does not consider the impact of NIL deals. Now that market forces openly apply to the recruitment of college athletes, the ‘rich’ will dominate the recruiting of elite players. There will be exceptions with certain athletes and programs, but few programs will be able to match the reservoir of NIL money a program like Texas A&M can use.

An expanded Playoff will not help the Aggies build their program near as much as will NIL money. Many other schools can compete in ‘free-for-all’ spending wars for players, but as the trend grows, so will the cost of building a two-deep via deep-pocket backers. Plenty of programs will not be able to keep up and most often, the rich will just get richer.

With all the rapidly escalating changes in college football, Alabama football fans are secure knowing the Crimson Tide will continue to be the best at developing players.