re: Hard to get excited about any player coming when they're only there for the money, not LSU

I feel the way you do, Shine. After thinking about it a bit they have been getting paid before they were getting paid legally, just not to this extent. There's always been a bit of lack of loyalty in some players.

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That seems entirely reasonable for the school. But the OP was talking about the fans. And there seems to be a strange notion on message boards like this that we are somehow compelled or obligated to love whatever the NCAA tells us to love. Not caring about a "sport" is still an option. Most of us are LSU fans because we came to love college football and LSU is our team. But if that sport -- the sport we fell in love with -- no longer exists, why would we feel compelled to invest our time, energy, emotion and -- especially -- money into whatever bastardized creation they put on display?

Many people on here comment extesively about how they don't care about womens basketball, or softball, or tennis, or swimming & diving, or some other LSU sports. Presumably, that is because they simply aren't invested in those sports because those sports don't appeal to them. If what happens on Saturday nights in the fall isn't the sport that we grew up loving, who is to say that it necessarily has to appeal to us? If you don't care about LSU's Gymnastics team, why should the OP care about LSU's Minor League NFL team? I don't particularly care about the sport of baseball, but I love LSU baseball solely and specifically because it is LSU athletes competing for LSU. The same has always been true for LSU Football as well. The more that reality diminishes, the more that emotion investment is uncertain. And that is 100% not a diminution of my (or anyone else's) love or commitment to LSU's College Football team, it is only a consequence of LSU (along with the rest of the NCAA) abandoning College Football as a sport.

College Football is 100% dying, especially at the "Major" level like LSU. Whether any particular fan of College Football feels an emotional attachment to the new sport being introduced is completely up to them. Passing on that is no different than anyone else passing on any other LSU endeavor. Would you pay thousands of dollars for season tickets to watch LSU's groundskeeping staff do their job? No? Then why would you pay that to watch some other LSU employee doing their job? If it's because you find professional football entertaining, I've got news for you: there's MUCH better professional football happening every Sunday throughout football season (and even longer, for now). Maybe you love even more professional football, and if so that's great for you. But the history of past minor leagues of pro football suggests that most people don't share that love; at least, not enough to make such a league viable.

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You are not compelled to love college football. There is no law, regulation, requirement, or social moral compelling you to love college football.

You are free. Whatever ties you feel bind you to college football are hereby torn asunder. You're welcome.



Here's the thing about this thread and all of the other threads like this that have been started by the OP and others.

The vast majority of us are tired of hearing about it. Quit the CONSTANT bitching. We get it. You're tired of football players playing for money.

It's been going on for over 100 years! Do you know why LSU did not win the national championship in 1908 even though they were 10-0 and only had ONE touchdown scored against them? The team was accused of paying its players.

If you don't like college football, fine. Leave and take your keyboard with you. College football was doing fine for about a century before you got interested. It's growing even now. It will be fine if you stop watching. Just like real professional football.

Paid mercenaries. Do they actually register at the school and attend classes?

you have a point..

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It's been going on for over 100 years

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If you genuinely believed that college football exists today in the same form as it did 100 years ago, then there would be no point discussing anything with you.

I suspect you actually know better than that. So I will attempt to engage in a real discussion.

Paying players like this has absolutely not been going on for 100 years. As you yourself referenced, in 1908 LSU was penalized by the (then) shepherds of the sport for the sin of paying players. Whether we were actually guilty of it or not is irrelevant, the point is that it was roundly condemned because college football was an amateur sport. That model continued to exist through a multitude of other changes in the sport for over 100 more years until recently, when the dial spun dramatically in rapidly in the other direction. So we no longer have an amateur sport of college football, which means we no longer have the sport that existed until roughly the last 5-7 years (I don't remember when NIL actually first came into existence). Instead we have this new thing. The people making money off of it insist on calling it "college football" to milk the profits off the decades of emotional investment from fans into the amateur sport of college football. But whether it is actually college football, and (if it is) whether it will remain so, are genuine questions.

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College football was doing fine for about a century before you got interested. It's growing even now.

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That's only true if it is still college football. That is the point. The sport has not changed in the sense of refining pass interference or instituting overtime; it has fundamentally changed from an extra-curricular amateur school activity to a professional sports league. And all the pounding and shouting about players getting paid under the table will never change that simple fact; the fact that it was (by necessity) under the table is a qualitative, not quantitative, difference.

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If you don't like college football, fine. Leave and take your keyboard with you.

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I love college football, and have for as long as I can remember. And the money hasn't changed that. The only thing that I fear might change it is the status of the players. When they stop being LSU students playing football for LSU, I don't know if it will still be "LSU Football" for me. But for the moment, it still is. I just do not agree with the notion of, "this is the game, you have to adapt". If people don't like minor leage pro-football, there is no reason for them to pretend to like it just because LSU sponsors a team. If LSU sponsored a second-rate professional ballet troop, I probably wouldn't be emotionally invested in that, either. Would you?

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Those who don't adapt, wither away and die.

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Hardly. For the most part, they simply find something else to spend their time, energy and money on that they actually enjoy.

Do you still have season tickets to your favorite WLAF team? And XFL? I mean, if your "man card" depends on being a die-hard fan of a minor league pro football team, I'd assume you'd maintain your tickets, right?

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If you genuinely believed that college football exists today in the same form as it did 100 years ago, then there would be no point discussing anything with you.

I suspect you actually know better than that. So I will attempt to engage in a real discussion.

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There is very little about college football from 100 years ago that is the same today. The sport has morphed and changed in every decade. From stadium size, to television, to the amount of money generated by the sport.

There were no 100,000-seat stadiums before the 1950s. Now, there are eight.

Over thirty years ago, Bobby Bowden became the first million-dollar coach. I remember the uproar when Mark Emmert decided to make Nick Saban the third million-dollar coach. Now, nearly every FBS coach makes at least a million dollars, and nine make over ten million dollars per year.

At one time, there was no television coverage, then there was limited television coverage. Now there is almost unlimited television coverage.

College football is now a multi-billion-dollar industry. The amount of money changing hands at every level has grown over the decades.

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The sport has not changed in the sense of refining pass interference or instituting overtime; it has fundamentally changed from an extra-curricular amateur school activity to a professional sports league. And all the pounding and shouting about players getting paid under the table will never change that simple fact; the fact that it was (by necessity) under the table is a qualitative, not quantitative, difference.

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The title of this thread is: Hard to get excited about any player coming when they're only there for the money, not LSU

Certainly, NIL has become a big factor for most players. But make no mistake, players have been choosing which school to attend by the size of the bag for decades.

Bear Bryant used to buy all of the talent until the NCAA limited the number of scholarships. Saban used to have barbershops in Louisiana to pay for players. Chargers and the like have changed the mind of many a young player. McDonald's bags can get players to choose to play in Knoxville. Five-star players can even be bought to play in Oxford.

Over a decade ago, players were openly announcing that they were not going to college to play school.

I won't begin to discuss how many players came to LSU when they're only there for the money, not LSU.

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I just do not agree with the notion of, "this is the game, you have to adapt". If people don't like minor leage pro-football, there is no reason for them to pretend to like it just because LSU sponsors a team. If LSU sponsored a second-rate professional ballet troop, I probably wouldn't be emotionally invested in that, either. Would you?

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And there it is again. Things change. That's the one constant of life.

College football has changed in many ways over the decades.

Adapt or don't adapt. Love it, like it, or leave it.

That is what has been created .