This thread explores the TRUE ORIGINS of today's problems with college sports!

I say the transfer portal really started when Divorce Court began on TV in 1999.

In a sense the OP is correct.

Everybody in the US wants all their options permanently open despite their past decisions. Nobody wants to be responsible for decisions they made or didn't make.

Colleges don't want to be responsible for decisions about coaches.
Coaches want to be able to easily move between colleges.
Players don't want to stay at colleges they've committed to (losing, no playing time, etc).
Schools don't want to keep promises made to players.

And to top it off, everybody (schools, players, coaches, administrators, advertisers, TV partners, etc) wants to squeeze any money they can out of every situation.

Changing definitions
Student-athlete
Commitment
Amateur
Tampering
Lack of institutional control

None of these are the reason but are affected by the changes

The issue is that every major change to college football makes it more difficult for mid size and smaller profile programs to compete. CFP and its expansion, conference championship games, 12 regular season games, 9 conference games (for certain conferences), transfer portal, NIL, media deal disparity between conferences in terms of both exposure and payout, etc. The list is endless.

To be brutally honest, COVID actually helped mid size and smaller programs to the extent that it allow those programs to hold on to experienced players longer due to the extra COVID year of eligibility (high profile programs benefited from the extra COVID year to a certain extent as well, but those programs were still feeding players into the NFL while mid size and smaller profile programs were able retain players that were productive in college but were going to be unsigned free agents as best in the NFL).

The root of all evil!

CorsicanaBear said:

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In a sense the OP is correct.

Everybody in the US wants all their options permanently open despite their past decisions. Nobody wants to be responsible for decisions they made or didn't make.

Colleges don't want to be responsible for decisions about coaches.
Coaches want to be able to easily move between colleges.
Players don't want to stay at colleges they've committed to (losing, no playing time, etc).
Schools don't want to keep promises made to players.

And to top it off, everybody (schools, players, coaches, administrators, advertisers, TV partners, etc) wants to squeeze any money they can out of every situation.

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I agree; the problem is complex; one involves another.

And it's hard to combine sport and studies. Two years ago, I was on a sports team at my university, but it was harder and harder to dedicate enough time to both, so I decided to quit the team. Even now, I still have some problems with my studies, but it's better. But now I am working on my dissertation, and it's so hard. I've used some assistance from https://dissertationhelp.org.uk/ because I've never written something more complicated. With professional help, I was stuck, so it was the right decision. So, I think that it's indeed hard to have good grades and sports results; there is no balance.

Greed.