Fan Disappointment Scattered Everywhere - Time Out #491

Don't forget readers everywhere, tomorrow is legendary Ground Hog Day. Sunday, please be aware of false shadows out there! 

     Our calendar currently has us in the middle of basketball season, where the action is almost always fast and furious.

     Of course, the same could be said of the entire landscape of college athletics, especially the last few years, and the domination of the NIL (name, image, and likeness) and the transfer portal options available for college athletes in all sports.

     What a firestorm has been created that is understood by few and affected by many. Spectators certainly need programs to keep with all the player movements across of vast country.   

     Let's briefly discuss this complex situation from a different perspective than the usual chit-chat about college sports, and whether or not Team A is better than Team B. or which team is going to win more games? 

     I propose the biggest impact on college athletics in today's U.S. state-of-mind is the bad vibrations the current NIL and transfer portal options have had on the viewing fans.  Yes, folks, the poor ol' folks like me who actually love the college games of basketball, football, wrestling, baseball, softball, soccer, tennis etc. Most of us have been around long enough to remember seeing a high school student/athlete graduate-up to the college level, and then give their chosen sport all their efforts for 4/5 years, while wearing the same school colors. We used to continually see them enjoying their one-school college fight/spirt song, loudly played by either their entire band or just their pep band. As fans, we felt like we accepted these athletes that played for our favorite teams as members of our own extended family.  We celebrated the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat the same as "our' athletes did after each sporting event. We would see them years later, and ask them how they had been doing? In essence, we really cared about them.

     Not so much now, my public friends?  

     With the addition of NIL and the transfer portal, in many cases, simply said, the athletes are here today, gone tomorrow. These former players that had been our athletic heroes, now constantly come and go through America's colleges and universities like our famous Oklahoma wind. Some of these college athletes change locations more often than their truly professional sports brothers and sisters. The frequent player movements among the schools takes me back mentally to yesteryear, when I used to trade bubble gum sports cards with my close buddies in Our Town long ago. Maybe you recall having those trading card experiences, too?  

     In short, the current situation is chaos, and it isn't even "controlled" (i.e., monitored) chaos, in my humble opinion. 

     Does anyone know where the off switch is located to turn off this present-day, high-speed, college athletic merry-go-round?