Welcome To The Twilight Zone, Where Uncle Sam Says NFL Players Can Return To LSU And Other College Football Teams

NEW ORLEANS, LA - JANUARY 01: Head Coach Kirby Smart of the Georgia Bulldogs jogs onto the section during the College Football Playoff Quarterfinal crippled betwixt the Ole Miss Rebels and the Georgia Bulldogs connected Thursday January 1, 2026 astatine the Caesars Superdome successful New Orleans, LA. (Photo by Nick Tre. Smith/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)

Icon Sportswire via Getty Images

For those of america opinionated firmly connected Planet Earth, while assemblage shot these days continues to run location astir Mars, Jupiter aliases beyond the farthest Black Hole, well, we’re not unsocial successful our thinking.

This athletics has gone loony.

Worse, fixed the willy-nilly millions to billions of dollars sprinting crossed the existent hemisphere of assemblage football, there’s nary extremity successful show to the madness. Even Congress grounded to bring sanity to the business contempt six years of legislative initiatives successful some houses and $15 million from lobbyists.

Let’s commencement . . . anywhere.

Riley Leanard shocked the senses this outpouring erstwhile he announced he took a salary trim arsenic backmost going from the University of Notre Dame ($1.6 million) aft the 2024 play to signing a rookie statement pinch the Indianapolis Colts (1,078,464).

To prevention you the math, that’s astir a 40% difference.

Which is why powerfulness convention teams now request wide managers (you know, for illustration the NFL) arsenic good arsenic athletics directors. Those GMs will negociate shot budgets this play pinch a median costs of $23 million, according to nil-NCAA.com, aliases much than $30 million, if you’re talking astir the SEC.

Elsewhere, courtesy of the Transfer Portal successful its eighth year, assemblage shot rosters person gone from decades of stableness to the haves who tin springiness moreover marginal players immense NIL (Name, Image and Likeness) deals and the person nots who are conscionable waiting for a financial boost from the adjacent convention realignment.

About convention realignment: It’s retired of control.

All you request to cognize is the Big Ten is still called the Big Ten, but it’s really the Big Eighteen, going from its original Midwest standbys of Ohio State, Michigan and the remainder to see those specified arsenic Oregon, Washington and UCLA.

The salaries for assemblage caput shot coaches?

Don’t ask.

OK, if you must know. According to CBSSports.com, the top 10 highest-paid caput coaches in the athletics make astatine slightest $10 cardinal per year.

Just a decade ago, location were zero.

Then again, a decade ago, the College Football Playoff (CFP) was only successful its 2nd year, featuring 4 teams and a full payout of $425,043,857, according to businessofcollegesports.com. Now the CFP has 12 teams, pinch the description to 24 (and apt beyond) connected the horizon, and frontofficesports.com placed the full payout past play at $116 million.

Yeah, it’s astir money.

The NCAA and its awesome conferences person tons of it, and this sums it up from collegesportsauthority.com: The Big Ten’s existent media authorities package, signed successful 2022 pinch CBS, Fox, and NBC/Peacock, is worthy astir $7 cardinal complete 7 years (Sports Business Journal), making it the largest woody successful assemblage sports history astatine signing. The SEC’s statement pinch ESPN/ABC, moving done 2034, is weighted astatine astir $3 cardinal complete 10 years (ESPN property merchandise via SELC). The NCAA's woody pinch CBS and Turner Sports for the Division I Men's Basketball Tournament — the statement that costs March Madness successful afloat — runs done 2032 astatine astir $8.8 cardinal full (NCAA.org).

Then location were the caller decisions from Venus aliases possibly Neptune by national and authorities courts to let a 5th twelvemonth of eligibility to assemblage shot players, moreover if they signed a master shot contract.

To compete connected field again, those players only were required by the courts to terminate their pro deals and to repay immoderate pro earnings.

Executives for the SEC and the Big Ten came to their senses, though. They exercised their ineligible correct to do what they believed was champion for their conferences, but the large image remains the same.

Cue The Twilight Zone music.

“I consciousness for illustration I took a freakin’ gummy," Los Angeles Rams caput coach Sean McVay told reporters Tuesday erstwhile asked astir the latest spot of lunacy involving assemblage athletics successful general: Courtesy of those tribunal rulings this week, 2 NFL players were primitively cleared to subordinate the LSU shot team.

In lawsuit you didn’t know, LSU is not successful the NFL.

“I can’t moreover comprehend this stuff. It’s wild,” McVay continued, and past location was Todd Monken, the Cleveland Browns caput coach who had 1 of his players wishing to time off for the Tigers of assemblage shot while still progressive pinch the NFL franchise. It was tight extremity Dae’Quan Wright, and protect tackle Zxavian Harris of the New Orleans Saints was the different one.

Wright and Harris played astatine Ole Miss for Lane Kiffin befoe Kiffin bolted the Rebels adjacent the extremity of past play for LSU to go the third-highest-paid caput coach successful assemblage shot astatine $13 cardinal per year, according to CBSSports.com.

Even though Wright was physically location for the Browns’ preseason crippled astatine location against the Buffalo Bills Saturday, he mentally had 1 cleat retired the doorway and headed for Baton Rouge, Lousiana.

“Ain't this (expletive) crazy?” Monken told reporters after the Browns’ 31-7 nonaccomplishment astatine Huntington Bank Field. “I mean, I don't moreover cognize what to say. As acold arsenic I know, he had a aesculapian rumor that hasn't allowed him to practice. That's a aesculapian issue, has thing to do pinch me. Then he was cleared, truthful we dressed him conscionable successful lawsuit we had to person him, but erstwhile you don't rep it's difficult to put him connected the field.

“I wondered why Lane Kiffin reached retired a week ago. Now I know. (Expletive) I didn’t know, now I know. I didn't telephone him back, I conjecture now I should've.”

Or possibly not.

Why time off Planet Earth to effort to make consciousness of worldly from outer space?