Everyone thinks college football is broken and needs saving. But what if it really isn’t?
Donald Trump is issuing executive orders, roundtables are being convened involving everyone from Marco Rubio to Nick Saban, and panic is widespread that something, anything needs to be done to save the sport before it’s too late. And so far, the NCAA depending upon politicians to run the sport for them has made the quagmire even worse.
But ESPN’s Kevin Clark has an interesting thought… college football is actually doing really, really well on its own.
The advent of NIL and the transfer portal has only seen ratings, attendance, and interest in the sport increase. And the opportunities for any school to contend is now present, that’s been proven by Indiana winning a national championship in football, which was previously unthinkable.
Clark appeared on the Andy & Ari podcast with college football writers Andy Staples and Ari Wasserman at On3. And in responding to comments from Ryan Day about how he would fix the sport, the ESPN analyst and host suggested that he would actually not do anything at all.
Everyone always talks about what’s wrong with college football. What if nothing is wrong with it from a fan/consumer perspective?
We had @bykevinclark on the show today. pic.twitter.com/7CRAm1jusp
— Ari Wasserman (@AriWasserman) April 8, 2026
“I don’t know if that is even correct Andy and Ari, because right now we’re looking at record ratings, we’re looking at the most attention I’ve ever seen on college football in my lifetime, and what I don’t understand is, and this isn’t a Ryan Day point, it’s more of an NCAA point, is why Charlie Baker looks at this and says this is bad,” Clark said.
Clark then said that one of the root causes of the furor around college football is how difficult life has been made for NCAA coaches. With the non-stop recruiting and transfer portal effectively making each player a free agent every year, coaches are working around the clock to keep their programs together. But in response, Clark says that it’s true of coaches at the NFL level too and that they are always trying to make their own jobs easier.
And when it comes to topics like player movement and compensation, we don’t have to go back to the stone age by eliminating NIL and we don’t have to go to a full-fledged NFL model either. The possibility exists that the current model actually gets it right.
“I think that we’re looking at record ratings, record attendance, the national championship game was Taylor Swift level ticket prices, which it’s never been before. And I actually do think there’s a happy medium and I kind of think we’re in it, guys,” Clark concluded.
It’s really hard to argue with those facts. For all the hand-wringing and panic about the current state of college football (and college athletics as a whole) it’s never been more popular and more successful. That’s not just football, either. Take a look at almost every college sport from basketball to softball to volleyball and you’ll see that interest levels are up.
That’s not to say there aren’t serious issues happening throughout wider college athletics that can’t be improved. But maybe the powers that be might consider taking on some responsibility to embrace the current state of college football and realize that NIL and the transfer portal have not killed the sport. If anything, it has only served to increase its popularity and viability. Surely the industry is better off now than turning to Donald Trump or congress to try to blow it up.
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