{"id":60177,"date":"2026-08-18T23:05:12","date_gmt":"2026-08-18T23:05:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=60177"},"modified":"2026-08-18T23:05:12","modified_gmt":"2026-08-18T23:05:12","slug":"hating-what-college-football-has-become","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=60177","title":{"rendered":"Hating what college football has become"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Some of you might recall an item I posted in which I decried what I believe is happening to intercollegiate athletics … however, I am going to restate it once more with extreme emphasis.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

It’s the damn transfer portal that is driving me just this side of the nut house.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

It is becoming hard for me to root, for example, for my favorite college football team: the University of Oregon Ducks.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

I grew up in Oregon. I didn’t attend the UofO, but I have rooted for the Ducks even when they stunk to high heaven. This era of the transfer portal has created a new environment in college sports. For the purposes of this blog, I am going to concentrate on tackle football.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

The Ducks hired Dan Lanning four seasons ago. His head coaching record stands at 48-8 at Oregon. Pretty good, right? Yeah, it’s damn good! Lanning has been able to work the transfer portal to his liking in Eugene. I don’t begrudge Lanning for taking advantage of this notion of recruiting top-tier athletes to compete an extra year in college. He’s doing it legally … or so I reckon.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

It’s just that these kids wind up in Eugene after playing full college careers in other locations. They arrive for a season — or maybe two — and then they’re gone. Some of them turn pro. Some of those pro athletes then launch stellar careers. I just wish I could root for them as if they were locally grown and fed. Instead, I find myself cheering for mercenaries. Which is what they are.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

The Ducks have taken maximum advantage of the transfer portal. So have many other college programs. I suspect I am not alone in feeling stranded by the huge talent pool that coaches are recruiting to play for their teams. I hesitate to call them “their schools,” because the coaches aren’t exactly loyal to the colleges that hire them.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Another season is about to unfold. I’ll cheer for the Ducks and hope they can win a national championship. If they do, I won’t feel necessarily proud for the university or for the state where I came of age.<\/p>\r\n\n

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Some of you might recall an item I posted in which I decried what I believe is happening to intercollegiate athletics … however, I am going to restate it once more with extreme emphasis. It’s the damn transfer portal that is driving me just this side of the nut house. It is becoming hard for … Continue reading Hating what college football has become<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[10608,3440,10411],"class_list":["post-60177","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sports-news","tag-dan-lanning","tag-oregon-ducks","tag-transfer-portal"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60177","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=60177"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60177\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":60179,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60177\/revisions\/60179"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=60177"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=60177"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=60177"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}