Hochman: With college football money and transfers, what’s the end game here, guys?

I briefly stepped outside of the hurricane to get some fresh air.

Man, modern college athletics are swirling out of control, as if ESPN content was more suited for The Weather Channel.

It’s chaos. Money! Transfers! Even more money! Even more transfers! Everything is awful, yet everything is … awesome? After all, fan passion is gargantuan these days with the growth of the College Football Playoff and the growth of social media, as well as more overall games to watch than ever before — and more ways to bet on said games.

Still. With the way this thing is spinning, what’s the end game here, guys?

It dawned on me the other day, during a quiet moment following football’s latest transfer portal period. I thought back to a December ago, 2023, when the high school seniors signed. Mizzou’s recruiting class was heralded. A big deal in Columbia. The Tigers nabbed Williams Nwaneri, the eighth-best player in the nation and No. 1 defensive end, per Rivals. And Mizzou wooed four-star running back Kewan Lacy and four-star receiver Courtney Crutchfield.

Well, after the 2024 Mizzou regular season, Nwaneri, Lacy and Crutchfield all transferred. Just like that, they’re gone. In previous seasons or generations, this would have been enormous news. But in 2024, it just kind of was what it was. You win some, you lose some. You load up, you reload. It’s the modern constant churn of college sports rosters.

Without having to sit out a year upon transferring, players are leapfrogging from school to school with an allegiance only to playing time, money and NFL possibilities.

NIL stands for name, image and likeness, but as it’s been said for a few years now, NIL essentially means: “now it’s legal.”

Student-athletes are professional athletes.

Growing a team’s culture has given way to growing a pool of money for a team.

Coaches, such as Mizzou’s Eli Drinkwitz, speak freely about economics of paying players, though not in a positive way. Drinkwitz recently publicly said: “What good does it do me to complain? I mean, I don’t know who’s in charge.”

Coaches are quitting. Tony Bennett, the college hoops national champion at Virginia, departed just as this season was starting. And Miami hoops coach Jim Larranaga just quit, only 12 games into this season. He cited that the new college sports hurricane has left him “exhausted.”

“I just didn’t feel that I could successfully navigate this whole new world that I was dealing with,” Larranaga said at a news conference. “Because my conversations were ridiculous with an agent saying to me, ‘Well, you can get involved if you’re willing to go to $1.1 million’ and that (being) the norm. …

“Now, you have to have a pro mentality, and you have to have a pro system in place to deal with all of it, if we’re going to have agents, if we’re going to be paying substantial amounts of money, then there needs to be some accountability for that. …

“After we went to the 2023 Final Four, eight players wanted to transfer or seek better NIL deals. They told me they loved it at Miami — but wanted to seek a better deal.”

Fascinating quotes. Honest quotes. Harrowing quotes.

But as pointed out by my pal Dan Wolken, a columnist for USA Today, Miami’s Final Four team had numerous guys who had transferred in because of enticing NIL deals. So, yeah, Larranaga’s success was fueled, in part, by the same system that made him leave the game. Also, like so many other coaches, he left a job at a smaller school (George Mason) to take the gig with the Hurricanes.

As for the hurricane that is college sports, this thing is pushing toward the preposterous, possibly Category 6. Without guardrails (or someone in charge), wealthy boosters simply are financing their favorite college programs — essentially paying the salary for top players or coaches. Money always has been the most powerful thing in college sports, even in the so-called halcyon days, but now it’s just become a brazen business.

Who’s in charge?

The NCAA seems to be a passenger in all of this.

The hope is a group of coaches, players, administrators and executives can put together a plan of action. Possibly a salary cap? More transparency on payments? Restriction on times a player can transfer — heck, maybe even for a coach, too.

Because the fear is that the “awesome” will give way to the “awful.”

In the meantime, we as fans are clinging to ideals of college sports that we grew up with — yet they are shedding and shrinking.

As Jerry Seinfeld once joked, fans really are just rooting “for clothes.”

It’s not about who is wearing the jersey. It’s simply that your favorite city or school’s jersey is being worn in the first place. And with the transfer portal, the idea of latching on to a guy or following a player’s career is antiquated. Now, if a guy isn’t playing, he’s likely looking to play elsewhere. And even if a guy is playing, he’s perhaps looking to get paid more elsewhere.

I am, let it be clear, all for college athletes getting compensated. But there must be some sort of checks and balances. Because right now, college sports seem unchecked and imbalanced.