Ian Ricoy
Sports Editor
No one likes cheaters in sports. The whole point is to see who would win given that each team has a relatively equal access to resources. There has been a lot of debate around college players getting paid (or lack thereof), even at Wooster’s own Philosophy Roundtables on Thursdays at 11:00 a.m. every week in Scovel 105. However, I want to make something clear. I am okay with college athletes getting paid for their abilities on top of their scholarships and living stipends. How they get paid is for another “Voices from the Crowd.” I recommend reading Max Engel’s ’21 article from Oct. 2019. The basic problem in these past few years of college football is that some schools cheat by paying their players, thereby having an unfair advantage when recruiting high school players, and others do not. If you do not believe some universities are paying their athletes, despite overwhelming evidence, then this article is not going to be for you. I’m not going to dive into defending this premise. I will first outline the state of college football today.
There have been eight different national champions in the last 14 years. Only three schools, Auburn, Florida State and Ohio State have not won multiple titles in this time frame. In ten of those 14 years, the South Eastern Conference (SEC), the conference most notorious for cheating, has won the national title. There was only one year (2014) where the SEC did not have a team in the national title game. Since 2009, Alabama head coach Nick Saban has as many national championships (five) than he has home losses at Alabama. Since 2012, Ohio State has never lost more than two games and has one national title. Since 2009, Oklahoma has won seven Big Twelve Conference titles. Since 2009, there has been one Atlantic Coast Conference champion not named Clemson or Florida State. Only two teams in history have gone 15-0 and they were the two national champions in the last two years. There are only four head coaches who have won national titles still coaching (not counting Les Miles or Mac Brown who came out of retirement last year).
One might ask: “Ian, how many national champions should there be in a time span?” Well, between 1986 and 1999 (14 years) there were 10 different national champions including Colorado’s, Florida’s and Florida State’s firsts. Never has there been such a small cluster of absolutely dominant teams in college football for such an extended period of time. The heart of the issue comes down to an uneven playing field. The problem is that some schools cheat (and get away with it) while other schools follow the rules and get punished. Let’s look at Chris Petersen’s tenure at Boise State and Washington. Petersen is a legendary coach who took Boise State (BSU) from a Division I-AA program, to beating Oklahoma in the Fiesta Bowl in 2007 and multiple undefeated seasons. He put Boise State on the map of college football and if you think a tiny school in Idaho has the funds to compete with Alabama and Oklahoma, you better be a BSU booster. This year, he abruptly retired as the head coach of Washington with no warning. Petersen told ESPN, “You worked your whole life to get there. I didn’t really appreciate the week, I didn’t appreciate the game like I need to as a kid growing up looking at that game,” referring to Washington’s Rose Bowl appearance last year. I have no proof, but I would venture to say that the stress of competing with schools who pay their players got to him. Michigan head coach Jim Harbaugh put it more matter-of-fact-ly in an interview with John U. Bacon saying, “It’s hard to beat the cheaters.”
The cheaters win and the rule followers get punished. There are professionals playing against amateurs. This is the reality of modern college football and as fan, I think it’s terrible for the sport and the players. I just want the NCAA to either enforce its rules or change the rules quickly to allow schools to pay their players already. I will always watch college football and will continue to root for my Michigan Wolverines, but it is getting hard. Michigan prides itself on integrity. It never raised its cost of living stipends abruptly, paid their players under the table and holds their players to a high academic standard. But this reverence for the rules comes at the cost of having not won a Big Ten title since 2004. I can’t say whether or not Michigan should cheat to win, I just want the NCAA to make up its mind.