NIL and the transfer portal have changed college football forever.

This is the most beautiful, horrific confluence of events in history and no one can correctly predict where this thing is going. From the outside, there is a train-wreck feel to what we’re witnessing. It’s going to hell and there’s a rush order on hand baskets.

Players deserved to get their piece of the pie, but the sport is losing its way and there is no quick fix though a college football commissioner — Mack Brown, perhaps? — is sorely needed.

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The portal doors opened Friday and later that day, there were upward of 4,500 players filing into college football’s version of a gas station selling Powerball Quick Picks. That’s roughly one third of all FBS players.

When did so many players become disgruntled? Actually, some of them were quite content at their schools until something or someone convinced them they could improve their bottom line.

Then they heard the “P” word. And off they went.

Of course, many proven performers from big programs — players like ex-Auburn wideout Cam Coleman  — are going to land somewhere for some fat coin, but there are countless others who will be back in their hometown trying to figure out how to talk their former head coach into taking them back.

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Let’s be honest. There’s no way all 4,500 will be on somebody else’s sideline this fall. Although the sport has taken on the look of a haphazard version of the NFL — a real pro league with a real organizational plan and more than 100 years of pretty solid business practices with billions in profits — the NCAA is strictly amateur hour when it comes to its most valuable asset: the players.

Meanwhile, high school stars are playing second fiddle to grown men who are in the portal with college tape to their advantage. A player like incoming Texas running back Derrek Cooper, a four-star standout from Florida, will sign a lucrative deal, but head coach Steve Sarkisian will also have to navigate how much time he wants to devote to bringing in freshmen as opposed to a proven upperclassmen at a higher price in many cases.

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Sarkisian lamented how the recruiting game has changed in the years since the portal and NIL became the new way of doing business.

“That’s the reality of the situation of college football right now, and that’s where we are,” he said the day before the Longhorns’ Citrus Bowl win over Michigan. “I think there’s nothing wrong with that. We just got to tighten it up, and hopefully we can get there sooner rather than later. I’m probably going to be on the phone with an agent (later) that’s going to throw a number at me that I’m going to be like, ‘Good luck. I hope you get it. If you don’t, call us back. But I can’t do that.’”

The annual mass exodus every year bears no explanation. Vegas mob boss Nicky Santoro put it best minutes before he got whacked at the end of “Casino:” The dollars.

I’ve been a player’s advocate for as long as I can remember and it makes me smile to know there are young men from humble backgrounds who are able to help their families with the bills while also receiving an education.

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These athletes have always deserved to get paid beyond their scholarship, but the NCAA cowered in a corner when it could have put some sort of universal guardrail in place that’s better than the salary cap, but that’s not easily enforceable among 136 separate programs. Sure, no one batted any eye over the last 40 years while coaches and athletic directors pocketed millions as the major conferences, ESPN and Fox earned billions on the backs of athletes who filled stadiums as actual amateur performers.

Once players were given the opportunity to transfer and take advantage of their name, image and likeness, the proverbial floodgates opened. The current situation has become unsustainable. That light at the end of the tunnel is an oncoming train with no brakes.

It brought to mind Northern Illinois coach Thomas Hammock’s comments in August when he was asked about the portal. The Huskies play in the Mid-American Conference, aka the MAC, and Hammock addressed losing 19 players from an 8-5 team that made national headlines by upsetting eventual national runner-up Notre Dame in Week 2 of the 2024 campaign.

Hammock played running back at NIU from 1999 to 2002 before carving out a successful coaching career, including five years mentoring running backs for the NFL’s Baltimore Ravens. He spoke of how his experience in DeKalb helped prepare him for life after his playing days and how everything has flipped as the chase for dollars intensified from coast to coast.

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“In life, you’re going to make decisions,” Hammock told reporters in August. “Sometimes, it’s going to work in your favor. Sometimes, it’s not. I told our team the other day, ‘We lost all these guys. Let’s see who plays. It’s all good when people put on Twitter ‘All glory to God, I’m going in the transfer portal.’ Let’s see if they play. How many of them guys are going to play or travel or get snaps?”

It’s today’s game. Everyone has players and if there is a chance to leave a smaller program for a lucrative offer from a football factory, who can blame them?

Here’s the problem: Some of those athletes are receiving flimsy advice. They’re taking on the role of the dog from the old Aesop fable who was crossing a bridge with a bone in his mouth only to see another dog staring up at him — actually his own reflection from the water — with what appears to be a larger bone between his jaws. He dives for the bigger bone, and the pup ends up with nothing. 

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In some cases, it’s a gamble to leave a good situation. Texas wideout Parker Livingstone — quarterback Arch Manning’s roommate — announced last week on social media he was entering the portal and during his lengthy post, he added a line that sparked conversations everywhere.

“Never in a million years did I think I would be going into the portal looking for a new home,” Livingstone wrote. “Some things are out of my control. Such is the reality of the ever-changing landscape of college football.”

Was he saying the Horns fired him?

Did Livingstone leave because he asked for more money and didn’t get it? Was he told his current salary was being earmarked for another player?

Livingstone committed to Oklahoma Tuesday for $800,000 which is double what he made at Texas, according to a report from the Houston Chronicle’s Kirk Bohls. Either way, it was a rather cryptic post since it’s common knowledge the Horns are pursuing the more electric Coleman, who was second among SEC sophomores with 56 catches and third in catches of 30-plus yards with six. Coleman reportedly visited the UT campus Saturday. 

Decades before the portal era, players were pushed out of programs, but that may not be the case with Livingstone. Only the player and the employer — that’s right, employer — know.

The current model is doomed for failure. The sport is feeding on itself and while programs like Texas, Ohio State, Michigan and Notre Dame can survive because of collectives and massive bankrolls, the smaller schools will soon be faced with having to cut costs to keep up, which means the possible loss of nonrevenue producing sports. 

Deion Sanders has the unique position of being a head coach and the father of a former college player — Cleveland Browns quarterback Shedeur Sanders — who profited off NIL. Deion Sanders, speaking on a recent Barstool Sports podcast, said the thirst for money is problematic because priorities are being misplaced.

“They want to go chase the bag instead of chase the game,” Sanders said. Chase “the game. The game’s got the bag. Don’t chase the bag.”

Then, later, “You’re chasing NIL instead of NFL and that’s not the right thing. I’ve never chased money in my life. I chased greatness and guess what came with greatness? The money.”

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Somewhere along the way, the college experience has taken a back seat to a dream lifestyle before adulthood. It’s good, legally obtained money, but it’s fast money and young people whose brains aren’t fully developed aren’t always equipped to handle the speed of this particular game.

Hammock has sage advice for whoever will listen.

“Learn the lessons that you need to learn to be successful in life for the next 40 or 50 years of your life,” he said. “I would do it again for free because of the things I learned. That’s why I’m standing here today, because of what I learned in college. Not because of how much someone gave me.”

The portal closes Jan. 16, but the teams playing in the national championship game will get an extra four days to do some last-minute shopping. Until then, some players will emerge with bigger bags while others will spend several hours over these next few weeks watching a cellphone that doesn’t ring.

They will sheepishly declare for the NFL draft because what else is there if no college team wants them? A few will sign free-agent deals, but won’t make it through two weeks of an NFL training camp before the Turk comes calling saying, “Coach needs to see you and don’t forget to bring your playbook.”

That first college locker never looked better.