What is your most unpopular opinion on college athletics?

From now until preseason camp starts in August, Land-Grant Holy Land will be writing articles around a different theme every week. This week is all about unpopular opinions. You can catch up on all of the Theme Week content here and all our “Unpopular Opinion” articles here.

We all have some opinions that make people raise an eyebrow. It could be about sports, entertainment, or politics. Since you came to an Ohio State sports website, luckily you won’t have to deal with any opinions on politics. Instead, we are going to reveal our most unpopular opinions on college athletics. When we say unpopular, we don’t mean hurtful; more so, we mean opinions that are a bit unconventional.

When it comes to college athletics, there are plenty of areas to dive into. NIL, the Transfer Portal, how many teams should be included in the College Football Playoff/NCAA Tournament, and rules of the game and how they are interpreted are just the tip of the iceberg of areas that grind the gears of some people. Today, we don’t really need solutions to your unpopular opinions, since in many cases those fixes can be very complicated, we just want to know some things about college athletics that may be popular with others that have gotten under your skin.

Today’s question: What is your most unpopular opinion on college athletics?

We’d love to hear your choices. Either respond to us on Twitter at @Landgrant33 or leave your choice in the comments.

Brett’s answer: The Transfer Portal

Just to be clear, I’m not saying that I don’t think college athletes should be able to transfer. Having to wait a year to play after transferring was a bit ridiculous, especially when college coaches could move to another coaching position and not have to wait to coach. I don’t think that the transfer portal is currently utilized is what those in charge had in mind when they made it easier for student-athletes to transfer. Now you are seeing some college athletes transfer three or four times during their college career. At the very most, I think college athletes should be able to transfer twice during their college careers.

Photo by Todd Kirkland/Getty Images

I have no issues with what Will Howard did. He spent a lot of time at Kansas State and then came to Ohio State to close out his college career. I can’t say the same about Dillon Gabriel. After starting his career at UCF, he transferred to Oklahoma, followed by a spot at Oregon for the final season of his college career. It just seems odd to me that a college athlete can play for three different schools. I understand that he had a redshirt season due to an injury and a COVID year, but even with those, it’s hard to believe that things were so bad at times that he needed to transfer twice during his college career.

Things feel even worse when it comes to basketball. Usually, in the fall before the college basketball season begins, I need to take a crash course to remember who is playing where now. Then, just as soon as fans are getting used to having a player on their team, they have moved on to greener pastures. After transferring out of Auburn following the season, Chad Baker-Mazara is now playing for his fifth team, with four of them being at the Division I level.

That just seems crazy to me. As soon as you become comfortable with players, coaches, and a school, players are hitting the portal. At Ohio State, Aaron Bradshaw and Sean Stewart transferred to Columbus following their freshman season, and now both are elsewhere after spending one year with the Buckeyes.

I guess this is just how the world is these days. Our attention spans have become so short that it’s easy to see why college athletes are so quick to jump to a new school. Ohio State’s 2024 football season was so special because you had a bunch of players who were Buckeyes their whole college careers, finally getting to the top of the mountain after a number of close calls.

As the years go on, it feels like we’ll see less of that just because college athletes are constantly on the move these days, and there are no signs of it slowing down anytime soon.

Matt’s answer: College football should adopt relegation

On the Land-Grant Podcast Network this week, I spoke to The Athletic’s Editor in Chief for college football, Stewart Mandel. He ran me through some of the ridiculous proposals that the SEC and Big Ten commissioners are seemingly pushing for the next round of College Football Playoff tweaks.

While nothing has been decided, and Mandel notes that the seemingly disastrous proposals could just be a negotiating tactic (and a much more sane plan does appear to be gaining traction), but it got me thinking.

If the CFP were to go with a more robust automatic bid process, similar to what happens in the UEFA Champions League, where participants are determined solely by their finish in their respective home country leagues. In that case, college football should also adopt one of the aspects that makes European soccer so exciting: relegation.

Say, the B1G and SEC’s plan to expand the playoff to 14 teams goes through and the two power conferences get four autobids apiece, then two each for the ACC and Big 12, and the Group of 5 would get one. That would mean that conference rankings would determine the vast majority of playoff spots, rendering non-conference play irrelovent.

So, if the goal is to pick the best teams based on how they play in their league, then we should do everything possible to make sure that the play in those leagues is at the highest possible level.

For example, the Purdue Boilermakers finished 0-9 last season in B1G play. Due to that, they should be relegated to Big 12. They still have a chance at two AQ spots in the playoffs, but not the four afforded the Big Ten. Conversely, SMU went 8-0 in the ACC, so they would be bumped up to the SEC for this season, giving them an even better shot at a playoff berth, despite the stiffer competition.

This would also work at the lower levels. Army was 8-0 in the AAC last season, so the Black Knights would become members of the ACC for this season, and the 0-9 Oklahoma State Cowboys would be relegated out of the Big 12 and into Comferemce USA.

If the goal — as it would seem to be by this playoff berth proposal — is to emphasize conference performance, then the entire college football system should do everything in its power to keep those conferences competitive and interesting. Suddenly, the end of the season is important for the teams at the bottom of the barrel.

The 2024 version of Mississippi State would have been relegated out of the SEC thanks to its 0-8 conference record, but would the coaching staff and players approached the last month of the season differently if they knew relegation was on the table?

Sure, there would be things that would need to be worked out, including a team like Florida State who went 1-7 in the ACC last season; once the ‘Noles realize that their season is essentially done, would they tank to get bumped down into a conference with an easier path to a playoff berth? Not if you institute the rule that a team who gets relegated can’t go to the playoff the following year!

Regardless of what future playoff system the college football powers that be come up with, the entire landscape of the sport will be different, and they need to embrace more forward-thinking, innovative ways to keep the sport compelling to fans. I don’t know if relegation would work or not, but what I definitely don’t want is for the beautiful, chaotic sport that college football is to become another cold, cookie-cutter version of pro sports in America.

So, if that means we’ve got to kick some teams out of conferences every year, I’m all for it.