The days of Southern Miss competing in Division I-A football may be dwindling fast thanks to NIL and the dreaded portal. The Wall Street Journal reported August 18:
Every December, rosters convulse as 30,000-some players across Division I football become free agents, to say nothing of the thousands more playing in lower rungs of the NCAA ladder or at junior colleges. Coaches are no longer just trying to entice high-schoolers to come play for their teams—they have to convince their current players to stick around, too. “You don’t just go to the portal and get everybody and nobody comes and gets your guys,” Ole Miss coach Lane Kiffin said in July. “It’s free agency.” Players move in all sorts of directions. Benchwarmers on top teams look for less heralded programs where they might earn more playing time. Late bloomers who landed at smaller schools jump ship for bigger stages with better odds of drawing attention from NFL scouts and earning money from deep-pocketed booster collectives. To illustrate this point, The Wall Street Journal reviewed the 2023 first-team all-conference selections for the five smaller leagues that compete the top tier of Division I. These conferences are the American Athletic, Conference USA, the Mid-American, the Mountain West and the Sun Belt, known collectively as the “Group of Five.” The impact of the transfer portal is striking: After eliminating those who graduated or departed for the NFL, a whopping 40% of the remaining players with all-conference honors switched to another program. The vast majority of them bolted to a team in the Power Four (the Atlantic Coast, Big 12, Big Ten and Southeastern conferences). Even when adding second- and third-team all-conference picks, 36% wound up transferring. The data shows the extent to which the balance of power has shifted in college football. The smaller conferences have always had a disadvantage compared with their larger peers. Now, they have effectively become a farm system—developing talented players only to lose them to their wealthier competitors. Competing against the likes of Alabama and Michigan was always hard, even before those juggernauts could just snatch up players like books in the campus library. “Some of those leagues,” former Texas A&M coach Jimbo Fisher said in a radio interview earlier this year, “they’re becoming glorified junior colleges.” Rest of article.
The days of a Patrick Surtain spending his entire college career at a school such as Southern Miss are over. Diamonds in the rough such as you know who are going to be gone after a year. Hell, Kiffin would probably try to poach Favre during the game. Consequently, the time where a Southern Miss could beat Alabama or take Nebraska to the wire are almost over.
29 comments:
USM hasn’t competed for several years now.
Southern Miss hasn't competed for a long, long list of years BEFORE NIL. It made no difference for them in this environment. Ole Miss quit playing them year after year because it was a zero sum game that benefited no one but Southern Miss. Miss. State continued to play them for a time and this gave them some "air" to keep breathing, but when they finally figured it all out and quit playing them...most of the life was extinguished from them in regards to viability. Today, the only person in the press clamoring for Miss State and Ole Miss to play them is Rick Cleveland and nobody listens to him now.
USM is playing on the high school level!
The alums got rid of the winningest coach in history and for one year following, did well. Then it was all downhill.
Terrible to see a really competitive, historical school, slide south.
Never forget which Division 1 college in Mississippi broke Bear Bryant's 57 home field winning streak in November of '82 by a scor of 38-29 and three weeks later, The Bear was dead. His last home field loss was 20 years earlier.
KF, you're correct! It all comes down to money. Unless something changes with the transfer portal and NIL, schools like Southern Miss may have to drop football, but keep baseball and basketball.
The "power 5" will collapse under their own stupidity and green soon enough. There is a limit to the amount of money available to programs that will never have a shot at winning (the bottom half of every P5 conference). Greed always causes collapse. The question is just when. As Nick Saban said, "pay the wrong players and you are shit out of luck". Alot of schools are paying the wrong players and at some point, the money will dry up.
Oh, and a PS - Jimbo, all of "college" football became a "farm system" for the NFL a while back, just like ol' Whizzer White predicted. The NIL just made it official.
At "Bear Bryant"....It is Coach Bryant.
Well, don’t the coaches get payed! Why should the players get their brains knocked out for a pat on the back.
NIL has ruined College athletics. DO the players deserve to be paid. Sure. Will MIL kill the sport. Yes. At some point there will be five or ten teams dominating the game, and then a huge group of never will be contender teams. Can't wait to see the line of Ferraris parked outside team practice at Georgia, Texas, and Alabama. It is now officially a Rich Guy Hobby sport.
Good thing they never got around to repurposing some of that TANF money for the Southern Miss football practice facility like a certain someone suggested.
Talk about a real a waste of the taxpayer dollar!
Probably cost them signing Shedeur!
The funny thing is that while Old Miss and Miss State pour millions into NIL, they continue to be below average P5 teams.
For years it has been suggested that Mississippi could have a very powerful football program if the limited resources were consolidated into only one or two teams instead of five or six including USM and the SWAC. This will be a very quiet way of doing just that. Ole Miss and the IHL will be very very happy with this new arrangement.
While you panty-waist prognosticating pimple-pickers share your sideline expertise and never got called off the bench.
Back in the very early 2000's Nebraska showed up in Hattiesburg.
One would think the USM fan base would have appeared in record numbers.
Naturally the cornhuskers won the game, but they brought more people from Omaha to that high School stadium on Hardy Street than Robert St.John takes to Tuscany a few times per year.
Have you seen the enrollment numbers at USM. The trend is not their friend. Students want to go to schools that play on TV every Saturday.
NIL is the worst thing that has happened to college sports. I guess a full ride scholarship wasnt enough for the kids whos parents held them back in grade school for "athletic" reasons.
South Alabama, Jacksonville, Troy, UAB, Louisiana Lafayette and a couple of other schools making a commitment to football to go along with the SEC money has doomed USM to inevitable FCS status.
Don't forget there is only one college football team in Mississippi that already has a national championship. They also had one in baseball before the other two did as well. Not to mention the six in womans basketball including 3 back, to back, to back, and one in aquatic sports.
Most of the comments are missing the point. College football that we all loved has been destroyed. The cheap insult of Group of 5 is now 7. The P3 will dwindle down to 15 or so teams that can financially hang. Then what happens to the lower of those? College football was fun because “Any given Saturday” anybody could win. It became more popular than the NFL for it’s competitiveness. But money alway wins out. This has been allowed to happen because the “Haves” feel good about themselves now that they have nothing to fear from the “Have nots” even turning to insults on the artificial ride up, but be careful what you enjoy now because you could be the next Oregon State.
When the coach and players make more that the President and professors of the university, you know who is importanter. It's a game people. A distraction to take your attention away from what's really important. Hey, let's create NIL so people can complain about Football. We are being regulated to death by our so called elected representatives who treat us like Mushrooms, Kept in the dark and fed lots of natural fertilizer and y'all are moaning and complaining cause the NCAA actually allowed colleges and alumni to upfront and honest about paying players. Y'all need to really start paying attention to what is important. You want Football to go back to what it was, stop buying tickets. Stop contributing to the Alumni Assoc. These coliseums are being built to keep you your attention occupied by insignificant events. Look a squirrel.
Southern Miss should not exist. Give us a Mississippi State - Hattiesburg and a UM - Gulf Coast.
Dumb takes. Southern Miss literally has over 1.5 million (3rd in SBC & 17th in G5) in NIL and has gotten multiple 4 stars in the portal. It’s the lack of good coaching and development along with former incompetent leadership as to why we are here. ULL (a team that hasn’t beaten us since the Clinton administration) beat a power 4 team this weekend. They have similar resources as us. People just want to whine rather than see that it’s not that Southern Miss can’t compete.
Freshman and transfer enrollment were up by 5% last year and this class this year is the biggest in about 15 years…
Southern miss has the NIL and has gotten solid transfers. It is literally the coaching. Dumb takes
Also remember that NIL applies to more sports than just football. Some schools are so rich that they can spread millions around their entire athletic department and never miss a beat. Others will become football factories just to keep up. If they are determined to keep up they will redirect funds which could go to academics and development to NIL for football. If they aren't already an academic joke, they will become one. Hotty Toddy?
Looks like the few but befuddlingly proud USM fans out there found the thread! Welcome to the party, Yellow Birds!
It's called CAPITALISM. SUPPLY and DEMAND. Stop complaining. Unless the government steps in, this was inevitable. Money will have it's way. What makes colleges so different?
"...you know who is importanter." Snicker...
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