Is college football broken, or the best it’s ever been? Yes
The landscape is always changing, never boring, and never has there been more hope for so many. But that doesn't mean the sport is perfect.
Indiana football is everything right now, representing at once the enhancement of the college football product on the field and the unsustainable reality off it.
No, Indiana didn’t do anything wrong — that we know of, anyway, though I’m sure other coaches would like to investigate Curt Cignetti and his players for spyware or cyborg blood or something. But as we wrap up a week that had the absolute best and worst of the sport clawing at each other for top billing, the Hoosiers should know they’ve made it so much harder for so many people.
Not that they should care. Go destroy Miami after people spend the week talking themselves back into why you can’t really be this good, then celebrate a national championship that would represent one of the most unforeseen, inexplicable, glorious stories in American sports history.
Indiana, even while making Friday night more boring than we wanted with a 56-22 semifinal thrashing of Oregon, is the prevailing example of why college football is in a great place as a product.
Transfer portal. Contracts. No loyalty. Whatever. Inject this stuff into MY VEINS!!!!!
— Dari Nowkhah (@ESPNDari) January 9, 2026
Never has there been more hope for so many. Membership in the exclusive club of heritage and built-in advantages is no longer required. A tallying of the recruiting stars next to names on a roster no longer produces a long and accurate list of programs with no shot of winning it all.
The landscape is always changing, never boring. Vanderbilt, Texas Tech, Ole Miss and Arizona State are among Indiana’s party-crashing undercards. The College Football Playoff is compelling. The games aren’t all thrillers, but enough of them are.
I would, though, like us to get through one of those good games without half of college sports media crowing on some app: “OH THAT’S WEIRD, I THOUGHT COLLEGE FOOTBALL WAS BROKEN.”
Because we all know darn well that, in ways, it is. Or maybe fractured sounds less dramatic. Chaotic. Problematic? Whatever makes you feel less bad. In the same week we’re enjoying the CFP semifinals, including an Ole Miss-Miami classic, we’ve got the former coach of Ole Miss keeping assistant coaches from attending the ball like he’s Cinderella’s stepmother.
We’ve got that same coach, LSU’s Lane Kiffin, courting one quarterback (Arizona State transfer Sam Leavitt) at a basketball game while another (Washington’s Demond Williams Jr.) announces he’s in the portal, apparently with the idea of joining Kiffin, except he had already signed to stay on with Washington. Except we have contracts in college sports that seek to sort of bind, while being careful not to make the person being paid sound as if he or she is being paid to play. Even though that’s exactly what’s happening.