In the last Telegraph newsletter, I solicited your views on “the new reality” of college football. I asked whether you lamented the loss of amateurism, whether you think the new system is fairer to the athletes, and if it was a case of capitalism run amok. We received dozens of emails, and, as promised, we’re sharing them here.
We always enjoy hearing from readers. Write us anytime at [email protected].
—Pat Joseph, Editor in Chief
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Those Saturday afternoons I loved are gone now
I’m an old Bear.
When I attended the University, football was a tradition. The players were students. Student-athletes, they were called. They were our team, they were us, we were them. They took on the rival schools for the honor and glory of us all.
There was nothing that compared to a Saturday afternoon in October at Memorial Stadium. The relief of a week of lectures, study, and reflection gave way to excitement and elation. With food, drink, and merriment before and after the game, the marvelous marching band on the field, the team playing their hearts out, we cheered and roared, sang our fight songs, win or lose.
And, oh yes, GO BEARS!
There was no concept of paying the players a salary. They attended the University on scholarship. A good education and a possible job in the professional leagues (there were two at that time) loomed ahead. To be paid a salary simply didn’t exist.
The onset of the neoliberal economic and cultural system has altered our perspective of how society works. This seeped slowly into every corner of our world and arrived at college football. Football, at the college level, developed into a money-making machine, and businessmen took over.
Your January article happily described the recent football season as “what a season!” I don’t know. Unlike in the past, I paid little attention. I began to lose interest with the firing of Jeff Tedford (for failing to assure the graduation of his players, which apparently is no longer a problem) and finished with the collapse of the Pac 12 conference.
But the world changes. And it is said that we must change with it. But that does not mean it is changing for the better.
I do not begrudge young Mendoza for his success, but I did not feel a swelling of pride. He saw opportunities in this “business” of college football and took the best offer. I do wonder, however, how Indiana University, after many years of also-ran football, suddenly racked up such a stupendous season. Maybe someone will do a documentary. I doubt I would watch it though.
Those Saturday afternoons I loved are gone now. The games are played, but not for the honor or the glory of the Golden Bear but for the money. It seems strange that the University is now a business entity with a General Manager fielding a professional football team. Perhaps football could be taken private. It would seem to fit nicely with Chancellor Lyons’s Startup Campus.
So, uh, go bears… sort of?
Michael Fitzpatrick
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Colleges are now farm leagues for the NFL
There is no “new reality of college football.” The NFL and NIL have turned colleges into farm leagues for professional teams. There is no loyalty, no longevity, no connection to college anymore.
Brian A. Foster
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Maybe we’re just too sports-crazed
Recently at a kids birthday party, I asked a D-I college basketball player from two decades ago what he thought of the changes to college sports. Honestly, I’m for amateurism. But there I was, a fairly privileged White guy asking a Black man from an underprivileged family, so I listened. He told me that being on the team had demanding hours, lots of travel, and an added stress in college. Once on a road trip, he was just plain hungry, and out of cash. He asked his coach to buy him a hamburger, but his coach was restricted from giving any financial help to players, including meals. So he went hungry.
That’s clearly not fair. And yet the new system seems wild. I don’t know what the answer is. Maybe our country is simply too sports crazed.
Jonathan Stewart ’98, M.A. ’07
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Games should be played at 1:00 on Saturdays, TV be damned!
I’m undecided about the NIL, although I think opening the Transfer Portal before the Bowl games are played impacts those games in a major way since many star players will opt out of participating.
HOWEVER, I’m very much a traditionalist as far as when regular season games should be played…….. 1:00 pm, Saturday afternoons, broadcast revenues be damned!! If you want to see more than one game, technology allows recording, duh!
Richard Sheng, M. Arch ’74
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A case of legislation, not capitalism, run amok
My perspective comes from playing at Cal from ’78 to ’82, in the NFL (Oilers/Giants), and being an active California licensed lawyer. I felt compelled to pay my athletic scholarship back to Cal through volunteerism and financial support, and continue in that effort to this day. My Cal teammates and coaches, even our equipment manager, stay connected. Transferring was disfavored and training table dinner was provided in season only. It was an NCAA violation to work on campus. Games were at 12:30PM.
Times have changed drastically. In my day, 10 percent of an athletic department funding was institutional and 90 percent state funded. That equation has flipped. It’s no secret academia has a dubious financial record. There is a correlation between athletic success (Men’s Basketball and Football) and donations to a university. When you couple those two realities and mix in huge media… well, it’s like gaslighting!
The players and parents are not to blame and neither is it “capitalism run amok” as The Telegraph article infers. Was The Fair Pay to Play Act “legislation run amok”? It would appear that the answer to that question is yes. It’s only about money. How could a parent tell their soccer player daughter or football player son to turn down life-changing money to sign with or transfer to SMU/Duke/Oregon… ? The truth is the kid has to follow the money as, statistically, reaching the professional leagues is remote. It can be argued that the student-athlete who follows fungible money, gives up much of the college experience, friendships, connections, and loyalties shared by those of us that weathered the storm at Cal and elsewhere and continue to enjoy the fruits of that connection long after the money dried up.
At the end of the day, college football is professionalized and the players, like the coaches, managers, are employed by the universities to perform and entertain. Go Bears!
Joe Cooper
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Get Cal out of college football and move on
With the transfer portal and NIL payments, how is college football different from pro football? Get Cal out of college football. Accept that Stanford will always have the winning record in the Big Game and move on. Cal has more Nobel prize winners.
I think the pro teams ought to buy the college teams and call them the minor league. Drop all the NCAA sports and keep only intramural teams. European schools don’t have big sports programs. Why should we? Maybe it made sense at one time but that time is past.
Sincerely,
Kevin Larrowe ’75
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A players union would foster more loyalty
Dear Pat,
Thanks for the articles on college sports. The reality is that football and basketball have grown into media properties on par with professional leagues, and need to be removed from the colleges they have been tethered to for so long.
- Football and basketball players form a union to negotiate with the super league.
- Current conferences (Big 10, Big 12, SEC, ACC, others) disband and form a super league or major/minor league of some kind; there are many possible models, and traditional rivalries can remain in place.
- The super league negotiates one media deal, the way the major pro leagues do today, to maximize revenue.
- Schools sign licensing deals with the super league to receive royalties for the use of the school name. Importantly, schools are no longer funding these revenue sports.
- Each school forms a Revenue Sport Office to manage its participation in the super league. This entity is funded by its share of media money, as well as any outside equity participation by alumni or financial investors.
- A salary cap is negotiated for each sport, commensurate with the media revenue associated with that sport.
- Schools negotiate a student/player contract with each Revenue Sport Office that defines the terms the player must adhere to be considered a student athlete at that particular school.
- School’s ADs will still exist, but manage a smaller portfolio of nonrevenue sports and their associated donors. The NCAA may stay involved in this subset of sports but would have no involvement in the new super league.
To me, these are basic points of the new regime we are heading towards. The sooner we do away with the existing conference and funding structure, the better. The current “one year free agency” (media share plus NIL) model is not good for anyone. A players’ union would enforce some semblance of loyalty to a program, with defined terms of employment. The current chaotic funding model puts too much of a burden on university general funds, which pressures costs and makes tuition higher and higher for unfortunate undergraduates. It is time the universities take some of the money flowing into these revenue sports and funnel it towards the true purpose of the school: education of undergraduates. The funds flowing into the sport are large enough to ensure not only the future of revenue sports, but of nonrevenue sports and education as well. There would be a flood of private capital willing to supplement media money. These media properties are too large now to be effectively managed by university administrations. A new business model needs to be put in place to support the new reality.
Tim Chatard ’91
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Nancy Skinner opened Pandora’s box
I am (was?) a fan of college football, and this is what I think of Ms. Skinner’s intervention. Change was necessary—the NCAA is neanderthal—but when one imposes change without thinking through the consequences, i.e. without a plan at all to manage and rationalize such an enormous change, one ends up with a terrific and costly mess—lawsuits, more government intrusion, corruption. I do not think Ms. Skinner thought through her intervention; she opened Pandora’s Box.
Sharon O’Dair, Ph.D.
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Leverage the Berkeley degree for all it is worth
Read Daily Cal article about the end of football season and the distant pride of Cal alumni for the first Heisman Trophy Cal graduate winner in Fernando. But… the lesson is clear: Football success provides a 10x image on national, ACC television than all our noble (sic) prizes combined. Cruel but true fact.
Rich Lyons, Chancellor, had the Berkeley banner put across from Memorial Stadium’s ACC TV cameras to project our known image as “Berkeley” out over TV. Now, with Ron Rivera in the saddle (another Chancellor accomplishment) we should use the NIL portal to our maximum advantage. What do we have to offer no one else does? What Fernando Mendoza achieved in three years, a Cal bachelor’s degree, in a sense a lifetime security ticket, football or no football to a young man’s future.
Ron R, use this Berkeley degree for all it is worth, and go get portal players to bring back the Pappy Waldorf days to Cal. I ask you, “Why not?” It is not beneath our intellectual reputation to add some innovation in the football arena. After all, Cal is the leading university for entrepreneurial startups and enjoys a great national reputation in being the no.1 rated public university.
Go do it, Ron R and alumni. I will start with a $1,500 pledge to a new Alumni NIL Football Fund (needs this name) that the Alumni Association should start immediately.
Go Bears,
Clinton E. Day, MBA, CEO
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I miss the rivalries we had in the Pac 12
As a member of the Class of 1966, I’ve seen the Cal football team lose many more games than it won. I attended all four of the Big Games as an undergraduate. Cal Football lost them all. My memory isn’t clear about what happened after I graduated. I don’t have a long record of Big Game attendance. Still, I was well into my 30s before I attended a Big Game that Cal actually won. It was great being a Cal alumni, following the team, attending many Cal games, both home and away.
I can recall one Cal game played against USC in the LA Coliseum. The Trojans were beating us so badly that my son and I left at halftime and walked around the campus just to sort of take it all in. (Both of my sons graduated from UCSB and had great college experiences without even having a football team.)
Now, here we are at the end of the 2025–26 season. Cal played teams like Louisville, Syracuse, and SMU. Did I walk around those campuses with my sons? Not likely, of course. Was I interested in Cal becoming bowl eligible? I was until that stupid game Cal played in the Hawaii Bowl. I watched that game with the same son with whom I had toured the USC campus many years before. His take on the Hawaii Bowl: “Dad, it’s just entertainment!”
Cal doesn’t belong in a league like the ACC. What is Cal doing there? Cal belongs in a league like the Mountain West. Oh, that’s right, what would that do to Cal’s cash flow from television contracts? How would Cal afford to pay for the rebuild of Memorial Stadium that seemed like such a great idea so many years ago? How did the Bears end up on a field in Hawaii that looked like some of the fields my son played on as a running back for a small Catholic high school?
College football is absurd. It works OK as a minor league feeder program for the professional game. Maybe it works fine in other parts of the country? For example, the SEC is way too big, but it at least still supports many more traditional rivalries than college football in our part of the country.
I miss the rivalries we had in the Pac 12. The Pac 12 was destroyed by television contracts and the pursuit of the big bucks that came with them. Not having regional rivalries is not good for Cal Football. The firing of a very good coach like Justin Wilcox was not good for Cal Football. The debt Cal owes for rebuilding Memorial Stadium is not good for Cal Football. The Transfer Portal is not good for Cal Football. Being the top public university in the country is not good for Cal Football.
The University of California spent more than $400 million dollars to rebuild Memorial Stadium more than ten years ago. The university stills more than $400 million dollars on the debt financing it took on. What genius thought that up? The university has been paying on an interest-only financing plan since the stadium was reopened. We won’t even begin to pay down the principal for many years to come.
Cal is stuck in the ACC because of the hubris Cal Football was blessed with during the Jeff Tedford era. Cal doesn’t belong in the ACC. What has happened to the professionalization of college football is not good for Cal Football now. I cannot see it changing in my lifetime. When my lifetime comes to an end, the university will still owe its lenders more than $400 million.
Go Bears,
Alan Shirek ’66
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There’s now a revolving door at every collegiate locker room
Strange as this may sound, the arrival of NIL payments and the transfer portal feels like a logical progression after the rise of free agency in professional sports. It takes the model to an extreme —all players are essentially on one-year contracts with a school. They can enter the transfer portal each year and go somewhere new that’s willing to make a deal. Some will move for $$ alone while others will seek “a better opportunity” with promises of being a featured player on a more visible stage. It worked out well for Fernando Mendoza, but not so for Jayden Ott. “Professional” sports (MLB, NFL, NBA, etc.) don’t allow this because they have more control over their markets and fewer roster spots. If this model were to reach the pro ranks, rooting for one’s team would die as we know it without continuity. My love of college sports runs deep, but recruiting and scholarships have been diminished, leaving a revolving door at every collegiate locker room. Sad. Go Bears!
Joe Blachman ’83
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Winning is overvalued
In response to the editorial, the money and transfer portal have virtually destroyed the traditional college football that I have loved for years as a Cal fan. I preferred college football to the NFL, and now college ball mimics professional football. It started with the demise of the Pac 12 and went downhill from there. There is no concept of team loyalty anymore. While I applaud Mendoza and his accomplishments, I am sad about the commercialism and seeming selfishness. The CFP is part of the downfall. Winning is overvalued and it sends the wrong message to young athletes. I have lost my love for college football.
Diane Gubatayao
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Football has prostrated itself to the whims of TV
I’m done with it, about three times over.
NIL and the Transfer Portal killed off any notion that the players represent, or have any meaningful affiliation with, the University. When I was a freshman, Ron Rivera was the most noteworthy athlete on campus. He also lived in the dorms, hung out with us dweebs, played on all our intramural teams and wanted to talk about Candide in the Dining Commons. (Though the latter didn’t go too well—“Goddamnit Ron, the subject is boobs, and we’re never going to make headway in ranking the Unit 1 girls if you keep straying off topic!”) I doubt anything like that sort of integration with wider campus life occurs for football players now.
Then, there’s the abject prostration of the football program to the whims of TV. I’m never attending another night game. I’m never buying another ticket with a TBD kickoff time. And I might not even attend another of the rare day games where the commercial breaks run to 3.5 minutes and the halftime is interminable.
The last nail in the coffin was the demise of the traditional rivalries of the Pac-12. I really only cared about the Pac-8 schools, but the tepidness of my regard for the Mountain Time Zone schools pales in comparison with my complete indifference to the non-Stanford ACC schools.
To sum up, the fungibility of the players, the crappy viewing experience, and apathy toward the other institutions involved have all combined to kill my interest in college football.
Stewart Johnson
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Amateurism is a ship that sailed a long time ago
When I was a law student at Berkeley, I used to climb up the hill behind the campus to the garden overlooking the campus. From my perch, I could view the football stadium, and sometimes I would pause to watch the game for a few minutes. It didn’t distract me for very long.
I have never liked football, which seemed excessively violent to no end. I went to an all girls prep school and then to a women’s college, so I had no experience of school sports traditions. Indeed in my years in Berkeley, there wasn’t much sign of school football traditions in those days either. But then it was the era of antiwar demonstrations.
As to amateurism in college sports, it seems to me that ship sailed a long time ago. All of the universities with significant football teams pay their coaching staff astronomical salaries. Currently the now recently fired head coach at Berkeley (or Cal as you all call it) made $4.7 million last year, becoming the highest paid state employee in California. I don’t know about Berkeley, but typically the students recruited for college teams do not have the academic qualifications of students who come to study. And they are not expected to do much studying. With limited academic requirements, they are put in specialized academic programs in the Athletic Study Center while devoting almost all their waking hours to athletics.
Why is this so? Berkeley made something like $45 million from its football team in 2023. This of course is why Berkeley left the Pac 12 Conference, where it competed with teams on the west coast, to join the Atlantic Coast Conference, to play teams mostly in the South. Berkeley now plays the likes of Duke, the University of Virginia, Georgia Tech. Better media rewards. So much for building school spirit. Why: as my old classmate Leigh Steinberg’s client once said, “Show me the money!” College football is a business.
And so the question is whether paying student athletes cheapens the game? When I was a student, I had a couple of paid campus jobs. They did not change my status as essentially a student. I see no reason why the students who are placing their wellbeing on the line to raise money for Berkeley shouldn’t be paid for their campus job too.
Sincerely
Erica Hahn, JD ’68
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I don’t say this lightly: Cal should drop football.
You asked for opinions from Cal grads on college football. My thoughts:
1. Legal matters are all one way right now. CFB players get the money (on top of the free tuition they have been getting for decades), but don’t have any responsibilities. Don’t weep to me about these men supplying value and not getting value back: No one buys the jerseys of third string linebackers. Even at football factories, only a couple of players have ancillary market value. Answer: Make them employees. They already get free medical care when injured on the job. Have them sign contracts to perform services for a market-calculated fee, and agree to non-competes. This will prepare them for the real world better than any stirring halftime speech.
2. Part of the contracts must include the requirement that they perform their jobs for the whole season, including bowl games. I am a retired trial lawyer. I could not, without serious sanctions, get to the courthouse on trial day and say “Nah, I’m not trying the case. Might hurt my win-loss record or injure my vocal cords.” They have to play in every game for which they are physically able as determined by their employer, or get sued for breach. Include liquidated damages in the contract. I offer to draft a model agreement.
3. I have long advocated for a soccer-like system. For CFB, have a league of the 40 or so “schools” (I live in the SEC, so I know who some will be) that are willing to pay these men to perform. Five conferences, geographically arranged. These teams play only each other, plus one game per year against “schools” not in the league. There would be relegation and promotion so that some movement in/out is possible. Everybody else does the Ivy League: No scholarships, no NIL, go to real class. Carson Beck stated openly that he never went to class at Miami—putting aside whether that is really an institution of higher learning.
4. I have three degrees from Cal (BS Business, BA History, JD). I had season football tickets even after I moved out of the Bay Area. I REALLY was at The Play. So, I don’t say this lightly: Cal should drop football. I understand that it loses money. Most Cal grads don’t care about gridiron success, as witness the tepid attendance even for interesting and winning teams. Taking this step never hurt the reputation of the University of Chicago, or of the WCAC schools that eliminated the sport. The latter focus on soccer and basketball and do well.
Thanks for asking.
Larry Lopardo ’77, JD ’81
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When a player leaves a team … that team should be compensated
I don’t like it, especially in its current form.
1) A cap needs to be put on payouts.
2) Moving via the portal from team A to team B should have team B compensate team A, who lost the player.
3) When the player leaves a team, he/she should compensate the team they left (pay an amount for education costs).
4) If a player has been given a full scholarship, said player should not be allowed to move into the portal until they have achieved at least two years with their original college.
5) If a student player signs with a team, they must satisfy certain rules—i.e. to stay with said team for at least two years not including red shirt years.
Many considerations are necessary.
Best regards,
Brian G. Barsamian
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Pining for the days when amateurs played for love of game
Regrettably, in our culture today, money/wealth has become the preferred indicator of success, instead of other measures of the good that one has done for one’s community, profession, society, and/or country… or team. Now, just a bit more than half a decade after enactment of the CA Fair Pay to Play Act, instigated by State Senator Nancy Skinner, it has indeed allowed raw capitalism to run amok. College athletes no longer seem to have any loyalty to any institution or respect for the value of the education it can provide; the main criterion for a student-athlete’s choice of program appears to be the one where worship at the altar of the great god Mammon is the greatest. This situation has converted universities into mere “farm clubs” for professional sports organizations and put enormous and unprecedented financial stresses and strains on those same institutions that negatively impact their pedagogical, research, and service missions, already under attack and beleaguered by many other outside forces. I pine for the days when amateur sports, while never “pure,” were mainly about playing because of love for the game.
Jeremy W. Thorner
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Cal should have joined with Stanford and formed a California-only conference
I see the increasing financialization of college athletics as an adverse influence to the college experience. Athletics started out as an outlet for students and a means of rallying around the community. But that has transformed into a vehicle for advertising, promotion, and fundraising that has grown over the last half century. An unfortunate side effect was the financial exploitation of athletes in football and basketball, and the universities failed to come up with a formula to share those benefits with athletes. When the NCAA went to using athletes’ likenesses in electronic games without permission and compensation, the universities crossed the line. Regardless, the professionalization of college athletics is causing a divergence between the experiences of revenue-sport athletes and other students.
Particularly troubling for me are two aspects, one of which California athletes experience most directly. The first is the demise of the Pac-12 and colleges being forced into far-flung conferences solely for the purposes of the football program. Now all Cal athletes must fly across the country, losing sleep, class, and training time just to satisfy a small subset of those athletes. Instead, Cal should have joined with Stanford and formed a California-only conference and the Regents should have ordered UCLA to share much more of its Big Ten revenues with the system’s other campuses. The second is that walk-on athletes are no longer allowed to participate because of the NIL agreement and NCAA rules. I was a walk-on at Cal. Under the current rules I would not have been able to set two school records in the 10K and to score in the Pac-10 meet. Because I moved here from Seattle to join the team, I probably would not have even attended Cal and my life would be very different. And California would not have had an expert who provided the analysis that recovered billions of dollars after the 2000-01 Energy Crisis and showed that the Klamath River dams could be decommissioned at little cost to PacifiCorp.
Because of these changes, I am no longer giving to the Cal athletics program after being a consistent donor for decades. I still give to other Cal programs and I am a proud lifetime alumni member. But I am sad over what is happening to Cal athletics. I see college football becoming just a farm system for the NFL.
Richard McCann ’81, M.S. ’90, Ph.D. ’98
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Pay-for-play should be abolished
I thought that intercollegiate athletics were intended to be contests of athletic skills among students. Now we have professionals representing those schools. Do all those who play receive compensation or just the most skilled? Do the schools still give scholarships to those athletes? Where is the line (if any) between the professional and the “student”? Are these paid athletes required to meet scholastic requirements and attend class or do they just play? In my opinion, the pay for play for “student” athletes is wrong and should be abolished.
Louis Shepard
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Football is owned by TV—lock, stock and barrel
As a Cal Football season ticket holder for 47 years, I have seen a lot of football. Unfortunately, the thing that I signed up for, the thrill of being in the stadium for the actual event, has almost entirely gone away.
There are many factors. Replay, overtime, players as free agents. All contributed to the destruction of the game that used to be.
However, the overriding factor, the most pernicious influence, is the simple fact that college football is now owned by television. Lock, stock, and barrel. TV is largely responsible for the miseries the fans in the stadium must now endure, sitting and waiting through interminable commercials, replays, and whatever other reason they can find to insert more commercial time for TV. Hard to continue to be excited when one is required to wait several minutes while they do whatever they do, or don’t. “Momentum,” as we once knew it, no longer exists in college football.
Television is also responsible for the whole NIL thing, as it was all the money they threw around that led to the players, or some of them, becoming professionals, and colleges needing GMs to manage the “company.” It is also the reason that most of Cal’s home games were put on at night, leading directly to my non-attendance due to the driving time required for fans from the Sacramento area, where I live. When I was a student, getting home at 1 or 2 o’clock in the morning was not a big deal. Now it is not fun at all. So I don’t attend.
Basically, the game left me behind in the pursuit of money. I will soon leave my seats behind too.
Tom Walker
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Cal athletes have to travel across four time zones to play
It’s over is right! College football has been ruined by the transfer portal and NIL. No longer are athletes amateurs, playing for school pride and a free ride education (who cares about that anymore?); t\They are making millions of dollars and literally the minor leagues for the NFL. If they sniff out more dollars at another school, they can jump in the transfer portal, and go somewhere with a bigger budget, and not lose any eligibility in the process! This has led to realignment of time-honored conferences, and schools like Cal have to have their athletes travel across four time zones to play a game. It’s ridiculous, and very sad. Never thought I’d live long enough to see something this outrageous happen in my lifetime.
Nancy Leasia ’70
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Fun of watching the game is being ruined
The new pay-to-play system for college football has turned me off. I like to follow Cal football, not one Cal player. Unfortunately, one player can turn a team into a winner or loser. I understand the lure of money, cars, etc. to a youngster. However, from a fan’s viewpoint, it is the fun of rooting for a team that matters to me; not one player. The current trend is ruining my fun in watching Cal football.
Bernard ’63
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Players can play for money later
First, although I am not a regular football fan I do enjoy the occasional game. I enjoy the stories about why the players came to UCB and what they want to study. It seems now it is more for the $ than the outstanding programs at the school.
Second, I think players play more for the school if they have a real connection to the school and the people at the school (less so if there for the $). They can play for $ professionally later or earlier if they don’t want to stay with the school.
Just one take here…
Sue
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Focus on other sports
It’s time to focus on tennis, rowing, skiing, pitching, and other sports which only carry a few players. Enjoying college sports is history as professional sports has become.
Sincerely,
Edward Blamire ’51
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Long live rugby!
My comments regarding the “New Amateurism” have primarily to do with what is MISSING from all of the conversations, discussions, and op eds: That element is anything to do with academics… No mention of GPAs, majors, graduation rates (a low one sunk Coach Tedford), transfer credits, etc. Or am I missing something? I guess to take the place of “Academics,” the system has created the NIL, The Transfer Portal, and “Angels” similar to a Broadway play benefactor, who bankroll the NIL process and get rich pals to do the same, à la Mark Cuban at Indiana. I guess someone needs to explain to me what happened to the elements that were supposed to make collegiate sports different from professional sports: passing grades and graduation. On a positive note, however, the one mention of graduation in ALL the public editorializing about the Heisman Trophy and collegiate football was the fact that Fernando Mendoza (aka Superman) DID GRADUATE from the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley, while transfer portaling to Indiana. Is he the only one in college football to do so? Long live collegiate rugby.
Michael B. Neal ’64
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The spirit of “Alma Mater” has been lost
The January 2026 Telegraph asks for perspectives on the changing landscape of college football. For me, the spark died years ago. The final blow was the breakup of traditional conference alignments, which severed the historical ties that made the sport meaningful.
Today, college football has become primarily a farm system for the professional NFL. I suppose it’s “fair” that the institutions and the players receive a part of the TV revenues generated by that sport, but it matters little which team one prefers. The spirit of “Alma Mater” has been lost.
While I continue to increase my financial support for Berkeley’s academic mission, I can no longer muster the same enthusiasm for its football program. My interest in college athletics has shifted toward “lesser” programs like baseball, softball, rowing, and soccer, where the ideal of student-athletics remains intact.
College football has devolved into a commercial byproduct of a TV-driven industry. Money may not be the root of all evil, but when it becomes the primary focus, it inevitably displaces the values that once made team loyalty worthwhile.
Wayne Dernetz ’64, ’71
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The mold is already broken
As a parent of a former college and pro athlete, I would predict nothing but regret for introducing pay for college athletes. Although it is not unreasonable for the inclination of universities and colleges to reward athletes because of all the money the institutions make, introducing aspects of pro ball detracts from the idealistic notion of amateurism at the student level. Moreover, there is already growing concern about betting and game fixing, not to mention the fact that some involved alums have long been known to find ways to make athletes appreciated, to put it mildly. When official pay becomes the goal for athletes, it diminishes the idea of teamwork, school spirit, and pride of winning through concerted effort. Is the pay equal or variable according to the reputations of individual players? Either way, it makes for problems on the field, court, or whatever venue applies, in my opinion. Unfortunately, it seems the mold is already broken, thus I fear for a serious loss of excitement and pride surrounding competitive sports at the college level.
Valerie Gray
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Proud we had Mendoza at one time
Good afternoon alumni,
I don’t believe capitalism could effectively turn a football program into a national champion with a perfect season, albeit, unaccomplished since the year 1896 or even with a Carnegie or Rockefeller endowment of that year. And I might have that wrong. What we witnessed this season was an unrelenting year of player and coaching mistakes for our Bear Territory. We may not have raised the trophy, despite recruiting someone who did.
This leads me to believe we are headed in the right direction when it pertains to picking talented individuals. This also meant whether it’s a Farmer’s Moon versus a Wolf Moon in the calendar, a competitive Indiana University team can achieve a NCAA national title, for the first time. These Hoosiers went sixteen straight victories on the path to that trophy. Their path was just as challenging as their conference suggests with teams like The Ohio State Buckeyes, Michigan Wolverines, USC Trojans, and my on-again-off-again childhood favorite, Penn State Nittany Lions.
If there were any questions that if a team, with the right coach, not the perfect coach, can help a team to perfection, Cignetti gave an example. He is a coach who can both identify what a program lacks, make small changes with little to no drastic impact, and move on to the next yellow post-it. The coach improved overall cohesiveness as a team, which players themselves speak of as his accomplishments, then implemented the necessary corrections to help them improve their performance or deficiencies as players. This, Coach Cignetti talked about in a specific interview on how he achieved a 12-0 season.
He spoke in his interview, and forgive me for not remembering the network or host, shortly before the start of the college football playoffs that he noticed simple things. The Hoosier Football facilities had out-of-date equipment, run-down practice fields, and things of that nature. Most Division I programs enjoy a remodeled facility. I guess what coach encountered did not meet his standards. And coach would go on in this interview stating, “I have high standards.”
Cignetti made it a point to make changes not only internally with the brick and mortar of the Indiana University football program, he made the players believe.
The players can take the field against a worthy opponent every game. The key difference once the clock runs out is this: Who gave it their all, honestly, with little to minimal errors? At which points did one fail in the game? We can learn from our mistakes, not always mid-game. Game prep is vital. So when we take the field, our opponents not only know we came to play, we came to win. We didn’t come here to lose. Everyone hates losing. If you ever played a competitive sport, losing is an option, but you don’t take it willingly.
I’m proud to know we had Mendoza at one point in time. To win the championship, this QB needed a Cignetti-type coach. It’s possible we have the right mixture of players, coaches, staff, with the will to win. That remains to be seen.
Sincerely A Bear,
Nigel Campbell ’04
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Baseball has minor leagues, why not football?
Pat…
I enjoyed your Telegraph article. You asked what readers think about the new reality of college football. Personally, I prefer the amateurism model. On the other hand, college football has long served like the minor league for pro football. Major league baseball has minor leagues, so why not football? Is there a middle ground? Maybe some limit on NIL dollars either per player or school. Also, perhaps some criteria that players must meet in order to transfer to another school.
Yours,
Ken Brody B.Arch ’69
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More creative solutions than payment are needed
Hi Pat,
Thanks for the thoughtful and astute analysis of where college football is today, primarily monetarily speaking. To an extent I think it is capitalism run amok, but I’m biased as a Cal alum who comes from a working class family and have never prioritized money in anything that I accomplish. That being said, I think they should be compensated somewhat. More specifically, perhaps reduced tuition and housing costs. Additionally, extra time to take finals or provided tutors to help them succeed in their classes. I think more creative solutions other than just paying them need to be found. I hope for this someday and would appreciate it if you could publish some if not all of this in your newsletter.
Go Bears, Fiat Lux and f Stanfurd. The band is on the field!!
Ashley Brown ’05
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Cal had a stellar season!—by the commutative property
Watching former Cal quarterback Fernando Mendoza was great, but I also took consolation in that, prior to the National Championship game, Miami only had two losses all season—SMU and Louisville. And guess which was the only team in the country that beat BOTH SMU and Louisville? You guessed it—Cal!!! I’m sure there was some commutative property in there somewhere 🙂
Albert Yang
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Cal has no relation to “teams from the Confederacy”
I think the loss of the Pacific 12 Conference, its history, traditional rivalries, and familiar regional opponents with some opportunities for travel to away games and its replacement with the ACC is the worst aspect of the new reality of college football, changing the game from an amateur competition of student athletes to a single focus on chasing the buck. California and Stanford have no relation to teams from the Confederacy, and their willingness to move to the conference is an embarrassment and abandonment of Washington State and Oregon State in a desperate attempt to stay on television. It would have been preferable to find new regional teams to replace the other buck chasers and retain the value of amateur athletics in an academic institution.
Stephen Kay
Rhetoric ’72
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Athletes were on too short a leash
It is sad that our football and basketball players have become hired gladiators for our school. I would be curious to know how many athletes graduate with a degree.
I blame the NCAA for the current situation. They had our athletes on too tight a leash financially for decades. Now the genie is “out of the bottle” and cannot be put back in. (That being said, I still watch college football.)
Jerry Neft ’60
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Football has little to do with the university’s reason for being
Mr. Joseph,
You requested feedback on changes in collegiate athletics, so I am responding.
I preface my remarks by stating that I attended most football games and some basketball and swimming while a student, and I enjoyed the events. I was a competitive athlete in high school and continue to be very active to this day. I do not think I have a bias against sports in general, but I learned as a youngster that professional sports is an entertainment business and has almost nothing to do with the home city or local fans other than having an exclusive franchise within a league. The Raiders’ many moves and the dissolution of the Pac-12 conference provide abundant proof that loyal fans and sold-out stadiums are not enough to secure a professional team or player. As a result, I rarely watch professional team sports.
I understand that the NCAA coined the term “student athletes” as a friendly wrapper for college athletics prior to the NIL era. That term was largely false then and even more so now. Athletes in major sports (and perhaps more minor sports) were not students in the same way the majority of those attending Cal were. Comparing academics, the students studying engineering, the sciences, mathematics, and liberal arts had orders of magnitude more rigorous studies than any of the athletes I knew. They don’t get special classes, dining, housing, coaching, general managers, and tutors that most athletes get. I grant that there are a few exceptions that prove that an individual can be both a scholar and an athlete, but these are the exceptions and are statistical outliers. Today, these “student athletes” are professional athletes in every sense, from treatment to payment and sales of services. This may add “spice” to the game and attract the interest of sports gamblers, but it has little to do with the university’s reason for being. These students will soon be legally treated as university employees (independent contractors at the very least), incurring new liabilities and unknown legal entanglements in the future in addition to contracting issues.
In my view, the purpose of the university is teaching and the advancement of knowledge. I no longer see how professional collegiate athletics are key to this purpose. As such, I think it would be better to let them be stand-alone professional teams in a professional league. This would provide officially professional teams for all the smaller cities that currently have a college team but no pro teams. This could be modelled on the English Premier League, with multiple levels and relegation of the lowest performers in a tier and elevation of the top teams in the next lower tier. This would provide as much hometown pride as a professional team is worthy of, lets many people critique and hope for a team, and provides sufficient fodder for sports gamblers.
For those who insist that college athletics provides life-long benefits to the students, I suggest intramural sports without leaving campus. This would bring college athletics full circle back to its origins.
Regards,
Lonn Fiance ’81
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The ugly side of unregulated capitalism
The NCAA needs to regulate the transfer portal. When an athlete signs a contract for so many years, the NCAA needs to ensure the athlete abides by the contract or suffers some type of consequence. They also need to make both the coaches’ and players’ transfer portal time after the season is completed, including all bowl games, and then start all the negotiating.
This is a bad look for college sports when players and coaches are leaving the team or not playing in the bowl game because they have elected to go into the transfer portal. It really ruins college sports and it hurts the college fan base.
I used to love watching college sports as compared to professional sports because the college athletes seem to try harder both physically and emotionally but that doesn’t seem to be the case anymore.
This is the “ugly” side of capitalism when it goes unregulated. There are a few big winners and a lot more losers!
“Go Bears!”
George Freitas ’77
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Misplaced excitement
Sad to say I’m sorry to hear of the turn college football has taken. College sports should have remained non-professional. I guess we can thank Nancy Skinner for believing college athletes should get paid. Allowing athletes to commit to a college, play for that college, and then decide they want to go someplace else that can pay them is ridiculous. Why bother to recruit players if they don’t intend to stay for the four years. Is drafting someone the next step in recruiting players? It doesn’t encourage fans to become attached to players if they are going to leave to get a better deal. College football has now become all about money and how much a player can get. Is that really what college football should be about? Players that leave to profit, can change a program year, maybe for the better, but maybe not. And as we head to a professional approach, we now have to hire GMs to navigate the waters. It’s sad to see colleges getting excited about something that is going to change college football forever and not necessarily for the better. It’s also sad that it becomes more about money and how much money can these player and the university get. It used to be more important about getting good players that would help promote the program and then have other potential players want to play there. To build your winning program. What’s the incentive now? The incentive is how much money can we make and do we need to leave to do that. That’s not what college football should be about. They should develop these players so when the time comes they can then enter the professional football draft. College football should not be about money, but sadly that seems to be more important than the game and creating a college experience.
Lila O’Donnell ’79
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The “last days of the best years” of college football
In response to your question on paying college athletes. As a Cal class of 1956 alum, what I feel is that college football has changed profoundly from my days at Cal. It has resulted in a loss of true college football. It makes me feel that I was attending Cal during the last days of the best years of college football.
Go Bears!
Tom Nolan ’56
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Cal is so much more than football
I was a Bear from 1977 to 1981 and loved my Cal experience. I am a third-generation family member to go to Cal—my grandfather, George Hjelte; my mother, Phyllis Princelau Hjelte; and her sisters, Frances Princelau Dixon and Barbara Princelau Larrabee, attended Cal. It runs in my blood to cheer for the Bears!
I so enjoyed seeing the collage with current and old photographs on the front cover of the Fall/Winter 2025 magazine. However, it would be great to see this done again sometime and include other sports photos (basketball, track… ) and events in the collage. Football is wonderful, but Cal is so much more!
Lynne Hjelte Fowler ’81
