The Cleveland Browns (of the NFL) are cutting rookie tight end Dae'Quan Wright who, upon clearing waivers, plans on signing with LSU (of the NCAA).
Yes, you read that correctly; a boomerang roster move that perfectly encapsulates the state of college athletics. Absurd and outrageous, of course; also somewhat comical and entirely preventable.
Leave it to LSU, Lane Kiffin and an East Baton Rouge Parish judge to turn the transfer portal into a pros-to-college rotating door. Go ahead and curse them, but know that while they might be first, they are unlikely to be last.
College athletics is always about self-dealing and self-interests.
They talk a good game about "student-athletes" and paint slogans like "family" and "team" on the weight room wall, but if some NFL camp roster cut might help convert on third down, many won't hesitate to dial up a sympathetic magistrate and bump a sophomore down the depth chart.
The NFL waiver wire is the new national signing day.
Hey, let's send a scout to Detroit this weekend, we need a linebacker.
So go watch the King High opener?
No, the Lions preseason finale.
Those old "going pro in something other than sports" commercials have taken on new meaning.
There is plenty of blame to go around here, but in the end this falls on the NCAA, which keeps getting caught flat-footed legally while pursuing pie-in-the-sky federal legislation rather than seeking practical solutions.
"As a group, the NCAA is particularly incapable of seeing around corners," said attorney Tom Mars, who has specialized in NCAA cases but isn't involved with Wright's.
In this instance, it was a well-meaning but clumsily executed decision this summer to give every athlete five years of eligibility over a five-year period. That was an effort to end the era of granting nearly every player with some loophole or sob story another season, which left rosters filled with dudes in their mid-20s and some teams with seemingly more fathers than freshmen.
"There are a lot of older gentlemen with beards playing basketball in college right now," Arkansas basketball coach John Calipari jokingly lamented last year. "The guy comes in and he's waving to his kids up in the seats ... Crazy thing, he's using NIL for his first wife's alimony."
The NCAA's intention with the five-for-five rule was correct. Its rollout (namely, not grandfathering in the high school Class of 2022) and legal reasoning were not, making itself easy prey for plaintiff attorneys.
"You'd think somebody in the NCAA would have pointed out 'We better come up with a darn-good reason for doing this, or somebody is going to sue us,'" Mars said.
That's what happened and after some wrangling, here we are: Wright, a second-team All-SEC selection last year at Ole Miss, leaving the NFL to rejoin his old coach, Kiffin, who himself jumped to LSU.
More players are sure to follow in what should be a one-year problem, but this being college sports, who is really to say?
At least getting cut from the NFL as a rookie isn't so bad these days, not when seven-figure salaries might await back at major college programs.
It beats, say, making $13,750 a week on an NFL practice squad, a comparative pay rate that might as well be the Latin term for MACtion. Kiffin drops that on the way to hot yoga each morning.
The NCAA's failure has been long in the making.
For years now it has been bludgeoned legally by everyone from a chancery judge in Pittsboro, Mississippi, to all nine justices on the United States Supreme Court. Rather than accept reality, the NCAA, since 2019, has aggressively lobbied Congress to pass sweeping legislation to "save" it.
Not once has an actual bill reached a vote -- one might in September, but even then, passage seems unlikely. Congress, after all, can spot a desperate, disorganized and filthy rich industry a mile away. Why take one donation when a decade will do?
The politicians have repeatedly filled their reelection slush funds. Lobbyists have knocked out private school tuition for their kids. In exchange, College Sports Inc. has gotten empty photo-op hearings and pats on the head that maybe next session this will get done.
Welcome to K Street. It Just Means More.
The NCAA needs to stop asking Congress to solve all its problems and focus on eligibility. It should be protected in determining who can play and for how long.
This is common sense stuff, the way you can't be 13 and play U10 soccer or you don't get extra seasons of high school eligibility just because you got injured as a senior or your family spent a year in Germany when you were a sophomore.
Five years to play five seasons in college. Some restrictions on transfers. And if you leave for the pros, then you leave ... for good. It solves about 80% of what ails college athletics.
A simple, skinny bill is needed, not legislation bogged down on addressing coaching contracts, ticket prices, Olympic sports funding, conference realignment, transgender athletes and so on. Those may or may not be reasonable concerns, but it gums up the process; the pursuit of perfection at the cost of progress.
The result: Nothing gets done and nothing gets done and nothing gets done ... until one day Adam Schefter is reporting Lane Kiffin is signing guys off the Cleveland Browns and all that's left are jokes that write themselves.
