Listen, I totally get what you are lamenting. I do. But, if you look back to a generation ago most sports were very dissimilar as to what they are today. You’ve grown up watching it one way but changes have occurred all along.
I believe the version of college football we have been watching since the mid -70’s was “defiled and destroyed” by the NCAA. How? The NCAA is the governing board of the sport and they allowed the sport to move from student athletes to illiterates and cheaters. Why was UGA not given the death penalty for Herschel? Instead they won a Natty and the NCAA allowed the power programs to live in an alternate world of cheating, illiterates, and Natties. Meanwhile, the GT’s, Penn States, and Notre Dames, who tried to keep to the student-athlete model fell off the map because the NCAA did not enforce their own rules. So we’ve had a completely “defiled” sport with free shoes, crab legs, Camaros, houses, etc. Any team can win a Natty if they are willing to cheat. Pete Carroll proved this. He took a mid level program, bought players, won, left, and then USC went back to mid level. Look at Urban Meyer at both stops. And the NCAA put GT on probation.
The current system of NIL now takes away the major advantage the power schools had for 50 years which was they could pay but if anyone else tried the NCAA would get them. Remember when schools would call the NCAA on each other when recruits would tell them how much it would take to get them? Any future system will be better than the NCAA’s uneven system. If UGA spends 25million and wins a Natty then no problem because everyone will know. At least now GT can decide how much it wants to spend without fear of Dooley calling the NCAA on us.