The landscape of college sports, especially football and men’s basketball, has changed and will never be the same after the advent of NIL money and more relaxed rules surrounding the transfer portal. And of course, wholesale changes like that are going to get a rise out of the old heads who had to do it “the hard way.”
Nowadays, it is very common for a four- or five-star recruit to get a big head coming out of high school. That’s too early. Instead of working their way up the depth chart, most players are, as the kids say, “running from the grind.” Rather than staying and working, they jump ship and transfer to a school that guarantees them playing time, not to mention NIL money.
From the old head perspective, one that Hall of Famer Michael Irvin has decided to represent, these shortcuts through the transfer portal are taking “the fight” out of our young athletes. Irvin went on a rant on this subject on the set of his new Netflix podcast, The White House with Michael Irvin. He said that without trials and tribulations, young people will miss out on “the cocoon of life.”
“Bouncin’ around from school to f**king school is not being in the cocoon of life [sic],” Irvin began. “Coaches can do it, coaches can do it. Why not? Coaches are coaches. But as a kid, I gotta teach your ass how to fight, because you’re gonna have to fight for your damn family! You’re gonna have to fight on your job! So why are you going over here, ‘Oh things don’t work, I’m leaving.'”
Irvin continued to talk about that cocoon. While the analogy was not totally clear, Irvin’s point is: without hardships or adversity, these young men will not grow. “We learn from our mistakes” is one of the most important and honest maxims in the English language. That’s all Mike is trying to say.
“I’m losing the essence of the cocoon! I’m supposed to be teaching them how to go from a kid to a man,” Irvin said, adding, “We got kids growing up saying everybody get a trophy now. That took fight out of them… I had to fight and earn my way to first-string. Now we’re saying, if you’re third-string, just leave! That takes the fight out of them!”
Irvin clearly feels passionate, but that doesn’t mean that all the other retired greats agree with him. LeSean McCoy, who comes from a much younger generation than Irvin, believes the old heads need to get with the times.
“The days are different and it time to accept it uncle Mike,” McCoy wrote on Twitter in a reply to the video of Irvin’s rant. “Love ya OG ,every player won’t have our type of career but they can start off with a couple hundred thousand or millions .. it benefits them and the family.”
Both sides make good points. On the one hand, you want young men to go through adversity, make mistakes, and learn from them. But on the other hand, you also love to see revenue from that enormous college football machine going into the hands of the workers (aka the players) creating all of that wealth.
Some sort of compromise between the two would seem ideal, though also unlikely.
