The Untold Secret Behind College Football’s Ultimate Game-Changer: Academic Eligibility Revealed

Somewhere buried beneath layers of chaos and knee-jerk reactions within college football, there’s an old guardian waiting to be called back into action — a lost relic that once kept the chaos in check and gave this circus a semblance of order. Yet, intriguingly enough, the very folks who run the show right now — the high and mighty presidents and chancellors of the powerhouse conferences like the SEC and Big Ten — have turned a blind eye to this gem. Instead of embracing it, they’ve all but abandoned it during these wild, untamed NIL days. If you’re scratching your head looking for a fix to the madness rampaging through college sports, here’s a curveball: it’s academics — plain, simple, no-nonsense academic standards. When was the last time a player’s academic standing genuinely impacted their eligibility, their ability to transfer, or even their enrollment? It’s been ages since universities stood firm on academic integrity instead of cutting corners or making exceptions for star athletes. And honestly, it’s about time we brought this old friend back to the forefront, because without it, the game’s direction feels more like a runaway train than a championship drive. Ready to dive deeper? LEARN MORE

The solution is right there staring back at them, a lost standard from the past with a full tank just itching to get back in the fight.

Yet the current acting NCAA — the presidents and chancellors of the SEC and Big Ten — has virtually ignored it. In fact, all but walked away from it.

If you’re looking for the magic bullet of change, if you’re desperate to slow an out of control train barreling down the NIL era tracks, let me reintroduce a friend that has somehow been ignored for the past five years.

Academics.

Straight, no frills, classwork.

Freedom has a price: Players, cash, lack of consequences. What could go wrong in NIL world?

The next move: Trinidad Chambliss-led death of NCAA could lead to birth of SEC-only world

Want to get a grip on player movement and ridiculous appeals for extended eligibility? Start focusing on academics again — you know, the education in higher education.

More to the point: academic eligibility.

Forget about eligibility lawsuits from greedy attorneys, or the antitrust threat thrown around every time the NCAA steps foot in a courtroom. These are our academic standards, and you will abide by them. Period.

But when was the last time academics not only forced players to sit out a season, but prevented them from enrolling in school? Or prevented a transfer because credit hours from one school weren’t accepted at another?

Look, I don’t pretend to know the academic standards of every college and university, but I’m pretty sure a double transfer (or more) can’t simply wind up at an Association of American Universities school with a clean transcript.

Or even be accepted.

It’s not that difficult to scan transfer portal additions for any FBS school, and see the progression from school to school and realize the absurdity of this exercise.

These universities barely talk among themselves, and have distinctly different academic curriculum. There was a time when universities stood behind academic standards as a badge of honor, refusing to budge for anything or anyone.

Not even a star football player.

Now it appears they’ve simply decided to go along to get along. You scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours. Who cares about transferable credit hours?

At the front of it all, leading the way with baton in hand and proudly stepping out the new beat, is the NCAA. Don’t buy the righteous indignation they’re selling, everyone.

This is the same group that in 2017, allowed North Carolina — one of the top five public institutions in the country — to argue systemic academic fraud (fake classes) was available to all students, and therefore wasn’t liable to NCAA sanctions.

And I know this is going to shock you (sarcasm alert), the argument worked.

Six years later, in the early NIL stages of what-the-hell-are-we-doing-here, the NCAA decided to drop standardized SAT and ACT scores for incoming freshmen and opted instead for a minimum 2.3 grade point average on 16 high school core courses.

That’s a C-minus average on 16 courses over four years.

This is the same NCAA who decided players must only pass 6-9 credit hours a semester, and 24 over an entire academic year, to stay eligible. Low expectations, everyone, do not lead to high achievers.

Meanwhile, the presidents and chancellors who willingly built this mess and now realize it’s not what they want, charged a couple of conference commissioners to lobby Congress — the only organization more dysfunctional than the NCAA — for help to clean up the carnage.

Two conference commissioners who, at this point, can’t even agree on the format of a multibillion dollar College Football Playoff.

So players are earning foundational wealth without the restraints of contracts or limited mobility. Coaches are complaining about the system, but not the generational wealth they’re earning.

Universities are complaining because once available media rights money and booster contributions are quickly being erased by paradigm legal losses.

And here we are, engulfed in a transitory world of annual player movement with a longterm goal of what? That should — and really always has been — the No. 1 question for universities.

What are we working toward, and how do we make it better?

Instead those same universities (see: the NCAA) have systematically removed any academic governor that could slow the self destructive tsunami — when they didn’t need to.

The only limitation to athletic and financial player opportunity should be the ability to stay academically eligible, and have classes that transfer toward a degree at your next stop.

But that would take 130-plus FBS schools to welcome back our old friend academic eligibility standards.

The magic bullet itching to get back in the fight.

Matt Hayes is the senior national college football writer for USA TODAY Sports Network. Follow him on X at @MattHayesCFB.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Return of academic standards key to fixing college football instability