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When I was a kid growing up in southeastern Pennsylvania in the 1950’s, baseball was the sport. Pro football was second and basketball a distant third. Seats to games were cheap. There wasn’t much money in pro sports back then. College athletes got none unless it was under the table.

When I moved to Kenansville, NC in 1977, I found out that college basketball and football were very popular in North Carolina. Professional sports, including the Phillies, Eagles and Flyers, were the big draw where I came from.

I have followed ECU football and ACC basketball since I moved to North Carolina in 1977. ECU had several good football teams, been ranked on occasion, and participated in several bowl games. ECU baseball teams tend to be very good.

A lot has happened to college football the last couple of years. Much consolidation has taken place with certain leagues being expanded to mostly contain the better teams. Traditional rivalries between teams are slowly disappearing.

Today, we have the Power 4 conferences. It includes the Southeastern (SEC), Big Ten, Big 12 and Atlantic Coast (ACC) conferences. Recently, the PAC 12 conference was a Power 5 conference but shrunk to only two teams with the others joining one of the Power 4 conferences.

The ACC expanded to 17 teams before the 2024 season. Added were California, Stanford and SMU. Aren’t California and Stanford on the Pacific Coast? What do they have to do with the ACC?  The Big 10 has 18 teams. Why call it the Big 10?

The Southeastern Conference has 16 teams with Texas and Oklahoma being added and is considered the most powerful conference by many. Last but not least is the Big 12 Conference. It also has 16 teams.

I guess each Power 4 conference could now be called a mega-conference.

Why has this happened? Money is the answer. Broadcast rights bring in more money each time they’re negotiated and the Power 4 conferences have the leverage to get that money.

College athletes can now make money off their name, image and likeness (NIL). Shedeur Sanders is the highest paid student athlete with an estimated NIL valuation of $4.7 million. The more that can be spent on players goes a long way in determining who gets the best players.

Another new thing is the transfer portal. According to Wikipedia, the transfer portal is an NCCA database for student athletes seeking to transfer between member institutions. Student athletes are now allowed to transfer without sitting out a year. Rules regarding the transfer window are quite complex.

What it means is that student athletes that compete in other football and basketball university conferences can now easily transfer to a Power 4 conference school if it is beneficial to the student athlete. In other words, a star athlete could be stolen away from a university that is not a Power 4 conference team to a Power 4 team by a better offer.

The Power 4 Conference teams could easily be called professional football and basketball teams with the passing of the money to the players. Other college teams could easily become a recruiting base for the Power 4 schools due to the transfer portal.

I don’t like what is happening to college sports.

Al Klemm is a Washington resident and a former Beaufort County Commissioner.