| ||||||||||
Dr. Ronald P. Rogers CHIROPRACTOR Support for your body's natural healing capabilities 270-384-5554 Click here for details 
 
Columbia Gas Dept. GAS LEAK or GAS SMELL Contact Numbers 24 hrs/ 365 days 270-384-2006 or 9-1-1 Call before you dig 
Visit ColumbiaMagazine's Directory of Churches Addresses, times, phone numbers and more for churches in Adair County Find Great Stuff in ColumbiaMagazine's Classified Ads Antiques, Help Wanted, Autos, Real Estate, Legal Notices, More... 
|
Chaos or Negligence, You Decide By Ryan Hoots Sports Director, UntdWeStnd.com Lexington, KY - There's something broken in college sports right now, and everybody from athletes to reporters to fans can feel it...even if they don't want to say it out loud. The wild part? The blueprint for how to do this the right way has existed forever. It's called professional sports. Take literally any major league. The NFL, the NBA, MLB...does not matter. Every single one of them runs on structure. There's a draft. There are contracts. There are expectations tied to those contracts. Perform, you get paid again. Don't, somebody else takes your spot. Simple enough. It's not perfect, but it's organized chaos. What we've got in college right now is just chaos. Start with the draft concept. In the pros, teams don't just wake up one day and go shopping for whoever they want. There's a system. Bad teams get first crack at talent. Good teams have to build smarter. It creates balance. It forces development. It makes coaching actually matter. Compare that to the transfer portal era in the NCAA. It's basically free agency with no cap, no contracts, and no real accountability. Players can leave whenever. Programs can flip rosters overnight. There's no incentive to develop a guy for 2-3 years because if he pops, he's gone. Or worse...you develop him and someone else pays him more. That's not team building. That's roster roulette. Now let's talk contracts, because this is where it really gets sideways. In the pros, when a player signs a multi-year deal, there's commitment on both sides. The team is investing money and resources. The player is committing time and performance. There are incentives baked in. Hit certain numbers, you get bonuses. Make an All-Star team, you cash in. Win games, cha-ching. There's risk. There's reward. There's structure. College? It's all handshake deals and collectives moving money around with little to no transparency. A kid can sign somewhere, collect NIL money, and bounce the next year if things don't go their way or their feelings get hurt. No long-term accountability. No real consequence for leaving early besides maybe some fan backlash on social media for about 48 hours. That's not sustainable. It just isn't. What gets lost in all of this is development. The thing Kentucky fans, especially, have lived on for decades before the "one and done" era. Guys come in raw, they get better, they buy into a system, and by year two or three you've got something real. Mix an generationally talented freshman in and now we're cooking. Right now, that timeline barely exists and I don't think a Richie Farmer is walking through that door anytime soon. Coaches are forced to recruit their own roster every offseason. Players are constantly looking over their shoulder or checking their phone. Tampering is happening whether people want to admit it or not (even from religious institutions that used to scoff at the idea of such a thing). It's exhausting just to follow, let alone coach. You can't build culture on a one-year lease. Performance incentives are another missing piece. In the pros, your next contract depends on what you put on the stat sheet. Production matters. Consistency matters. *Cough*, availability matters. In college right now, the incentive structure is flipped. The reward often comes before the production. A player gets paid based on potential or some ambiguous recruiting ranking, not what they've actually accomplished on the field or court. That creates a dangerous environment where the hunger can fade before the work is even put in. Not every player, obviously. Plenty of dudes still grind. Still care. Still want to be great. But the system doesn't demand it the way it should. Fans are starting to feel it too. There's less attachment to players. Jerseys change names every year. It's harder to invest emotionally when the roster looks completely different every season. College sports used to be about continuity, about watching a guy grow from a freshman into a leader. Now it's more like...hope he stays, but don't get too attached. There's a middle ground here somewhere. Nobody is saying players shouldn't be compensated. That ship sailed, and rightfully so. The issue is the lack of structure around it. Some version of a contract. Some level of commitment. Incentives tied to performance. Even something resembling a regulated system would go a long way. Because right now, the pros look more like college used to look.....structured, competitive, developmental. College sports? They look like the Wild West with fancy branding. That's backwards. Fixing it isn't about taking power away from players. It's about creating a system where effort, loyalty, and production actually mean something again. Where teams can build instead of constantly rebuild. Where fans can connect instead of reset every year. Until that happens, this thing is going to keep feeling off. Talented, exciting, unpredictable...but off. Everybody sees it. Few want to admit it. It's doesn't make you a bad fan to say it out loud either. This story was posted on 2026-04-12 20:58:50
Printable: this page is now automatically formatted for printing.
Have comments or corrections for this story? Use our contact form and let us know. More articles from topic Sports:
Baseball: UK drops series opener to Mizzou, 5-4 I'm A Dam Runner will be Saturday, May 16 Baseball: Indians travel to Pulaski Co. on Friday Softball: Adair Co. to host Clinton Co. on Tuesday GRL State Park won't be open until summer Baseball: Between cruise control and chaos, KY wins big Softball: Lady Indians travel to Russell Co. on Monday Baseball: Indians off to a hot start Basketball: There's Always Oweh NCAAT Preview: Kentucky vs Santa Clara View even more articles in topic Sports |
 
115 Jamestown St. Columbia, KY. 270-384-2496 
 
 
 
 
|
||||||||
|
| ||||||||||
|
Quick Links to Popular Features
Looking for a story or picture? Try our Photo Archive or our Stories Archive for all the information that's appeared on ColumbiaMagazine.com. | ||||||||||
|
Contact us: Columbia Magazine and columbiamagazine.com are published by Linda Waggener and Pen Waggener, PO Box 906, Columbia, KY 42728. Please use our contact page, or send questions about technical issues with this site to webmaster@columbiamagazine.com. All logos and trademarks used on this site are property of their respective owners. All comments remain the property and responsibility of their posters, all articles and photos remain the property of their creators, and all the rest is copyright 1995-Present by Columbia Magazine. Privacy policy: use of this site requires no sharing of information. Voluntarily shared information may be published and made available to the public on this site and/or stored electronically. Anonymous submissions will be subject to additional verification. Cookies are not required to use our site. However, if you have cookies enabled in your web browser, some of our advertisers may use cookies for interest-based advertising across multiple domains. For more information about third-party advertising, visit the NAI web privacy site.
| ||||||||||
