College Football's Agent Conundrum Causes Coaches To Throw Fits

All eyes in the college football world were focused on Birmingham, Alabama this week to see the circus that is SEC Media Days.  The stories were going to be along the lines of Alabama repeating, Urban Meyer's health, and for the fifth year in row it seems the question of whether or not Steve Spurrier can actually make noise at South Carolina. 

Now all those eyes will be focused on agent-gate.  South Carolina, Florida, and now Alabama all have the NCAA looking into star players eligibility after recent allegations of involvement with the nefarious "agents."  By the time this article is finished, I wouldn't be shocked to see LSU, Auburn, Arkansas or any other school having the same issue.  We keep getting new names every day. 

It seems the NCAA is taking a hard line on getting the agents and their kind out of college football.  This is the area they've decided to crack down on.  Fans are livid at the agents, coaches are firing off shots at them.  Nobody likes the agents and that's obvious. 

I heard a guy this morning say that the agents are like a drug dealer and the players are drug addicts.   If you take away the dealers, there are no addicts.  This sounds good in theory, but we've been spending billions on a drug war for decades and we can't get rid of the dealers.  There is just no way to get rid of the agents.  Drew Rosenhaus is not the guy doing the illegal stuff.  It's the agent without a client list that is cheating. 

What are you going to threaten a street agent with?  A NFL ban?  A year of suspension?  The guys doing the illegal things are the guys desperate for clients.  Drug dealers didn't stop dealing because the sentencing got stiffer or the risk was larger.  The payoff is worth the risk and it's impossible to change that dynamic with desperate people. 

The problem here is the players.  Schools can do all they can to educate the kids and the NCAA can force the kids to listen to a hundred people warn them about bad agents and extra benefits.  If a kid is stupid and has a history of making bad decisions, you likely can't beat that out of his brain. 

You can't tell me Marvin Austin and Marcel Dareus didn't know taking a free trip to Miami was a bad idea.  Even if they weren't positive the guy was an agent or affiliated with one, you have to know this basic premise as a college athlete.  If someone is offering you something free you probably should say no, or at the least call your compliance department.  Free = trouble.  It's pretty simple. 

Marcel Dareus is set to be a multi-millionaire by next spring.  He couldn't wait until then to party in Miami?  He couldn't say "NO" with the knowledge that a year later he can go to Miami as many times as he wants and get VIP treatment wherever he goes?  Sorry, that's on him.  Is the agent wrong for seeking these kids out?  Sure.  These type of agents are scum, but scum that you can't kill off.  There will always be a market for these guys to try to get their foot in the door early with talented kids.  There is way too much money available to cut it out.   

Alabama coach Nick Saban made some blistering comments to the media in reaction to the news that his best defensive playmaker might be in trouble.  He blasted the NFL, the agents, and the NFLPA and basically threatened to ban them from his campus unless they do something.  Saban's reaction was classic misplaced anger.  Here's a guy that has used the fact that his program is more accessible to NFL scouts and coaches than any other program as a recruiting tool.  He's used the very thing he's bashing and threatening to take away to get to where he is today.  He's taken pride on being "NFL friendly" and running his program like a NFL franchise. 

Of course, there is no way Saban is going to ban the NFL from his campus unless he gets every other school to go along with him.  No way he'd allow himself to be at that disadvantage in the recruiting wars of the SEC.  He just wanted to blast someone and let off some steam.  He's frustrated and upset.  He forgets that this is part of the deal.  When you have highly rated players in your program you have to deal with the problems that brings.  He wants the NFL to fix it for him, make it so that his job doesn't have this stress. 

The NFL can't and shouldn't be responsible for a what a 20-year-old kid on a college campus does.  For all his talk about personal responsibility, you'd think Saban would get that.  It's on him to educate his players and on them to not be stupid.  Marcel Dareus probably got the education required to know better, he just refused to say no to temptation.  There is no reason that should be seen as an issue that the NFL should even approach.  They have their own issues, keeping Nick Saban stress free isn't one of them.

I'm sure other coaches will jump on the Saban bandwagon of demanding more from the NFL, a league they don't affiliate with or work for.  I'm sure guys like Mike Slive will place blame on the NFL or say the NCAA needs to help.  It's easier to do those things than to just say, "My star player is an idiot that screwed up."

The sad thing is every fanbase that has a kid involved in these issues will jump on board and bang the drum for Saban and his fellow coaches.  It's so much easier as fans to say to ourselves that the mean, nasty NFL and their agents ruined our pure, clean college football program.  It's so much harder to admit that the 20-year-old kid you've been idolizing made an incredibly stupid mistake that will cost him his college eligibility and possibly your team a win or two. 

College football doesn't need help from the NFL.  It needs to keep trying to educate kids and at the same time understand that sometimes you can't keep individuals from being morons.  When the kids make bad decisions despite being warned over and over again you have to let them go and not make excuses for them.  It's called personal responsibility.  Coaches preach it all the time and sound like cheesy life coaches they bring it up so often.  Now they want to bail out the players and themselves by finding a way to make this the fault of the NFL and put it in the hands of Roger Goodell.