How Corrupt Is College Football and Can It Ever Be Fixed?

Scandal.

That’s a word which college football fans have seen far too often in recent years, as the sport has slowly started to dissolve into a wild jungle where everything is based on money, power, greed and corruption.

The system isn’t just out of control at this point: it’s teetering on the brink of destruction.

The power dynamic in college football has now grown so out of whack that it’s going to take something drastic to help turn this sport around before it finally reaches the point of no return.

As college football’s popularity has soared in recent decades, so have the resources and the billions of dollars of revenue that annually flow in from nine-figure television contracts, sponsorships, bowl games, licensing deals and memorabilia sales.

The so-called amateur sport has now turned into a big billion dollar business, and with that kind of money floating out there, there’s bound to be some vultures flying around looking to swoop in.

Agents, boosters, bowl executives, you name it—they're all looking to break the rules and cause trouble just so they can get their hands on a little piece of the pie.

There are a lot of skeevy figures lurking in the shadows of college football these days, but the one supposedly saving grace that we were told would keep the fabric of the sport together is the head coaches at these major college football programs.

You know, the ones that parents entrust their children with, the ones who earn the highest salaries at the school, the ones they stick cardboard cutouts of all around campus, and the ones who, most importantly, are supposed to be leaders with high character.

But as we’ve seen time and time again, it’s those same coaches who often abuse their power and their position and display a reckless disregard for what’s right.

The latest example has come out this week at Penn State with the horrific sex abuse scandal surrounding Jerry Sandusky and the inexcusable inaction by coach Joe Paterno concerning the situation.

After Paterno was fired last night, some have said that justice has been served, but if you’ve read the details about the case and heard all the tragic accounts of what the victims had to endure, justice will never even come close to being served.

Paterno has simply become yet another example of how skewed the power dynamic in college football is right now.

The fact that a football coach could hold that much power around a college and a community is evidence of how imbalanced the system has become.

The scary part is the situation is the same at nearly every major program around the country.

Major college football coaches are not just the highest paid figures at schools, there some of the most powerful as well, but as we’ve seen with this most recent scandal, power should not equal trustworthy.

This is Joe Paterno, an American icon?

Someone who was supposedly pristine.

If he can’t be trusted to do the right thing, who can?

Can Jim Tressel be trusted?

Or Pete Carroll?

How about Butch Davis?

When one man is given so much power, naturally he’s going to abuse it, and when that happens, scandals emerge.

We’ve heard from countless college football insiders that there is no such thing as a clean program anymore. There’s only the programs that can keep things quiet and the ones that can’t.

College Football has become riddled with corruption, and it starts at the top and trickles down from there.

Whether its Jim Tressel never disclosing an e-mail or if its a booster paying a player, the lawlessness is everywhere, and it’s gotten to the point where the scandals have become bigger news than the actual sport itself.

For example, most people probably remember the 2010 season for the Cam Newton media saga, and not his Heisman Trophy run.

Over the last few years, it just seems like it's been non-stop scandals: Miami, USC, Ohio State, Florida State, Alabama, and now Penn State. It's just too hard to keep up at this point.

When does it end?

How many big-name schools have to be exposed before someone says, "maybe it’s time to change the system, because it just isn’t working."

Sure, college football has never been more profitable, but how much integrity has to be sacrificed to keep those dollars rolling in?

Is it finally time to clean up this dirty sport, or should we just let the power dynamic keep getting more out of hand and see where that takes us?

I’ll admit, sometimes I watch those grainy black and white highlights of the old Army-Notre Dame games from the 1940s, and it makes me sad.

It makes me sad that I wasn’t alive to see college football during a simpler time.

Sad that I can’t watch a game without having to see a brand name smothered everywhere.

Sad that I can’t go a day without hearing about the latest NCAA violation, suspension or scandal.

And sad that this once great sport has now gotten so out of control.

The system is broken, and it’s only going to get worse if we don’t start holding those in charge more accountable for their actions.

The greed, corruption and hunger for power that's currently plaguing college football needs to be dealt with and fixed, or else college football fans better get used to the word "scandal," because it's going to become a part of their daily vocabulary.