I have been a sports fan my entire life. Like many Americans I love football, both professional and college, I used to love the NBA and still watch some college basketball. I was also right in line with everyone when the Olympics rolled around to support our country and the athletes that represented us. I even like track and field. But the landscape of sports is changing drastically. And not for the better.

I'm not necessarily talking about the woke policies pushed by many of our professional leagues and now many of our colleges that promote transgender participation, negatively affecting the opportunities available to biological women. Those are all things that take away from our enjoyment of sports but I'm talking about the blatant and now open influence of money in college sports. College football, much like the Olympics, wore the cloak of amateurism, those who played for the love of the game. And while there were some programs that had a definite advantage and built teams that were always competitive, there was still the opportunity for schools with smaller budgets to ride the underdog persona to competitiveness or even championships.

But money has brought change that threatens not only the facade of amateurism but will further separate the haves and have nots. The SEC and Big Ten conferences, followed closely by the Big 12, have expanded their membership and ridden the success of one or two schools in each conference to financial windfalls. Schools in those conferences will be getting around $70 million apiece after signing media deals tied primarily to airing football games. That leaves two other conferences identified as one of the Power 5 conferences in college athletics scrambling to get deals that will allow them to compete financially with the SEC, Big Ten, and Big 12.

The PAC 12, that includes Arizona, Arizona State, Cal, Stanford and the Oregon and Washington schools, has lost 2 of its most marketable members, UCLA and USC, who are joining the Big Ten. Sports broadcasting companies don't believe the remaining schools are as marketable and are balking at paying that conference similar money. It's possible some of their members could join one of the three conferences thus spelling the end of the PAC 12 conference. The leaders of that conference were blindsided by the expansion of the other 3 conferences and are now left scrambling.

The ACC, which boasts some big time programs such as Clemson, Miami, and Florida State are in worse shape. A few years ago, the conference agreed to a media rights deal that would pay them about $36 million a year through the year 2036. At the time it was a huge deal and put them at the top of the monetary heap. Now, it leaves them earning about half of what their competitors will earn and puts them in jeopardy of becoming second tier schools. What seemed like a good idea at the time has turned out to be disastrous.

It's not just the athletic departments that stand to suffer financially because as history proves, universities with successful athletic programs garner more donations from not only alumni but with partnerships created with corporate donors. Student enrollment also increases when the athletic department provides the high profile visibility associated with being on television. Failure by the ACC and the PAC 12 to either get or renegotiate their media deals would further consolidate the control of the national championship races into about 40 schools.

And with players being able to sell the rights to their name, image, and likeness, we now have schools bidding for the services of talented players. Offering millions of dollars to 18-year-old kids that have proven nothing other than their ability to excel at their sport at the high school level. Now we have discussions about student athletes becoming employees which brings unionization back into the conversation. Student athletes at Northwestern University have been trying to organize for the last several years but have been unsuccessful in doing so. Now that brings the potential for everything that goes on in the professional leagues to the college level. The game will never be the same.

And that's too bad. We loved watching schools like Central Florida, the University of Cincinnati, or TCU make a run with the big boys participating in the postseason national championship tournaments. Those schools won't even get the media attention that will bring them into our collective consciousness and give us the stories of the underdog that we love to get behind. Money will ruin that which we believe has made college athletics great. Get ready for work stoppages, free agency, and all those things that create loyalty to an institution's athletic teams.

Maybe we can get behind pickle ball leagues.